Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

what years have they been pure maple, with no hint of any other wood except the fingerboard?

Jason, do you mean with no walnut wings or skunk stripes?

yes

1980 to 2005 4003 models were all maple except for the bubinga fretboard ...

The 4003 fingerboards can be either rosewood or bubinga. Depending on available supply I belive either wood can be used. I think the 4004 comes with bubinga only.

Bubinga is a type of Rosewood and we've used nothing else for many, many years now.

You only use one species then? There was a post around here a while back that mentioned something about there being more than one closely related species used for fingerboards.

My local supply of bubinga is pretty consistent in color and grain. The store calls it Guibourtia tessmannii (if I spelled it correctly). It is fairly light in color. Kind of pinkish at times. When they have sap wood / heart wood combo pieces the sap wood is much lighter in color - almost white. I have not seen bubinga that is the same or even similar color as most of my Ricks. I've just figured them to be from another species.

The Ric website says it is rosewood but John Hall says it is bubinga and then we find out that bubinga is a type of rosewood ... so we are all correct ...

A rose(wood) by any other name.

My 2000 model 4003 has the darkest fretboard I've ever seen. It's almost purple it's so dark. Is that Bubinga?

Cole

see above

Apparently, there is even more than one species called bubinga. The second one is Guibouria demeusei and it looks just like most of the brown RIC fingerboards I have seen. I guess that answers that question. One horticultural reference I found states that bubinga was once believed to be from the rosewood "family" but is now classified differently. This stuff is hardly set in stone. The world of taxonomy is forever changing. When I studied biology back in high school and college there were only 2 kingdoms, plants and animals. Now there are 5 or more including new kingdoms for protozoans and a few other single-celled organisms. My head hurts just thinking about it.

I found it in the JH frequently asked questions section here on Rickresource.

[ Question: I consider that Padouk is used for the fretboards. My friend says Pau Ferro. The Rickenbacker literature says Rosewood.

Response: Padouk (if that's how you spell it!) is far too oily and open grained for our purposes. Pau Ferro, aka Ironwood, is much too heavy. 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. ]

Look up African Rosewood here and note that "Guibourtia demeusei" is listed. Run the same inquirey for "Guibourtia demeusei" and you'll also see Bubinga listed.

At least the U.S. Forest Service, and in particular the Regis B. Miller Center for Wood Anatomy Research still classifies Bubinga as "rosewood".

The scientific name is certainly far more reliable than trade or common names. You warned us about that a few months ago during a discussion about vermillion. I see here that african rosewood is listed a being any one of 13 different species. Some of them are not even related. According to the USFS, The source for every one of those trees is Africa. Your quote above says that the wood comes from Asia so I assumed you meant you were using one of the asian rosewood species in addition to bubinga (african). Hence my comment about two different species being used to make your fingerboards.