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bass woods

What woods does everybody like for bass bodies?

  • Alder

    Votes: 88 20.8%

  • Ash (Swamp or Northern Hard)

    Votes: 140 33.0%

  • Basswood

    Votes: 11 2.6%

  • Koa

    Votes: 10 2.4%

  • Korina (Black or White)

    Votes: 12 2.8%

  • Lacewood

    Votes: 2 0.5%

  • Mahogany

    Votes: 45 10.6%

  • Maple

    Votes: 40 9.4%

  • Poplar

    Votes: 13 3.1%

  • Redwood

    Votes: 8 1.9%

  • Walnut

    Votes: 38 9.0%

  • Wenge

    Votes: 17 4.0%
  • Total voters
    424
#26
Originally posted by zombywoof5050
...I once read that the wood in Brian May's guitar came out of a very very old fireplace, and that's one reason that it sounds so unique (from the years of heat).
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zomby - The neck wood came from a mahogany fireplace mantle. The oak used in the body center came from an old table.

In fact, insiders call that guitar "The Fireplace" and the "Red Special" is just a more popular name.

As for the heat thing over the 500 years the mantle has reputedly been around - With the intensity of the much-larger-than-bass, market for guitars, I would think some guitar makers would have figured out a process they could market to position their products as "superior" due to heat.

There was some bass maker in Bass Player's "New Gear" that was claiming how their treatment of the wood with heat made the wood better.

The only effective means of improving tone woods that I've read about, (other than years of playing the instrument), is some kind of shaker that proved to be successful. Unfortunately, the cost/profit relationship associated with the process was too low.
 
#30
Originally posted by Julien
come on it's time to realize taht the wood part of the sound is maybe no more than 0.0000001%
The sound is in the pick ups.......
Click to expand...

Well, ya can't argue with "science." :rolleyes:

Wood plays a huge role, (if we were talking electric guitars, that would be a little different).

Why does it matter? I think Mike Tobias says it best, " consider that the electric bass is first and foremost an acoustic instrument."

As essentially an acoustic instrument, the pickups reveal the materials the bass is made of and the player, (although some pickups are designed to alter that sound).

You just can't generalize for the entire bass world. There are too many factors involved, a few being;

- Your ears. As Alembic says, "How much does the top laminate matter? Depends on your sensitivity to the subtle tonal changes with different top woods."
- The lutherie skills applied to the bass
- The qualities of the particular boards used
- The finish used on the wood
- Wood age/grain/grain runout, et al

Conklin, who uses an array of woods on basses says, "Various tops can add different textures to the tone."[/]

Bee basses will even tell you the headstock wood affects tone.

But if a person hasn't played a number of basses made with a variety of woods, or, if the bass isn't made well, or, if a person's ears aren't sensitive to subtle differences, I suppose they all sound the same. Or else, all dark heavy woods sound the same and all light, resonant woods sound the same.
 
#31
Originally posted by Fetch Da bass
OK redwood looks great. How does it hold up. I know that redwood is a very soft wood like spruce. I have a bunch of redwood 2x6 boards. Maybe I will make myself a bass body out of it.

Fetch
Click to expand...

It is not suitable for oil finish basses, it is too soft. It will require a hard poly finish for pretection.

I'm not sure how well it would work for the body. All of the redwood basses that I have seen had a different wood on the back. For example, mine is swamp ash.

Invalid Link Removed
 
#39
Originally posted by Julien
come on it's time to realize taht the wood part of the sound is maybe no more than 0.0000001%
The sound is in the pick ups....
i'm sure they're only maybe 2 peolple on earth that are able to make difference two basses with smae pick ups,strings but with different woods....;))
Click to expand...

Spoken like someone who hasn't done possibly the simplest test...an Alder Fender Jazz vs. an Ash one.

Then again maybe 0.0000001% is a really big number;)
 
#40
Originally posted by Julien
come on it's time to realize taht the wood part of the sound is maybe no more than 0.0000001%
The sound is in the pick ups....
i'm sure they're only maybe 2 peolple on earth that are able to make difference two basses with smae pick ups,strings but with different woods....;))
Click to expand...

Either I totally disagree with you, or I am one of those two people. I have done the test with the fenders. All of them had the same pickups, and everyone of them sounded different. While the all the ashes and alders sounded similar to each other, the ash basses sounded quite different.

IME, not only does the type of wood make a significant impact on the sound, but different pieces of the same species sound somewhat different.

IMO, the tone starts with the wood. Pickups cannot add anything that isn't in the vibrating string. The body and neck, and everything else lay a part in how the body vibrates, which in turn effects how the string vibrates. If the body didn't vibrate I would agree with you, but as it does, in some cases tremendously, I see it very differently than you.

Geoff
 

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