Fingerboard wood

[jps]

On another forum someone said that the fingerboard on his 4001V63 was made of Padauk. Is this true? I thought the fingerboards on Ricks were made of Bubinga.

[marty]

As far as I know 4001 and 4003 basses have rosewood fingerboards, whereas Cheyenne and Laredos have bubinga fingerboards.

I assumed V63's had rosewood too, but I may be wrong.

[rick12dr]

The 4001CS[Squire] had Paduak board.The rest have bubinga aka African Rosewood.

[johnhall]

From an old FAQ:

"We use both African Rosewood and Bubinga, which are very similar close relatives. Both are also classified as Hong Kong Rosewood sometimes, which is closer to the mark, since it is grown in Asia
rather than Africa.

"We do not use nor have we used commonly available Paduak, which is Pterocarpus soyauxii. In past years we used Hong Kong Rosewood (Dalbergia family) or African Rosewood (which is true Bubinga in the Guibourtia family) which we continue to use.

I will grant you that Hong Kong Rosewood has been colorfully referred to as Indonesian Paduak by wood suppliers.

In the end, without the species, the trade names of wood are almost useless."

I'll clarify one point. I didn't mean to say some of these species aren't grown in Africa but rather that we've only used Asian-grown lumber to date.

Here's a link which references many species and common trade wood names:

http://www.toolcenter.com/wood/species.html

[jps]

Thanks for the clarification John.