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I would like to start a discussion of ebony as a wood for FBs and bridges.
I have read numerous posts that claim that ebony has a deadening effect on vibration whereas other woods do not have same.
If true, would not the woods that perform opposite (BRW and African Blackwood) be the best to use for those functions?
Thanks,

I have not heard that ebony has a deadening effect. If ebony didn't work for fret boards and bridges, I don't think people would be using it. Some my prefer rosewood for those functions but I always thought it was for weight reasons.

Ebony makes a great fret board because it is so hard and doesn't wear out quickly.

Weight is greater than RW but thickness and mass of the FB and bridge is not all that much. Ebony has always been the preferd FB material for most stringed instruments. I would guess that has had a lot to do with feel. When polished out to glass smooth nothing feels or wears like Ebony.

I too agree ebonies are used for durability more than anything. Probably the secondary issue is color. A lot of ebonies are black or a close enough dark color to not compete in the color scheme of the other woods used in the guitar. And dying lighter ebonies is fairly common.

Versus say Indian Rosewood, ebonies are a lot better against fingerboard nail wear divots. The old Indian boards I've seen show this considerably. But... According to Frank Ford, the divots don't seem to matter much to the player, although he did develop a technique to fill them in during a refret.

Mario and a few others swear by their Brazilian Bridges though. May be like the difference in Sitka and Adirondack top bracing, minimal, but "Let's get that little" seems to be the thought. 2 pennies.

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Someone posted some test data on the damping effects of various bridge and fingerboard woods, and the bottom line was that it depends on the type of ebony. Maybe someone who has some time can search for the results, but my memory is that gaboon ebony had a very high damping factor compared to rosewood, but Macassar ebony tested very favorably to rosewood.

great discussion. What about African Blackwood for both?

Searches return minimal result on African Blackwood. Probably because it is so rare and expensive, few people use it.  I do recall someone sounding very excited about it used as a bridge. It is a rosewood after all, it should do fine. The weight should be ok on a SS - I would be curious how much a classical bridge would weight. Probably a bit more than Braz.

Hibdon offers African BW fingerboards.

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I did the tests some years ago on internal damping in a large number of hardwoods. We did it at the univerity using the equipment I usually use for measuring the same things for rock samples. We used identically sized samples of hardwood, at least three of each type, and introduced a known signals at a range of frequencies at one end and measured the output at the other, we did this in all grain orientations. The wood that had by far the greatest damping was indeed Ebony, with BRW, Mad Rose and Honduran Rosewood right at the other end of the scale. Other low damping woods were the other usual suspects EIR etc. Also good, if I remember rightly was Padauk. If you want to use an ebony I would suggest Macassar as that came in the top half of the test.

Myself,I always use BRW or Madrose for bridges, and also for fingerboards, I would never use ebony for a bridge, though a fingerboard would be OK if you really wanted a black board, but it would have some effect on the sound, probably in the sustain. If you want ebony for appearence then use Macassar, good black ebony is getting hard to get anyway, and you can always stain the Macassar if you want.

That said for classicals an ebony FB is still the norm, maybe because the sound an ebony board gives is the sound we now accept as being 'classical'. Indeed I've just cut the slots in an ebony board for one myself. However, all of the best classicals use BRW for the bridge, although I believe Smallman uses padauk, which is OK.

Don't forget a guitar is a total system, and as the great Mario always said, it's all in the details.

I'll see if I can dig out the raw data, though it was some time ago.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

african blackwood is, iirc, the wood of choice for clarinets and oboes and such.

That's what I'm doing wrong! Blow instead of pluck!