Yeh, breh, I read you doing your best to dance around and allude to the Slippery Slope argument, and I crossed my fingers in hopes that you'd continue to show restraint, but then you pulled out your skis, waxed them, and went for it. I hope it was a good ride for you.
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Does fretboard wood make a consistent difference in tone that you can hear?
- Thread starter Gorn
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- difference fretboard tone wood
It's not a slippery slope argument, it's the difference between longitudinal waves and standing waves.
Only one is transmitted electrically, and only one is actually audible. They're not the same one. Sorry that point was lost on you, and everyone else apparently.
I sound like "me" on either fretboard, but there are minor differences, for sure. Then again, it could be some other variable at play. For now I'll go with yes, it makes a slight difference.
Actually, it's more the interaction between the resistance and the capacitance over the length of the cable.
Neither is a bass guitar. The sounds are being produced acoustically and amplified electronically.
Would it work better for you if he had said "an electronic recording of an aluminum baseball bat vs the electronic recording of a wooden baseball bat"? Either way, the results are the same.
No, it's exactly the same kind of wave.
Like almost every other minor aspect of a bass design, it ends up being something that gear heads can make a hobby out of characterizing (which is absolutely fine). At the end of the day, a lot of the discussion we have on here isn't something that truly makes an impact on the music.
Like I posted above: yes, I can hear a minor difference, but it doesn't make or break what I'm trying to accomplish.
Like I posted above: yes, I can hear a minor difference, but it doesn't make or break what I'm trying to accomplish.
Im talking more the common option of maple vs rosewood. Although Im also talking about the body woods of instruments as well. Many people see a darker top wood and assume a darker more earthy tone while expecting the opposite of natural ash or alder basses/maple tops etc
No - it is not.
However, I incorrectly used the term longitudinal wave previously. It should have read transverse wave. I recognize that probably added to the confusion and resistance to what I was saying, and apologize.
I expect none of you to read all of this.
A string vibrating is a standing wave (or a standing longitudinal wave):
Standing Waves
Standing Sound Waves (Longitudinal Standing Waves)
Acoustic Guitar Vs Electric Guitar... Compression Vs Transverse Sound Waves
What's the Difference between a Pickup and a Microphone?
All sounds that you hear are standing waves. Standing waves do not travel through a pickup and then a wire or through a microphone and then a wire, but they are created by either a string or a speaker moving air between it and your ear. Transverse waves and only transverse waves travel from a pickup through an electrical signal chain. You can't hear a transverse wave.
Upright basses are acoustic instruments. Wood matters to them. Resonance matters to them - that's why they're so big and roomy, they need a lot of air to vibrate in order to be heard, and the materials (the carved or plywood front, back, sides, and fingerboard) also vibrate and create more resonance and new harmonics, giving each upright bass its own timbre. It's why upright basses sound so amazing live and unamplified - you can hear and feel everything, unfiltered. When Leo made the first mass-produced electric bass guitar, he did not model his build after upright basses, because resonance didn't matter in his design goals nearly as much as sturdiness, portability, playability, and volume. If resonance mattered much at all to electric instruments, we would all be playing hollowbody bass guitars with piezo pickups, and arguing about whether a carved top mattered or if plywood was ok, whether a spruce veneer made a difference, and how long it takes a bass to truly "open up." Gut strings would be used. Solid bodies with magnetic pickups would be scorned as lifeless or artificial, and we would all be making the argument that this was because resonance matters and electrics just don't have any. In other words, Talkbass would be just the DB side, with a separate forum for acoustic bass guitars, like there is one for electric uprights.
Why is there acoustically so much difference between a wood upright bass and an electric upright bass? Why is it that in the right mix and venue they're indistinguishable from each other once amplified? The first question depends on resonance, and the second depends on a transverse wave that is amplified which then activates a speaker.
I've consistently been saying that if you hear a difference between fretboard materials, you are not wrong. I'm not taking anything away from you. You get to keep your opinion unchallenged. I'm saying that difference is subjective, not objective, which means it can't be related to anyone else in any terms that will be consistent from person to person or bass to bass, it isn't measurable or definable in terms of numbers. It's like saying you think someone is friendly, but I think they're a jerk, or I like Arizona but you find it too hot. It is only relatable in terms such as "warm," "bright", "sweet", etc. There is a myth that these differences are due to wood density or hardness - that is false, since maple is much softer than rosewood and rosewood is softer than ebony. There is a justification that maple has a shellac that creates its brightness - well, then, it isn't the wood that matters, it's whether or not the wood is finished. Either way, *my* ears cannot tell a difference between two otherwise identical basses EQ'd the same way and through the same signal chain that can be attributed to fretboard material. I *can* hear a subtle difference between two otherwise identical basses, regardless of fretboard material, if the conditions are right. Most of the difference I detect is from resonance through my body, and I convince myself I hear the difference - recorded, it's much more difficult. I have over 30 years experience playing uprights and electrics - electrics with a variety of fretboard materials - like ebonol, rosewood, maple - P basses, Jazzes, non-Fenders of several types, in a variety of different styles of music and venues. How can you or the others posting here possibly be so arrogant to say that I am wrong, because we disagree, and I am not saying that you are wrong - I'm been actively saying you are *not* wrong. What I'm arguing is the difference between facts and opinions.
Consistently, whenever there's been an (admittedly unscientific) test on Talkbass, the results show that people don't know what rosewood or ebony or maple sound like. There have been zero tests, scientific or not, that demonstrate the opposite.
Where fretboard wood matters to tone is the internal grain structure, it's response to lateral and longitudinal torsion and tension, how it is laminated to the neck, how it behaves structurally in the system that is the electric instrument - and there, a piece of rosewood can behave completely differently from another piece of rosewood, and even similarly to a piece of maple. But through an electric signal chain, even this effect would be minimal.
Comparisons to aluminium bats and wood bats hitting a ball are irrelevant. Comparisons to steel pipes of differing conditions being struck with a hammer are irrelevant. Saying that if if resonance didn't matter, a high tension metal-wound metal cable vibrating through a magnetic field would create only a sine wave is ridiculous. Saying the pickups and signal chain are irrelevant is ridiculous. If you're going to try to convince me that your opinion is actually a fact, then you'd better supply some actual facts that support it, and not get emotional when you're challenged to support it with facts. Otherwise, accept that your opinion is *just* your opinion. I don't accept this kind of woo any more than I accept that coconut oil, chiropractic, or leeching are panacea, that global climate change is not accelerated by human behaviour, or that vaccines cause autism. It's the same bucket of BS as far as I am concerned - that is my *opinion* - you're welcome to convince me otherwise, but so far nobody has provided any facts to do so, so - IMHO - BS it remains.
If we as an industry and a market are going to continue using terms like warm and bright and sweet to define how an instrument sounds as a result of the wood it is made from, then we as an industry and a market should define those terms, and provide them in a measurable way. A given piece of rosewood should have a warmth score of 742, and a given piece of maple a warmth score of 39. We don't have those scores and can't get those scores because a) they don't exist because it's purely subjective, and b) nobody cares about them because it's purely subjective. If it is purely subjective, then my opinion is no less valuable than yours, and vice versa.
Jack White did the same thing, only he did it while still seeming like a cool dude.
I don't know, when compared to other instruments of the same type, it (the fence guitar) sounds pretty muddy and, well, different. So, basically he proved tonewoods have an impact, but that you can make sounds as long as it's technically set-up right, but there is really no better or worse in regards to this subjective mess of a subject.
What gets me is how much some people care about the topic. If you don't think woods have an impact on tone, so be it. If you think they do, so be it. But, I'm not going to spend a week just to prove it because I, you know, have better things to do, and I just don't care that much.
Interesting. The thread has been dormant for a week and the poll is basically at 50/50. The yeses had about a ten vote lead while the thread was more active. It's pretty much what I expected. I hope some day someone goes through the tremendous hassle that would be involved in the legitimate double blind trials to really answer the question. I'm not gonna do it. No one's gonna a do it, probably. Like, who cares right? All I know is black and maple is the objectivly superior aesthetic for any bass, so there we are.
Having two black and maple basses currently out of a total of four, and having had several in the past, I can completely agree!
