Not What I'd Call a "Hardwood"

[Alan Peterson]

A stroll thru the neighborhood Guitar Center revealed a fairly attractive Ibanez solid body guitar hanging from the wall, nicely priced at just under $200. In looking up the specs, I discovered the company is using "treated white pine" as a fingerboard material.

PINE? Seriously? Forgive my shock, but that kinda goes against everything I ever knew about string instrument construction that has traditionally depended on durable hardwoods such as maple, ebony, rosewood, variations on ironwood et al.

Other than keeping known respiratory issues at bay (and making the sawmill smell like Christmas year round), what advantage could there possibly be to a pine fingerboard

[Bob Gramann]

Cheap?

[Glenn Cummings]

Huh..... My search for your pine, also landed me on Ibanez... where they use Treated New Zealand Pine. Nothing there as far as 'treatment'...

Then sequitur search provided some information https://www.nztif.co.nz/buying-nz-timber/

Not sure what the treament is, but I could imagine a dry wood being resin/epoxy filled...
There are some of these types available. But I did find the 'durability' mentioned:

"Sawn New Zealand timber dries easily and can be kiln dried rapidly from green. The wood can be readily treated with preservative to achieve all desired durability levels."

I tend to think this 'preservative' is more of resistance to moisture, insects, fungus and such.

I'll be interested to see what others find.

(Note: Southern USA has a very dense Yellow Pine, which is much different than any of our Local (PNW USA) pine.

[David King]

Here's my best guess: http://www.tunnicliffes.co.nz/thermowood-.html

[Alan Peterson]

I looked up David's link on the ThermoWood product.
Glad to see they got the process worked out. Any time I combine thermal energy + wood, the result is charcoal. Not very helpful in guitar building, but superb for filtering homebrew.