Frustrated with ebony fretboards

[Alissarr]

I’ve got a stock of about 10 guitars at the moment 2 maple fretboards, 2 rosewood (both 1980’s Jacksons), and the remainder at ebony fretboards just had a 3rd fretboard split on me. Minor cracking but enough that swelling wouldn’t fix it back. The common thing between thes Guitars is that they are all newer guitars with ebony boards.

Is is there something I need to know about the wood these days. Been in MN and my whole life I have never had issues, but had a monarkh go bad on me last year, and two soloists within he last few months! General rule of thumb is I change strings every 2 months or so and use fret oil at each change. Normal humidity and temp and I store my gear in the basement.

[neilli]

what oil are you using?

[Alissarr]

My go to is usually F-one. But after I had a few issues with the two non USA models I threw it out and switched back to lemon oil. Just seems weird to me that I had 3 guitars all new within 2 years and all had the ebony crack. Luckily on my USA soloist Jackson stepped in and paid for the repairs.

[toejam]

Never tried the F-1, but many people seem to praise it. I just use Old English or Weiman's without any problem, or even the Dunlop 65 stuff. Regular mineral oil/baby oil is also fine.

[ed]

I have used the F-one oil for a while now and i cant say anything else than it smells pretty good. Other than that i use linseed oil. Also what ive found out is the Dunlop 01 fingerboard cleaner/prep is pretty good stuff to get the gunk out of the fretboard, especially if you use a brush of some sort with it.

Maybe the woods havent been dryed enough. I rarely see the older ebony fretboards have cracks in them like maybe a few that have been neglected. And they are usually very small cracks that you dont even notice if you dont look close. But i think ebony tends to crack more easily than rosewood or maple.

Are those USA guitars or imported?

[xenophobe]

You live somewhere it's cold during winter. So you probably use a heater a lot.

Do you monitor for humidity? Sounds like you're storing them in too dry an environment.

[etepbbb]

It does get really dry here in the winter, that is a real possibility. However, I don't oil my guitars more then 2 times a year and I don't have problems. I mine are older guitars, where the fretboards are dried out. I wonder if the newer guitars just aren't dried enough before being shipped? Do you feel the frets sticking out of the fretboard, like a sawblade? This would be an indication of a fretboard drying out after being finished.

[Alissarr]

The weird thing about the situation is how much lighter in color the boards got too. My humidity is pretty well controlled at home, but I am sure the dry forced air didn’t help. My suspicion is the wood on the Indonesian models are not dried as well.
Up until last year I’ve never had anything crack on me, but I think it’s got me off buying ebony boards new.

[DonP]

Was this winter worse than normal for you?

I keep all my axes upstairs. I've just started monitoring my basement and I notice large swings in humidity from summer to winter. I bought a de-humidifier for summer. It barely keeps up. During the winter it's on 80% less.

[xenophobe]

This winter I saw a number of different people online have ebony fretboards crack and fret ends stick out. Two different people on the Kiesel group with new guitars, even. Every time I asked, it seemed heating seemed to be an issue and most of these guitars were kept out of their cases. If it goes under 30% for any length of time, you should probably store guitars in the case. Most people seem to think 40-50% is ideal, maybe a bit higher and more important for acoustics.

Humidity packs for guitars are a thing.

https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=humidity+packs+for+guitars

[Number Of The Priest]

I live in Canada where I have my central heating activated half the year (typically November to April, give or take a couple of months). I've been living in my current home nearly ten years, which is a 2005 build so it's airtight to modern standards. The downside of the airtight construction is that it traps excessive moisture from cooking and showering, and the moisture condenses on the cold windows which threatens to make my home musty and moldy. To remove the moisture, I run a dehumidifier and my ventilation fans. So basically I have a dry house six months of the year.

In the summer, it can get hot and humid here. I run the air conditioning if it becomes uncomfortable, but otherwise I do enjoy the fresh air flowing through open windows.

So you can imagine the massive fluctuations in humidity and temperature that my whole house encounters through the course of a year. It's a rollercoaster.

When not being played, I keep my guitars in their cases. I have cases of various quality. I never found the need to use any humidity-controlling/monitoring case candy (hygrometers, humidifiers) and I've never had a problem with sprouting fret ends, drying/cracking fretboards, swelling woods, or needing to adjust the truss rod between seasons. I should probably start a cult on my devout belief that case storage probably negates all of my guitar-ownership problems.

Additional benefit of storing guitars in their cases: No accidents due to careless pets or people (or clumsy ol' me) or faulty wall hangers.

[xenophobe]

So you can imagine the massive fluctuations in humidity and temperature that my whole house encounters through the course of a year. It's a rollercoaster.

I don't think fluctuations are bad, just long exposure to really low humidity. I live in one of those places. Humidity dropped to under 20% in the winter. I bought a humidifier because of it.

[Alissarr]

We didn’t seem t have a worse winter but maybe I need to place a few humidity gauges downstairs. We set the humidity at about 45% in our house but I only measure it upstairs so I suppose it could be crazy downstairs. Weird thin was the guitars that were not my US Soloist were both in nice cases and cracks were not Dicks verse in the winter (late summer / early fall).

[Alissarr]

weird thing was my frets didn’t stick out (all models had bound fretboards, so maybe that’s why). My go to tech seemed to see many re this year too, but he thinks it might have to do with the ebony being harvested is some remnant from trees that were felled years ago. Mentioned that the sub prime cuts were left in the forest and that’s where a lot of stock is coming from now. Anyone know how ebony is treated / prepped before used?