Hi.
I am in the process of ordering my first ever fully custom bass and have gotten stuck in choosing the wood for the bass.
The bass I am looking at would be a 24 fret fender jazz style bass with a neck through construction.
Visually I really like the look of darker woods and have recently started liking the Wenge/Bubinga laminated necks, and as far as I have been able to discern this would be a good starting point for a well defined full range tone. I am also thinking of ebony as the fretboard, and this is where I get stuck.
I don't know enough about tone-woods to be able to figure out what I should use for the body wings and the top. Visually I like the look of wenge as a top and maybe even a bottom wood. For the core of the body I really start to struggle. I have seen some Ibanez basses that use roughly the same configuration that use mahogany as the main body wood which really looks nice and might be an alternative.
Does any one have enough experience with tone woods to give me an explanation of how this would all work out? And maybe give me some pointers if I am doing something totally wrong in choosing woods that will make the bass sound odd or something else.
Sound wise I am looking for something with even tone over the whole register, clarity is important to me since I play a lot of chords, but also punch and growl since I mostly play harder styles of music with a bit of distortion. I am thinking of going with two single coil pickups and a three band Noll preamp with sweepable mids which should provide some amount of flexibility to the instrument.
At the moment I am playing an Esh bass with a swamp-ash body, maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, I do like the over all tone of this bass, but I have been struck with a bit of GAS and want to experiment in different directions. My current bass is a bit lacking in the mids which forces me to use a bit of EQ to cut through the mix.
I have already visited all music stores within reasonable distances from my home to try and learn more about different woods, but most instruments they had in stock were made from alder or ash with the occasional exception. I did however not learn much about the different tones of the woods since all the bases I tried were of different makes and models with different pickups and electronics, so it was very hard to get a feel for what was wood tone and what was electronics. I tried to listen to them acoustically as well which was quite difficult because of all the ambient noises from other people in the stores.
Thankful for all the help I can get.
I am in the process of ordering my first ever fully custom bass and have gotten stuck in choosing the wood for the bass.
The bass I am looking at would be a 24 fret fender jazz style bass with a neck through construction.
Visually I really like the look of darker woods and have recently started liking the Wenge/Bubinga laminated necks, and as far as I have been able to discern this would be a good starting point for a well defined full range tone. I am also thinking of ebony as the fretboard, and this is where I get stuck.
I don't know enough about tone-woods to be able to figure out what I should use for the body wings and the top. Visually I like the look of wenge as a top and maybe even a bottom wood. For the core of the body I really start to struggle. I have seen some Ibanez basses that use roughly the same configuration that use mahogany as the main body wood which really looks nice and might be an alternative.
Does any one have enough experience with tone woods to give me an explanation of how this would all work out? And maybe give me some pointers if I am doing something totally wrong in choosing woods that will make the bass sound odd or something else.
Sound wise I am looking for something with even tone over the whole register, clarity is important to me since I play a lot of chords, but also punch and growl since I mostly play harder styles of music with a bit of distortion. I am thinking of going with two single coil pickups and a three band Noll preamp with sweepable mids which should provide some amount of flexibility to the instrument.
At the moment I am playing an Esh bass with a swamp-ash body, maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, I do like the over all tone of this bass, but I have been struck with a bit of GAS and want to experiment in different directions. My current bass is a bit lacking in the mids which forces me to use a bit of EQ to cut through the mix.
I have already visited all music stores within reasonable distances from my home to try and learn more about different woods, but most instruments they had in stock were made from alder or ash with the occasional exception. I did however not learn much about the different tones of the woods since all the bases I tried were of different makes and models with different pickups and electronics, so it was very hard to get a feel for what was wood tone and what was electronics. I tried to listen to them acoustically as well which was quite difficult because of all the ambient noises from other people in the stores.
Thankful for all the help I can get.
