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Warmoth has a fairly comprehensive description of many popular woods used in guitars and bass. I have no idea how accurate it is though. Others do, I'm sure.
Blind tests aren't interesting because the player isn't involved in the loop. It is like asking an audio engineer to compare two different compressors by giving him a few sound clips.
...and both of those guys have standardized pickups. Every bass they make pretty much has the same pickups as all the others they make. So yes...in their world, Pickups are standardized. If the wood choice is the same, construction is largely the same...how come A MM sounds different to a P bass? From a material point of view, it's only the PU's that are different.
I've made 7 or so exotic basses over quite a few years. In my opinion, yes wood choice, construction style, pre amp choice, PU choice, wire choice or magnet choice in a PU, configuration, electrics etc...they all make a discernible difference. Whether or not any of this translates to a live mix is the big question.
I don't want to sink into the cesspool of Youtube commenting, but this video made me both cheer for joy and grit my teeth a lot, given my degree is in physics. He's not wrong about the physics he's presenting, except for one or two minor misstatements that don't materially impact his point. It's actually a great little functional tutorial on wave physics! The kicker is what he didn't talk about.
He has successfully argued that the materials a guitar is made out of will not alter the frequencies present in the string. He has knocked down one possible explanation that people use for the "woods make a difference" side of the great Tonewood Debate.
The problem is.. if the construction materials do matter, they don't matter because they alter the frequencies present in the string. He admits that different materials will return a differing percentage of energy back to the string on reflection.
(SIDEBAR, safe to skip, instructive but irrelevant)
One of his minor flubs in the video is saying that an 85% coefficient of energy return between the string and the bridge saddle would be "pretty good" and implies that in reality it's less than that. He's wrong because at an 85% coefficient of energy return, if I pluck an open A string, it'll go quiet in under a second.
Proof: Open A is 110Hz, One half second of 110Hz is 55 cycles. 55 cycles of 85% energy return yields 0.85^55 = 0.00013123235, or 0.013% of original energy left in string.
Empirically, I can hit my open A and It's down to about 10% of it's initial volume in about 7 seconds or so. I'm spitballing from memory here, but I'm not far off. So 7 seconds is 770 cycles of open a, so X^770 = 0.1 and we solve for X. X = 0.1^(1/770) or a 99.7% coefficient of energy return for my bass, more or less.
(END SIDEBAR)
What he doesn't consider is that the coefficient of energy return may be non-constant across varying frequencies, which is to say maybe the coefficient of energy return is a function of frequency. He never makes a claim on this, he seems to merely not imagine that it's a possibility. It's a possibility, and one that structural engineers have to take seriously.
None of this is me arguing on one side of the debate. I'm a bit of a fence sitter there. But while I applaud this video as a great little amateur physics lesson because what he says isn't wrong, it's a poor addition to the debate because of what he neglects to mention: he pretended as if the crucial point of contention doesn't exist for purposes of declaring victory.
Exactly. If there's a FOH, then odds are your tone disappears once it hits the soundman's gear. He compresses and eq's to his taste meanwhile asking for the amp to be turned down as much as possible.
Uh oh, did I just toss in the soundman argument. This could start a TB black hole!
Thank god the pedal I got the other day came in a box.
Earlier in this thread Blaargh posted a link to study comparing alder and ash bodies. Since this is the only objective, logically designed study that anyone has pointed out, I'm going with it. I'd suggest that everyone takes a look.
The gist seems to be that if you use a microphone at about the 12th fret to collect the sound waves there is a notable difference between the two woods, but when you use a pickup it largely smooths out those differences.
If anyone can point to a well designed study showing different results let me know. Otherwise, case closed for me.
The gist seems to be that if you use a microphone at about the 12th fret to collect the sound waves there is a notable difference between the two woods, but when you use a pickup it largely smooths out those differences.
If anyone can point to a well designed study showing different results let me know. Otherwise, case closed for me.
I get the best wood from a nice piece of ash!
They build the same basses, using the same pickups, bridges, strings, machine heads and electronics.
The only variables are the woods.
And they both say the exact same thing: wood affects tone.
That's as close to a controlled comparison as you will ever see. Sadowsky pointed out that he's built over 6000 basses. In that time, he's found it to be true. As has every major luthier in the world.
But some clown with a video camera and a $30 whiteboard posts his theory that every builder is simply trying to up charge you, and he has people applauding him for his courage.
This was a fascinating and exhilarating debate.... thirty years ago.
This is like arguing whether it's better to hang the toilet paper over or under. It never goes anywhere and neither party can convince the other that they're 'right'.
As for me, after modding and building so many guitars and basses over the years that I've lost count (including switching pickups from one instrument to another), I've come to the conclusion that wood can make a slight difference in tone, but it's so negligible/inconsistent/unreliable that it's not worth worrying about. For me, wood choice is more about aesthetics than tone and I care more about how much a bass weighs than what kind of wood it's made of.
This is like arguing whether it's better to hang the toilet paper over or under. It never goes anywhere and neither party can convince the other that they're 'right'.
As for me, after modding and building so many guitars and basses over the years that I've lost count (including switching pickups from one instrument to another), I've come to the conclusion that wood can make a slight difference in tone, but it's so negligible/inconsistent/unreliable that it's not worth worrying about. For me, wood choice is more about aesthetics than tone and I care more about how much a bass weighs than what kind of wood it's made of.
OP, welcome to the world of bass guitar, and best of luck to you.
I'm going to concur with opinions that most of the common body woods will hold up well, and that the wood doesn't have nearly the impact on your tone as some people think. Perhaps a little, but the electronics, signal chain, and your playing style are most of what you'll hear regardless of wood type.
Get a good piece of alder or ash, finished with something durable, your bass will last as long or longer than anything else out there.
And not to sound like your mom, but what matters far more at this stage of your musicianship is routine practice and progressing. Interestingly, the more you play and the better you get, the more capable you are of making these choices based on your experience rather than trusting a bunch of poo flingers on the internet.
I'm going to concur with opinions that most of the common body woods will hold up well, and that the wood doesn't have nearly the impact on your tone as some people think. Perhaps a little, but the electronics, signal chain, and your playing style are most of what you'll hear regardless of wood type.
Get a good piece of alder or ash, finished with something durable, your bass will last as long or longer than anything else out there.
And not to sound like your mom, but what matters far more at this stage of your musicianship is routine practice and progressing. Interestingly, the more you play and the better you get, the more capable you are of making these choices based on your experience rather than trusting a bunch of poo flingers on the internet.
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I never knew people actually thought it should go under. I just thought there were people who didn't know that clearly the only correct answer is that it goes over. Who are these backwards people?
The skills required to build a bass--and the skills required to successfully market the basses thus built--have little or nothing to do with the skills required to evaluate the question at hand. An auto body tech might have repaired 6000 cars, but that doesn't mean he knows anything about intersection design or paint chemistry.
Mr. Sandowsky is as subject to confirmation bias ("listening with his eyes") as you or I am. Nor has he, to my knowledge, published an audiogram showing the sensitivity of his ears to various frequency.
This is a straightforward question that can be answered by experiment (Both spectrum analysis and blind listening). "Witnessing" in the fashion of that video is for matters of faith.
Part of the reason the debate persists is that nobody seems to want to expend the effort for a proper test.
Exactly!
Poor science or flawed tests fail to take into account statistically significant variables and the importance of setting up proper control methods to validate or negate their impact. I have yet to see one so called blind tone wood test that addresses the significant variability in hearing capability from one subject to the next not to mention addressing the combination of feel and tone that a player experiences vs a listener.
A good player can feel and hear the difference in attack and decay of notes they are playing and how responsive the instrument is to different playing styles, that's much harder if not impossible to do if you are only a listener. Likewise it's been very well documented that hearing range capability changes with age and that some percentage of the population is tone deaf or has some degree of hearing damage. I have yet to see a test that addresses either of these hugely significant variables. Instead, most tests just trod along as though they don't exist, then claim they've disproven tone woods when five random blindfolded people can't agree on a sound difference from one instrument to the next.
Then there's the whole moving goal post situation where blindfolded people can hear a difference from sample to sample which does in fact support the claim that different woods can sound different. But they can't accurately identify which is maple, which is alder and which is ash so the final claim made is, blindfolded listeners can't tell the difference between different woods. It's a twisting of data and a scientifically dishonest way of presenting a conclusion.
I don't know who you're calling 'backwards', mister, but I thought everyone past schooling age knew that hanging the TP under provides a greater transfer of mechanical energy while placing much less stress on the perforations, leading to fewer inadvertent tears.
I'll post a few YouTube videos to prove my point later.
Have you considered just finding a 5'ver that you like the way it is?Hey guys, I'm a new (kind of) bassist and new to the forums. Quick back story. The old band is getting back together and I volunteered for bass. I've been playing around with my friends old bass for a while and I enjoy it much more than guitar (I have sausage fingers). Since said friend owed me money, he gave me his old bass in exchange, a Yami RBX170. I since have converted it to be strung with the low four strings of a five and tune it to ADAD.
I'm in the market for a used five string, with a unique body, bolt on, and active pickups. I plan on changing everything short of the body. So my question is, what type of wood should I look for. I want a body that, if taken care of of course, would last longer than me. What type of wood should I be looking for in a body? The style of music we play is kind of a more modern hard rock (if that makes any sense)
TL;DR: what body wood, with care, holds up best to standard wear and tear and resonates well with modern rock?
I apologize for sounding naive if I do, I'm still fresh on the bass cleff!
I appreciate any helpful alive
I honestly can't say from experience that body wood alone is enough to make a bass good for one genre and terrible for another. It's kinda like asking what pickups are good for what genre - you kinda just have to find one you like the look of, pick it up and plug it in and see if you like how it feels and sounds. If it sounds like it rocks, that's probably because it rocks.
That being said, I'm a recent convert to the school of "wood makes a difference", but it's not IMO a matter of "this wood is great, this wood sucks", so much as it's just slightly different variations of an already good sound.
That being said, I'm a recent convert to the school of "wood makes a difference", but it's not IMO a matter of "this wood is great, this wood sucks", so much as it's just slightly different variations of an already good sound.
Each bass is a sum of its parts, and every part matters. Having said that, the best way to approach buying a bass is to play it for yourself (and just listening to it is not the same thing as listening to it while playing it) and to not pay attention to the wood time until after you have made your decision.
