Can You Tell The Difference??? ASH vs. ALDER

[VWbug]

1 A Ash
1 B Alder

2 A Alder
2 B Ash

But I Can't honestly say I hear a distinct difference

 

[stepswork4me]

thanks stepworksforme, for all of your astute contributions to this thread.
i've found them to be really insightful and lucid.

Why, thank you John. Thank you very much. With the exchange that we've had thus far I never would have expected such a nice comme..... Wait a minute! Are you attempting sarcasm?

 

[johnk_10]

Why, thank you John. Thank you very much. With the exchange that we've had thus far I never would have expected such a nice comme..... Wait a minute! Are you attempting sarcasm?

not an 'attempt', and i think that you got it.
so far i haven't seen you contribute anything but criticism to others in any of your posts in any thread.

 

[Munjibunga]

OBKB, I mean no disrespect but I could care less about Leo and just the mention of you working with him as your qualification to trump others implies ego. Your experience is yours and that's fine. I'm just not buying into it. I'll spend my dollar on what I find true and not what I view as "marketing".

So let's hear about your experience building basses over the last 35 years, then. I take John's remarks at face value, and some of that value comes from how long he's been building basses and with whom he built them. Also, his build threads speak volumes about his qualifications to come in here and trump your ramblings.

 

[stepswork4me]

not an 'attempt', and i think that you got it.
so far i haven't seen you contribute anything but criticism to others in any of your posts in any thread.

Then, apparently, you don't know how to read.

 

[stepswork4me]

So let's hear about your experience building basses over the last 35 years, then. I take John's remarks at face value, and some of that value comes from how long he's been building basses and with whom he built them. Also, his build threads speak volumes about his qualifications to come in here and trump your ramblings.

OBKB

 

[johnk_10]

Then, apparently, you don't know how to read.

proof once again that all you do is cast insults. good job man, that one was really witty.

 

[stepswork4me]

proof once again that all you do is cast insults. good job man, that one was really witty.

Well, just call me a black kettle.

 

[johnk_10]

Well, just call me a black kettle.

already thought of alot better ones than that.

 

[prd004]

I say we settle this by putting Dan Atkinson and John 10 in a cage match ala Beyond Thunderdome!!!!! All the weapones will be made out of Ash or Alder and we can judge the tone when they clonk each other on the head!

 

[johnk_10]

I say we settle this by putting Dan Atkinson and John 10 in a cage match ala Beyond Thunderdome!!!!! All the weapones will be made out of Ash or Alder and we can judge the tone when they clonk each other on the head!

i'm up for it. let the games begin!

 

[stepswork4me]

John,

I understand that you have a much better grasp on building and luthierie than I. To this there is no question. I just happen to subscribe to the BELIEF of many other luthiers that body wood matters VERY little. For anyone to state something so subjective as FACT is nothing more than ego. If my frank communication is offensive to you there's just not much I'm willing to do about that. Sure, I can be a total smartass as can you. So, let us agree to disagree and butt heads elsewhere.

 

[johnk_10]

i have never said that someone isn't entitled to their opinion, and i don't find any correlation of someone's opinion to one's ego.

 

[Spencer!]

...the BELIEF of many other luthiers that body wood matters VERY little.

I wouldn't want to play their basses....

 

[stepswork4me]

If we can't see fault in ourselves, we live in ego. You guys have a good night. I'm done with the philosyfical.

 

[Munjibunga]

The last guy that talked to me about my ego had a pretty bullum head himself. It wouldn't fit through the door.

... and it's "philosophical."

 

[stepswork4me]

... and it's "philosophical."

Ya don't say?

 

[B String]

I think its interesting that one element seems to have been left out of this discussion. At least for me, when I play instruments with different woods, there is a slightly different feel to the note. The way it swells or punches, etc.

So much of my love (or hate) of an instrument is how the notes feel coming off the bass. When I've owned Graphite neck basses, I hated the inability to be able to nuance notes like a wood neck bass. Different woods change the feel of the note under one's fingers and with it, the ability to feel the nuances of different wood combinations.

This is just my opinion and is not based on any science other than my own experiences. So its not just about the sound from 20 feet away. Its also about the feel of the different woods under the hand of the player.

 

[Ian Perge]

Interesting... I thought I heard a difference between the first set, but not enough and not the "usual", "prototypical" voicings of Alder & Ash. As for the second, a slight difference but nowhere near enough to even hazard a guess. I think that for myself, it comes down to 2 reasons. The first is that I'm "generally" used to associating Alder bodies with Precision Basses and their split-coil pickups, and Swamp Ash with Jazz Basses and their single-coil pickups. Having that "tone factor" taken away and then being tested on it made me consider just how much I I take into consideration the pickups on the respective basses and vice verse.

The second is that in the case of my own basses built out of those particular woods, they're each built with a "top" of some type: from fairly thin but still possibly influencing Maple tops on my Swamp Ash Mike Lull M4 & M5 Jazz basses, to hugely influential Flamed Maple & Zebrawood "tops" on my Alder bodied Spector Euro Bolt-On "ReBop" DLX basses. The reason I put asterisks around tops when referring to my Spectors is that because of the particular shape of the concave NS body shape, the "tops" are easily 1/2 the amount of the body wood (and in the case of my Zebrawood 5-string, just about 2/3rds of the body... but both the "ZeBop" 4 and 5-strings are hugely "punchy" basses which both have an extremely quick attack both amplified as well as unplugged). And on the other end of the spectrum, the Flame Maple ReBops have a certain indefinable "sweetness" to them, the most noticeable from my fretless ReBop 5 DLX FM which has a complexity of sound when playing in the upper-midrange to high area of the bass as well as an ease of obtaining the classic fretless "mwah" compared to other fretless basses I've played, even high-end basses known for their "trademark" fretless tonality... namely Pedullas. And just to remove this as a possible "spoiler" to its tone, the bass does indeed have an HG Thor Epoxy fingerboard coating, but it had as much of the aspects I've stated above before the epoxy process. I got the coating mainly for protection of the Rosewood fingerboard as I'm a "Rock" fretless player who uses Roundwound strings (perhaps my biggest influence is Tony Franklin, so that should say something about how I play and the tone I sometimes try and get ) and even Steels from time-to-time before I found that D'addario's EXL Coated Nickelwound String gave both a very nice "piano-chime" tone by themselves, much moreso then Nickel strings when I was first starting out, and that their coating process were the least "artificial" and effected the tone compared to other brands I'd tried). But my point being that these six basses have yet another factor involving their tone , and that with my four Spectors it's a large factor, one that has been noticed by not only other bassists but non-bassists as well (my Better Half, although she's spent so much time around me both playing & talking about bass (along with being a Rush fan for the vast majority of her life, going so far as to dress up with her Best Friend as Hemispheres'-era Geddy & Alex for Halloween in their early teen years, that she would know just about as much about Basses as your nontypical TB Member... God, I love my wife. )

However, the big question for myself is, "Will this change the woods I *think* I prefer in my basses, or will I start to reevaluate everything one again?", having done so once before in the early-to-mid 2000s that brought me from using primarily a six-string, neck-through, active soapbar-equipped "hippy sandwich"-type bass for the vast majority of my Recording & Live work in the 5 years before that. After a good few years of trying every bass I could get my hands on, purchasing more than a few to find what worked for me and what didn't, both in terms of woods & electronics as well as hardware, ergonomics and bridge, nut & string-spacing measurements, I found myself moving towards "SuperJazz" (my term for modern, high-fi sounding Jazzes such as Mike Lull & sadowsky as just a few examples) and other bolt-on basses with a main body wood and tops for mostly cosmetic reasons, the combination of Passive pickups and Active preamps in most of my basses, and Maple fretboards on two of them (and many more in the future in my "Dream Bass" spec write-ups I doubt it. The tone of differing body woods my be audible to some of us when such drastic measures are taken to keep every other factor equal, but would that be the same in the Real World? Somehow I doubt so - certainly not in the "Mass Market" companies such as Fender & Music Man, and smaller boutique shops such as MTD pride themselves on making basses where the woods are so different they're practically different models. Can anyone whose heard an MTD "Marilyn" wood combination say it sounds anything like one of Mr. Tobias' Ash body wood/Ash neck wood/Maple fretboard creations? Having heard high-quality recordings of both I can say for myself that they sound like two different basses to "My Ears". It's opportunities like those that let me know that choosing different woods for different basses in the future from my "Dream Bass" list (mainly custom Lulls & Spectors with a Bongo, a Dingwall or two, and fretted & fretless Rob Allen's for my "S-ABGs" among others) is the smart & prudent thing to do.

...but thank you extremely much Dan, for getting our heads out of various orifices and actually thinking for a few brief moments in time!

 

[mongo2]

However, the big question for myself is, "Will this change the woods I *think* I prefer in my basses, or will I start to reevaluate everything one again

I wouldn't worry about it, just go with the basses that you like.

Edit: In a band situation the nuances of the differences in tone between basses can easily melt away.