Body wood?

The problem is I don't know what you consider to be a "bit" more mellow.

Most of my basses are swamp ash and it's what I tend to prefer. Nice grain and looks. Nice "edge" to the tone. I've got a maghogany Alembic and it's superb but hard to compare to anything else just based on wood. I love the sound of it though.

And I have some alder basses. Alder is the mellowest wood that sounds good to me. It looses some of that ash edge and has pretty plain grain, but has a really nice solid classic sound. I love them too for their own reasons.

But I don't go softer than that. Basswood or "forced maple" soft wood basses all sound blurry and "foofy" to me. Obviously a bongo is the exception, but I feel that unless a bass is designed for soft wood from the ground up (like the bongo is), it just doesn't cut it.

So the only question would be is Alder what you consider just a "bit" more mellow or "too" mellow. You'll have to answer that one. Personally I like them both.

 

Koa or Alder. My swamp ash Gecko 6 (maple/purpleheart/pao ferro neck) does not sound mellow at all.



On the other hand, my Fender SBVI jazz bass (alder body, maple/ebony fb neck) sounds ridiculously brihgt!

 

Warmoth has a really good wood description/guide here: Warmoth Custom Guitar Parts - Wood Descriptions

My personal wood preference is Wenge.

 

There was a pretty good post where a fellow put pickups into a nice jazz bass body, and attached some pickups to a chunk of scrap wood. He did a vote to see if anybody could tell the difference, people voted wrong. Sorry I am no good with the search I cannot find the thread for you to link.

I read the post a few weeks before I ordered a Carvin thankfully, I based my body wood purely on weight. If you go to Carvin's site they have a good wood reference guide as far as tones go, only the types of wood they use though.

Edit: Carvin's Color and Wood Guide

 

I think quite a bit of the brightness is coming from the pickups in the Schecter which I believe are EMG's. Those are known for a bright, somewhat "cold" sound. Bartolini's will most likely warm that thing up.

 

Wenge looks awesome, use wenge.

 

Pickups and amp is what you should pay attention too. Bodywood is of no importance at all, other than weight and looks.

 

+1

Or at least, I'll concede that wood is ~2.1485% of the whole package. But for tone, most of that is pick-ups (kind, placement...active v passive), preamp, strings, amp, cabs, playing style. IMHO.

 

I don't think so, especially about the neck/fingerboard woods, but there are exceptions.

 

Id change the pups on the bass. Theyre overly trbele oriented if your getting real bright tone with mahogany body & treble control flat. Mahognay is a warm voiced wood. Ash is significantly brighter. Though not as much as maple.

 

Ask a wood tone "expert" about the tone of mahogany without telling them you have one. Chances are they'll tell you how mellow it is. Consider that when you get expert advice on other woods tones.

Also don't get hung up on the EMG's are bright and Bartolinis are dark lore either. Both companies make models with different tones and don't have a singular company tone.

 

Neck wood I don't think has a big difference but the fretboard wood does make a difference. Again I cannot find the thread about it but there was a test done on this and maple is brighter than rosewood, beyond that I don't know.