Fodera Club Part XIII

[Joelc73]

I am tempted to listen on my ear buds right now but know I won't get the full experience. I will wait to get home tonight and do it right.

 

[Turn Em Loose]

Thanks for the soundclips and thanks for the great bass porn! While not a Fodera owner and not a likely future owner (Just can't afford one. Though if I could, I'd have a different Fodera for every day of the week.) I enjoy this thread quite a bit!

Prolly in the minority, but I really don't hear to much of a difference between the neck joints. Well, not enough of a difference to make a difference after a whole band is inserted on top of the bass signal. If that makes sense.

The only thing I get out of these clips is: I suck and really need to practice more. I mean, how can MG sound soooo much better than me just playing open strings slowly??

 

[basswalker2004]

I dig the sound clips. Gone back and forth a dozen times so far and personally I'm liking the bolt on the best.. We'll see after another dozen or so listens.
thanks Fodera and Matt for doing this.
cheers

 

[Blue Blood]

I rpobably prefer the bolt-on and then the neck-through, just depends on the style being played. That said, I didn't really like the tone of either of the basses. Could be the woods but I believe it's most likely the dual coils. I can't stand the weird phasing issue that dual coils tend to have. I like the more focused, direct sound of single coils.

 

[Christian Houmann]

Here you go...let the games begin!!

http://soundcloud.com/fodera-guitars

An important note...these were originally recorded at 96k to retain as much of the sonic information as possible from the instruments. They were then down-sampled to 44.1k (CD "quality") to make the files more reasonably sized so that they could be easily downloaded and burned to a CD. They are meant to be listened to on the best audio equipment you have available to you...

A HUGE thanks to Matt Garrison for recording these for us. As you already know, he's as amazing a person as he is a player!!

Jason

That's cool Jason. Thanks for doing this

 

[Robin Ruscio]

This is great!

One of my first thoughts for everyone is to consider how the wood choices affect the overall sound. This is a neutral warm combo- mahogany and brazilian rosewood, with a little brightness from the maple top. (I just parted with similar spec neck through Fodera and recognize the tone.) I can't help but wonder how our perceptions (whatever they are) might have been different with brighter tone woods, such as ash/ebony or something.

 

[Damian Coccio]

Since I think of tone as color and dynamics as something else altogether I'll venture to say that the tone is 90% the same with an as expected change in dynamics. Thanks for the good scientific test to confirm the hypothesis we've probably all had at one point or another.

 

[nostatic]

The bolt on seems to have a slightly quicker attack, and it is a bit "rougher" in the initial part of the sound. I think that gives more apparent loudness (even if tracks are normalized). I suspect that bolt-on will sell quickly. I'm betting in a mix or a slight bit of technique or eq change would come close to equilibrating though. The other thing is that even within the same wood stock the final instrument is its own entity and has its own personality.

 

[basses55]

Hey Jason, this is a great comparison, and the execution from construction to demonstration included the kind of detail that it needed to have to be truly credible. Congrats on the whole project.

One question after listening to it - did you guys try to match the recorded level between basses or did you leave the level the same and let the differences in volume come naturally from the basses?

I hope you left it the same to demo the variation in vol/response between the neck joints.

I hear the differences between the three, and although they all sounded great to me right now I love the bolt- on for this wood combo, and followed by the neckthrough.
Although not really part of this experiment, overall preferences can change with different wood combos IMO. I like the bolt- on for the punch and attack it lends to the normally smoother mahogany with the Brazilian. If it were a walnut body with an ash neck for instance, it may change things. So people might also consider the wood combo they want in addition to the neck joint ...(and pup position etc etc).

GREAT job Jason, and Fodera, thanks for this.

 

[smperry]

Closed and continued here: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/fodera-club-part-xiv-904894