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Blindfold Test: Maple vs Rosewood

Which audio is maple, which is rosewood?

  • Audio 1 is maple, audio 2 is rosewood.

    Votes: 208 40.5%

  • Audio 2 is maple, audio 1 is rosewood.

    Votes: 305 59.5%
  • Total voters
    513
#41
Quadzilla said:
Are those fake emblems on your non-Fender manufactured necks???? :eek: :smug: ;) :D Sorry, I had to! :p
Click to expand...

Hehe, you got me! :hiding:

In my defense, the maple neck came like that with the bass.
And the other one just looked completely bare without anything there.

I just stuck the decal on and didn't finish over it, so anyone taking even a quick glance would instantly see that it's a sticker. Plus, I like to brag about the fact that the necks are from Allparts because I think they're better than typical Fender stock!! :D :hiding:
 
#48
Man, that's tough. I could hear a difference, but nothing massive. I did prefer #1 though. I'm going to go with #1 as maple but only because I disliked the 'clank' that #2 had.

Thanks for putting that up by the way, it's as fair a test as I think you could possibly get without removing and replacing a maple fingerboard for a rosewood one.

Incidentally, on the topic of telling the difference in sound of woods, there's a clip I found of a guitarist who replaced the basswood body of his strat with an alder one and recorded an uneffected clean signal straight into his computer before and after (same hardware, pickups, everything, except the body) and you can reeeeally hear the difference in bodies. If anyone is interested I can dig that out.

Mark
 
#52
mcgraham said:
Man, that's tough. I could hear a difference, but nothing massive. I did prefer #1 though. I'm going to go with #1 as maple but only because I disliked the 'clank' that #2 had.

Thanks for putting that up by the way, it's as fair a test as I think you could possibly get without removing and replacing a maple fingerboard for a rosewood one.

Incidentally, on the topic of telling the difference in sound of woods, there's a clip I found of a guitarist who replaced the basswood body of his strat with an alder one and recorded an uneffected clean signal straight into his computer before and after (same hardware, pickups, everything, except the body) and you can reeeeally hear the difference in bodies. If anyone is interested I can dig that out.

Mark
Click to expand...

I'm interested!
 
#54
I had an experience similar to several others: on the original tracks, I thought #2 was maple. Listening to the normalized versions, I thought it was #1. Pretty darn close, eh? Don't you think the North American contingent has had enough time to check in by now? Nice feel on the recorded basslines, by the way.

-Steve
 
#55
What's funny to me is, almost every instance in this thread where somebody says "clip X is definitely rosewood because it sounds like this and that", their description is what I like in a bass tone. But they are sometimes describing clip one and sometimes clip two! Regrettably I have no way to listen at work, so I'll have to wait until tonight to find out whose tonal descriptions I can agree with or trust. ;)
 
#60
nemo said:
How often you get the samples where the only difference is the fingerboard?
Click to expand...

Not true. The difference is the entire neck, not just the fingerboard. It's very possible that a difference in tone between the two samples is because of the neck wood, not the fingerboard wood. The neck wood (non-fingerboard) does have more mass than the fingerboard.

To put it another way: it's wrong to assume that two chunks of wood of the same species must have the same tone.

To nitpick even further: were the neck screws torqued equally in both instances? :ninja:

Interesting test, regardless! :)
 

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