Driving 8p nails into wood may show up some technical problems but using wood as an excuse for bad tone, poor transference of vibrations from fluffy/soft shims and actually having the music wind up IN the body (where it gets swallowed up in the Great Black Hole Of Sound = The Body) - is counter-intuitive and has not been borne out as logical, existing to any substantive value, nor of any importance to me in all the basses I've built.
My Ps sound like Ps and my
Js sound like
Js - no matter what wood I've used ---- and I've used some very oddball woods for my basses.
Keep the strings in motion so they can actually be 'seen' by the magnetic pickups and you've max'd out your tone as far as it's gonna go until you change any of the following:::
1) strings
2) fingers
3) pickups
Wood is an ablative. If the body's humming, the music isn't getting to the amp.
I'm considering the possibility that cotton-wound wires are better than vinyl-coated ones though. And perhaps the red coated wire is better for the low tones.
You can help me with that theory if you like. I'm sure you can find some voodoo logic to explain it.
