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I think they look great - don't look at all mongrel.

Well the biggest cosmetic problem is the filled in tuner holes.
But then when ya factor in the satin finishes, powder coated pickguards, and some other details and the guitar is the sum of all those things.
They still look nice and play and sound great but they aren't exactly the same as if they were made to standard specs.
But for the guitarist on a budget why not?!

Here it is! Still looking for a loving home!

Dat back.

god i wish i had a grand id be so flossin

Love that finish with the light Rosewood fretboard.

The fingerboard on this one is a wood called Granadillo. It is a great rosewood look-alike. Unfortunately it has become diffiult to find locally. It's a real drag because I was so excited when I found this stuff and now the lumber yard says they don't know if they'll have any more.
I'll just have to keep checking often. In the meantime I still have padauk available and bought some Morado (Pau Ferro) to try out.
But if I could I'd be doing Granadillo on everything.
I was able to find a big enough piece to make one set of back and sides which will be my 100th guitar. :-)

For a while there it seemed folks were becoming more and demanding of darker fingerboards, especially since pure black Ebony was becoming extremely hard to find, which added to the myth that Ebony is naturally very black and consistently so. But I'm loving light colours at the moment. That Granadillo looks stunning, and I dig what Suhr are doing with Pau Ferro.

Yeah it is kind of funny that folks will get something in their head and THAT is the way it has to be.
When I look for a fingerboard wood the color plays a role due to the overall look of the instrument. I would never use a padauk (orange) fingerboard on a purple or green guitar. It would look too weird.
But I think people will, overall, need to be more open minded with woods.
Rosewoods, while not necessarily endangered, are pretty expensive.
The goal can become finding a wood that performs well that isn't so spendy.
Generally Padauk is about 1/3 the price of your average rosewood.

There is a video from the Martin company where Dick Boak talks about how "every musician is an environmentalist until it comes to their guitars. Then they all want brazillian rosewood".

I disagree with that. The majority of people out there have probably never played a guitar with brazillian rosewood, and not even all of the ones made with it where great. LOTS of turds with beautiful wood.

I think the problem is the companies and builders are not explaining to people that while different woods can impart a different flavor tonally, there are plenty of fantastic (visually and sonically) woods available.
Also a guitar is the sum of many things and one wood change doesn't necessarily make or break it.
Finally, if you look at a lot of old catalogs you will see different kinds of mahogany offered at different times.
Why the switch? Price and availability. If cuban mahogany suddenly gets too spendy or hard to find then the industry switches to honduran.

I'd have to double check this to make sure I remember correctly but I think I saw a 60s fender catalog several years back where brazilian rosewood was the standard fingerboard wood BUT for an upcharge one could get Indian rosewood.

So the lesson is Brazillian was cheaper and perhaps easier to get. Then when it became protected the industry had to switch and suddenly Indian was less $ than brazillian.

But people get an idea in their heads and you can't do much except smile and nod.

OH and one more thing. You mentioned ebony. I wonder if people know how much ebony gets dyed black??
Gretsch used to "ebonize" rosewood fingerboards.
That is a practice taken from student violins where cheaper woods are dyed black to look like ebony.


Some of the most gorgeous ebony I have seen is "black and white" ebony! That stuff is amazing!

Personally I avoid working with ebony if I can. People need to be educated to not let it dry out or it cracks, and it can be really messy to work with.

Brazilian Rosewood definitely sounds different from Indian Rosewood though, I've played several guitars (electric as well as acoustic) with these woods and in my opinion Brazilian Rosewood has much more punch, balls, articulation and projection than Indian Rosewood.
When used for the fingerboard it's not as big a difference as when it's used for the body of an acoustic guitar (especially a nylon stringed one) but still there's a difference.
I do agree with you that the construction and build quality of the guitar and the selection / tuning of the woods and the neck + body matching is more important though, however I've played lots of guitars with an Indian Rosewood fingerboard that sounded absolutely shit to my ears and guitars with a full Maple neck or Ebony fingerboard regularly seem to be much better and more consistent sounding in my opinion (though I also think Ebony can sound a bit clinical / modern at times).
I have never tried it but Madagascar Rosewood is supposed to be a good alternative for Brazilian Rosewood so I've read, if the SRV Strat is any example than Pau Ferro should probably be pretty awesome as a fingerboard wood.

On an electric, I don't think wood matters. The electric guitar is a giant system where all sorts of things are going to affect the sound in a much more radical way than wood. Speakers and pickups for example. The amp and speakers are analogous to the sound hole in an acoustic and should be taken into consideration in any eventual discussion of tone.

For sure! Which is precisely I don't bother to get into THOSE discussions where folks want to argue about how the sound of this mahogany vs that mahogany on their les paul etc etc etc.
Going back to brazillian rosewood for a moment, I won't agree or disagree that it has any certain tonality to it BUT I have played DOZENS of old acoustics with brazillian rosewood back and sides.
Were I to break it down realistically: 10% (or one in 10) sound awesome/amazing.
40%-50% sound average/good but not incredible.
The rest sound mediocre.

When it comes to acoustics the sides do nothing soundwise. The back is a sympathetic resonator and while it does contribute something to the sound there are other things that have greater impact.
This summer will be a good exercise in this. I am building a handful of acoustics in a new dread-ish body style. One will have Granadillo back and sides (my special one-off 100th guitar), a couple will have maple back and sides, and a few will have walnut back and sides.
I am thinking of continuing my top-wood experiment and making one of the walnut backed guitars with a fir top.
So there will be some fun experimenting!

OH and one other development: the fellow who had ordered a natural single pickup socialite decided to grab the shaded 12-to-6 conversion instead so that one is gone!

The tonewood thing is mostly BS. most guitars don't really resonate that much, and there's so many places for the vibrations to get hung up on. I believe most differences you hear are determined by your acoustic environment and preconceived notions of what you're playing. most people don't blind test guitars when trying them out, that would be a silly waste of time.

Here's some food for thought, if you're like myself, or most musicians you'll have days where you think "boy my tone sounds terrible" or "this amp/guitar/pedal/pickups/brazilian rosewood sounds terrible". of course your tone isn't actually bad, it just sounds bad right now. I mean you would think with all this lurking on ilovefuzz and spending lots of time browsing many resources for deals on used gear, you'd have the whole tone thing figured out. but it's not about your gear. usually it's just because your ears have been over or underexposed to loud sounds, the weather (air pressure, humidity) is different than what you're used to, or there's something about your mental state that alters your perception of sound. it could also be other things but I think this is what will most commonly give you tone grumbles.

you could have easily been in a bad acoustic environment or state of mind when playing an instrument you're unfamiliar and possibly uncomfortable with. sounds take time to get used to which is why complex layered music is rewarding with repeated listens. I can't tell if I love a guitar or not until i've had hours of time to mess with it on a setup I like.

TL;DR: Human hearing is sensory perception that is subjective to many factors. These factors are apparent in gear the individual has daily experience with. It is therefore difficult to ascertain a particular variable in an instruments construction upon a brief playing that is most common when trying out guitars

I went through a couple of weeks of thinking that my Fuzzhugger Arc Flash started crapping out after half a rehearsal. But it only uses germanium as a clipping diode and isn't temperature sensitive at all - it was just me getting fatigued as you describe. The weird thing is it went over after a while and I've never experienced that phenomenon again.

Two really got posts Bobby and Chet.