There’s been a push for some time to create new man-made materials to replace hard-to-find or banned exotic woods. Tone-producing woods are even harder to replace, so it’s natural to start with other parts of the guitar — like fingerboards. Ebony and Rosewood are the most common exotic hardwoods used here, and a variety of synthetics have been tried to reproduce the look and feel of these, first starting with ebony. Now, there appears to be a material that has the look and feel of hardwoods and now is available in faux Rosewood as well: Rocklite.
Many past synthetics have either been all man-made plastics, like phenolic or some epoxy resin, or some hybrid combination of wood and resin, put into a mold and subjected to high temperature and/or pressure. The difference in Rocklite is that they seem to use splinters of some type of sustainable hardwood that are oriented (like a grain) rather than thin layers of wood or chips or paper. This creates the appearance of wood grain and might even mimic its properties.
Here’s some more commentary on it:
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/rocklite-the-latest-synthetic-ebony-for-fingerboards.1311057/
Ebano was produced first (Ebony-like), and they just introduced a Rosewood version of it (Sundari) so it will be interesting to see if someone can use it to actually make an acoustic out of it — full back and sides — and compare to the real thing.
It’s good to see that people are pushing the limits not only in design but new materials as well. With the recent CITES rulings for Rosewood, and no doubt applied to other woods in the future, modern luthiers will need to resort to using new techniques with these new materials to create modern instruments.