The Pau Ferro seems to be "the best of both worlds," with almost as much top-end sparkle and snap as maple, while retaining the warm lower frequencies of rosewood. No wonder SRV used it!
Pau ferro has more clarity and sparkle than maple and doesn't take away from the sound of maple like rosewood does. It does scoop those hi mids a little but adds a lot to the sound too. IT has the snap of ebony without coloring/dominating/hijacking the whole tone like ebony does. It it a fantastic tone wood, it also tightens up the low end but it can be combined even better with other neck woods. Goncalo Alves in the neck with a Pau Ferro board would be an ideal combination. Good companies like Warnoth offer this combination and it sounds fantastic on a number of body tone-woods including Limba, Koa, Walnut, Cherry, but even the conventional Alder and especially on Swamp Ash it sounds awesome. Pau ferro is also a great board wood to combine with a Wenge neck as it scoops out a lot of that over the top mid-range of Wenge which can be a bit too much.
Took two listens to this, first watching the whole vid and second with my eyes closed and just letting my ears decide. I can absolutely see why Rosewood works for your style of playing, the dark and warm tones work super super well with a bluesy style, it really takes you places. Personally though, I fell hard for the Pau Ferro. Maple was super nice too, bright and snappy just as expected, great note separation with a super sweet tone, but the Pau Ferro with really similar brightness but the added warmth as well really took the best qualities of both and put them together; it had a little extra twang to it as well which is nice. I love the defined note separation, though I understand it makes some bluesy chord work sound a bit too tinny, same with maple but for something more fast paced I think they're both great. I overall appreciate Pau Ferro's character the most. This was a brilliant vid, well organised, no rambling, just pure music comparisons without the bs. Awesome stuff, man.
After watching the acoustic section. Pau ferro sounds great for low tones, the wood sounds like its resonating the note. I would use it for a bass, but the high end doesn't sound amazing on guitar. The maple sounds too bright and shiny personally. The rosewood sounds "stereotypically" how a guitar sounds so it's hard not to say it sounds the best, but it probably does.
All sound so great for different tonal reasons! I guess the common denominator is the great playing 👍 I know its super rare to find but too bad there wasn't ebony too. I love Pau Ferro scooped, 3D like sound, but just wish it was darker...
First of all the playing is superb and so I find the differences very small. All 3 sound good and the preference is a matter of taste. Here I would decide depending on the playabilty of the neck and fretboard. Which like you most?
Pau Ferro is the best of both worlds (especially for teles). It's brighter than rosewood so you get the fast attack but it's got the smooth feel like rosewood and doesn't require a finish. Plus it has great grain pattern variations.
Thanks for the comparison, but there are so many other factors (even when played acoustically) among all the guitars besides the fretboard material. I have an old Tokai ('84 goldstar) and it sounds very similar unplugged and has rosewood fretboard.
I’m not sure how valuable a test like this is. The pickups are 100% the biggest factor so if they aren’t identical, that could be a huge part of the tone difference. Even if you swapped necks around, you would need to make sure the pickup heights stayed the same as that is another major contributor. Great playing though.
@@AlbertoMartinezDelRio if we are talking about the stuff on the guitar… then yes. If everything else was identical and you were only swapping out one thing at a time to do a true A/B test the pickups would have a much greater affect on tone than any wood on the guitar.
I have all three necks and i dig the look of the PF but its tone is just missing something. Sounds plinky, shrill, no body to the tone especially on the high strings. Very disappointing haha
It’s very hard to hear the difference between wood types when it comes to fingerboards. It’s more of a feel thing for me. I used love rosewood for years because of the feel plus it looked great if it was a nice piece. I never liked maple until I started buying Fender Teles about 10 years ago or more. Maple when glossed is like plastic in all fairness but it does not affect sound. I got used to it and went off rosewood. Most of my guitars are maple now and I like a satin finish most of all but if the guitar sounds great I don’t care. Recently I’m back loving rosewood again especially on a Tele. I like it dark and consistent without lighter streaks. Then we’ve Pau Ferro! Now when I first saw it on the Player series in 2018 I was aghast! Big streaks, wildly inconsistent and then the terracotta colours! Pretty ugly stuff. Then the dry feel. Ok, you don’t really feel the wood on the board because the string is between your fingers and the wood. Vintage frets allow more contact but it’s only small. The prime objective of a fingerboard is to hold the frets and be hard-wearing. Thats it. Cosmetics come second. I can’t really tell the difference in sound as it’s playing technique, pickups and amp make the sound. All guitars sound slightly different because of set up, mass and construction. If I had to buy a Fender model I really wanted with PF I’d have to personally view it and pick the example that looked as consistent as possible. No wild streaks or greys! But I’m sure you’d get used to it. When you’re playing you’re really looking across the board so it’s not as noticeable. Tone is the number one factor in a guitar as I’m sure most will agree. Tone and playability! I don’t think the board makes much difference. I’ve had dull maple guitars and bright rosewood! Most say it’s the opposite way round. Fender have gone back to rosewood on some of the Vintera 2 models but even some of them look very streaky with lighter red hues running through the wood. I like the way the player here, stops after fluffing a run near the end and attempts it again! Honest and great guitar playing!
@@AlbertoMartinezDelRio claro excelente combinación, ya decía yo este lovely tone no sale al grabarlo así por si sólo, el deluxe reverb fue un tone master o 64, 65 o 68?
@@AlbertoMartinezDelRio Best replacement or build Necks in America that are affordable are from Locke Custom Guitars in Texas and by special request they will use whatever wood you desire and are fret are slotted and have no fret ends showing and I never had to level or touch any fretwork and last neck I ordered was $335 dollars + Tax and free shipping. He is the Best
I appreciate the effort, but for this to be a legitimate demonstration of the fretboard.. all three should be set up on the same guitar model with the same type of hardware, the fretboard being the only difference. It's hard to gauge this with so many other variables being different.
I understand what you say, bluZage, and you are right. Doing is learning... I only hope that it serves as an approximation to the different tones that can be generated.
@@AlbertoMartinezDelRio I dig your video but just throwing ideas out there for you. Based on your video and a few others I went for the Pau ferro on my latest purchase. So its still a great help . Thanks for sharing.
Somebody once told me something about these guitars... He said if you could accomplish a goal and prove your self and prove you were sincear and that we were wrong about you...then we'ed llike to give you a guitar... The man who challenged me to this goal, i met in monterey. I can tell you that goal he challeneged me to was if i could get off all drugs and learn to quit cigarettes and coffee. That he would congratulate me and find a friend to give me guitar or something special and lncliding an apology. Well, i really did get off of all drugs. It took a long time in total. The truth is i never lied or tried to be deceptive about my equally tragic and extradinary life. The complicated parts to all it was, is due to 3 main things, 1 is a truamatic brain injury, 2 post truamtic stress disorder and 3 a life time of bad diet and a lot of bad psychiatric drugs. It had affected not just myself and including everbody else around me because of my memory being blocked and so many other more details in that ripple effect. It means i never tried to be deceptive or tried to lie. I just had a really bad memory. Thankfully with the assistence of many people, friends and family members incliding the community i stay or am around, least not forget God, the lord and holy spirit i am free and completely off of all those so called medications that i call drugs and i can see or remember all things alot better now.
Rosewood is the best sounding to me, then maple which is clearly brighter and with more attack. Pau ferro sounds to me really bad, it just kills every tone of the guitar, it is like it's not absorbing the sound. I saw a lot of videos, mostly from retailers which are trying to convince people tha pau ferro is a good wood, but to be honest it is not.
I was really hoping that instead of a boring display of mediocre playing...that someone would have verbally shared the differences in the materials ant the density of them and how they affect the resonance through the .neck
