Building a Sustainable Guitar: Ebony
Welcome to the fifth installment of WRI’s six-part blog series on the future of tonewoods, the woods used in guitars and other musical instruments. In each installment, we look at a different species of tree used for a certain part of the guitar. Each wood presents its own challenges and possibilities surrounding sustainable harvest.

The wood underneath a guitar’s strings is called the fretboard. To function properly, it has to be perfectly constructed from wood that is hard, dense and warp-resistant. It must hold metal frets for years without any movement, since even a microscopic amount of fret movement can throw a guitar out of tune. One material is synonymous with fine fretboards: ebony….