How many of you agree with this statement?

[peterpalmieri]

guys, no need to reinvent the wheel. There are at least a dozen different poll threads already on TB where they are A/Bing different basses and in some cases very similar basses.

It's fun but for me serves very little purpose because I'm a bass player and not a bass listener so for me it's a wasted arguement. I can say I own a USA Lakland JO4 and a Alleva-Coppolo LG5. They are both Alder/Rosewood basses with 60s spacing single coil jazz pick ups. To me these basses are very different and I'd tell you that 99% of bass players who came over and played them could easily tell a significant difference and the bands I play with can tell as well. Keep in mind these are both Oly white jazz basses with a tort guard so the guys in the band don't see much of a visual difference.

That being said if I posted clips of both not many people could tell which one is which. But the point is that it proves nothing.

Again if you want to remove the tonal differences imparted by the wood by all means play an NS bass...

 

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

If you buy into Ned's concept and the OPs comments wood would have to play ZERO role in the tone of an electric bass

I'm not saying that wood plays zero role in the differences. Of course woods impart differences that can be perfectly distinguished with the instruments unplugged, but they become negligible with an amp into the equation (IMO).

 

[metron]

I'm on the side of believing that wood makes some difference but in real world application, with a band, it doesn't matter much at all.

 

[dave64o]

I'm not saying that wood plays zero role in the differences. Of course woods impart differences that can be perfectly distinguished with the instruments unplugged, but they become negligible with an amp into the equation (IMO).

And then you put those two instruments into a mix with the rest of the band and then the differences become even harder to hear.

I've always gotten a chuckle out of the A/B tests. For all the talk about vast difference in sounds of different basses/strings/pickups/etc. it seems like the tests usually prove most people wrong. Can some people pick out the differences consistently? Sure, there are some. But it always seems like the majority can't once the people post their responses.

I also like hearing the rationalization. It's often "I played the samples through my computer speakers so that's not a valid test. If I could play it through my home theater system I'd easily identify them." For one thing, in a live setting I think the wood (for example, since that's the A/B we're talking about in this case) would be even less noticeable than in recordings. Also, how will a lot of people listen to your music? I'll bet there are an awful lot who are going to be listening through earbuds on their iPod. Will they be valid tests where the listeners will suddenly notice the small tone difference and think, "Wow, that bassist sounds like he made a bonehead move by making THAT change. I'm not listening to THOSE losers anymore?!?!" Well, I kind of doubt that will happen.

OK, so some people can tell the difference in a blind test. I'll grant that. But once you put those bass tracks in a mix and then put it in a live setting or on people's iPods, the differences will be so small virtually no one but a very small few would even notice that there's a difference, let alone be able to tell what you changed to cause that difference. If all those who say they can always hear those minute differences actually can consistently identify them in real world tests, then I'm truly impressed.

I know that sounds sarcastic but it's not. I really think that's pretty impressive and I wish I had ears that were so discerning.

 

[ggunn]

Keep in mind that you and he have opposing views that many of the other most innovative instrument designers have

But also keep in mind that these instrument designers have a vested interest in believing (and perhaps more importantly, having their customers believe) that the exotic woods they make their basses out of make a difference in the tone. I am not saying that I know for sure that wood doesn't make a difference, mind you, but instrument designers aren't exactly objective in their point of view.

 

[msquared]

For me, I don't so much care how the sound of the bass differs overall. I'm playing through a PA or a bass amp and competing with vocalists, guitarists, drummers and room acoustics, or I'm recording onto a track and competing with vocalists, guitarists, drummers and the engineer's sense of aesthetics. How it sounds in a quiet room at low volume is worth considering on a certain level, but overall it doesn't matter to me.

What I care about is response, and that does vary fairly considerably. Regardless of how it sounds when buried in the mix, there is going to be a certain way that I hear it and feel the notes depending on the woods (or graphite), pickups, strings, etc.

 

[BartmanPDX]

First off, I regard Ned as one of the very few true innovators when it comes to bass -- almost up there with Leo himself.

I also think the body-less construction of the Steinberger had more to do with weight concerns than a desire to be distinctive. My XL-2 weighs over 9 lbs. due to the density of the composite which they used back then. A full-bodied composite bass would have not only been very difficult to manufacture but would have weighed about 15 lbs. or more, and thus would have been unbearably heavy to play. I think the statement was most likely a justification for the small body size.

While I don't think the body wood has a tremendous influence on tone, I do think it does play a role in the sound. I have tried identical basses (other than wood) strung with the same strings and heard a difference both acoustically and through an amp. Not a huge difference, and certainly less important than pickups, pickup location, strings, preamp, and a few other things, but it's there. In a full band setting though, most people would be hard pressed to hear a difference between two basses which were identical in every way besides body wood.

 

[kb9wyz]

Your link to the audio is mocking right now, so I am subscribing at least, because I want to hear what he says and not merely try to glean what he said from these posts.

I will return with an opinion.

 

[BartmanPDX]

FWIW - The fact that I completely disagree with Mr. Steinburger has nothing to do with the fact that I think his designs are the most disgusting things I've ever seen built.

I nearly posted a very insulting response to this, but ultimately decided you're not worth it.

 

[bucephylus]

I'm not saying that wood plays zero role in the differences. Of course woods impart differences that can be perfectly distinguished with the instruments unplugged, but they become negligible with an amp into the equation (IMO).

Every player is certainly welcome to their opinion, but....

Most players can quickly hear the different effects on tone that different neck materials AND construction produce. That is one reason why 5 string Jazz Basses can NOT sound exactly like 4 string J's, for example. And those differences are clearly heard in the amplified sound, IME.

The effects of different bodies are less pronounced, but more of a factor for bolt on basses. There are big differences in body woods, even from piece to piece; so, it is difficult to say "Alder has this effect and Ash has that effect." Even with neck through construction, there is a world of difference in the amplified tone between, for example, Lacewood, which is about as resonant as Styrofoam, and Ash. So, on neck-throughs, the player can hear the difference between the extremes, but not so much the more similar woods. Bolt-ons can be more discriminating.

The physics behind this are pretty simple. The vibrating string is not a perfect oscillator and is damped at the two witness points - one at the bridge and one at the fret (or fretboard). That damping has a significant effect on the perceived tone and is the result of the materials of construction. That's it.

Not that you can't produce a great tone with a non-wood bass or no body for that matter. The most extreme example that I actually think sounds pretty good is:



Hope you found that interesting. Anyhow, materials of construction do matter, IME, and there are straightforward technical reasons for that to be the case.

 

[john turner]

i don't agree (with steinberger) for the very reason that the unique sound of a berger is so very different from a wood, full-bodied instrument.

the wood of the body of an instrument is going to respond to the vibrational energy of the string. how it responds determines how much energy the string will retain at various frequencies as it vibrates, and how much vibrational energy will be transfered to the body, and then to the pickups connected to the body (bear with me here).

this can be experimentally shown.

i've brought this example up in another thread on this topic. if i play my doubleneck with the non-played neck -on- and the played neck -off- (i.e. i'm playing the fretted neck but the fretless neck is what's going to the amp) i can hear what i'm playing - very reverbed out, but still it can be heard. this is from the body vibration of the doubleneck - the huge body being vibrated by the strings i am fretting, moving the pickups with respect to the (relatively) stationary strings of the fretless neck, and causing what i'm playing to be heard.

it's very similar in sound to the end of zeppelin's "over the hills and far away", and i actually got the idea to do this from that song, or more specifically a guy i used to play in a cover band with who played that song on his doubleneck and would play the end with the 12 string neck on, but fretting on the 6 string neck.

this would not happen if the body was a non-issue in the sound of the instrument. that vibration, caused by the body vibrating the pickups in sympathetic frequencies to the notes i'm playing, moving with regard to the (relatively stationary) strings, which are affected very little by the vibrating body due to their own inertia and the very small vibrational energy that the body is exerting back on them. if the pickups move and the strings are stationary, as far as the pickups, and the amp, is concerned, it's the same thing as if the strings moved and the pickups were stationary.

note : this response is also not caused by the strings on the fretless neck vibrating in sympathy with the fretted neck because then they would only reproduce open string notes, not everything that i was playing.

here's an experiment that anyone can try that will illustrate this effect too, although not as well. get a cordless drill, vibrating hand massager, or any other battery-powered vibrating device you might have handy ( ) and hold it against the body of your instrument (plugged into your amp) as you turn the device on. make sure it's far away from pickups, so as to not affect our test. hand-mute your strings over the pickups themselves, so they don't start vibrating. hear anything through your amp? that's the pickup vibrating with relation to the stationary strings you're handmuting.

use the same setup but have the device vibrate against other instruments. i bet you'll hear noticeably different sounds from the amp from the different instruments. might not be -hugely- different, but it'll probably be noticeable.

that "not-huge-but-noticeable" element is the different effect on the over all sound of the bass the body wood and construction of one instrument is having when compared to another.

a note about vibrating pickups - although pickups are generally not mounted directly to the body without some kind of acoustic coupling, the vibrating body will still cause the pickups to vibrate, as is evidenced by my doubleneck experiment, or the "vibrating body" experiment i gave above.

if the pickups are vibrating, and the string is vibrating, there's also going to be phase issues between the two, where the pickup is going to vibrate certain frequencies in phase with the string, increasing their volume, and certain frequencies out of phase with the string, decreasing those frequencies' volume in the resultant output. these effects are going to be directly related to the different materials of the instrument's construction, since those materials are determining not only how the strings, but also how the body itself, and therefore the pickups, respond to vibration.

these effects are going to be very small, but then again, nobody pickups two basses and expects either of them to sound -that- different from one another - it's not like one's gonna sound like a whale and the other's gonna sound like a clarinet.

 

[jdieh1]

I'd say that basically every factor in the instrument's design and construction plays a role in the sound that comes out of it, except small things like the pickguard and the screws that hold it on.

You can't say that the wood doesn't change tone because when I changed the neck on my Thunderbird I noticed a damn big difference in tone.

 

[Gibenbackerbass]

Quest for perfection perhaps?

Six-Sigma quality in motion.

 

[ric stave]

I love my Status Stealth, which I was lead to over the years by Steinbergers, and the search for a whole body headless 6 string bass.

I also love my G&L L2500, and all-wood beast, and I'm pretty sure it's the pickups in this one that bring the 'boing', or the 'scha-wing!', if you will.....

And my 'Other' bass? It's a 5 string all-wood copy of the Ned Steinberger classic paddle design. Very comfortable to play, great sound, and after finally coming home to daddy, she will not be leaving home again.....


I understand the look of a cigar-box body or even the headless thing (with or without a 'real' body) is not everybody's cup of tea. Personally, I like the paddle headless minimalistic thing - hell, if I could afford it, the Status Streamline 5 would be the Hohner's replacement, but would defeat the purpose of having a 'beater' bass to take to questionable-area gigs.

Back to topic - Ned was a smart man, and made a good instrument. I owned an XL5n for a while (before selling to get the Status) - it was an amazing instrument soundwise. And as I said before, I love my G&L all wood bass too.

They both sound awesome. As I'm sure many other instruments do too.

 

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

here's an experiment that anyone can try that will illustrate this effect too, although not as well. get a cordless drill, vibrating hand massager, or any other battery-powered vibrating device you might have handy ( ) and hold it against the body of your instrument (plugged into your amp) as you turn the device on. make sure it's far away from pickups, so as to not affect our test. hand-mute your strings over the pickups themselves, so they don't start vibrating. hear anything through your amp? that's the pickup vibrating with relation to the stationary strings you're handmuting.

use the same setup but have the device vibrate against other instruments. i bet you'll hear noticeably different sounds from the amp from the different instruments. might not be -hugely- different, but it'll probably be noticeable.

Interesting test. I'll give it a try.

 

[peterpalmieri]

And then you put those two instruments into a mix with the rest of the band and then the differences become even harder to hear.

I've always gotten a chuckle out of the A/B tests. For all the talk about vast difference in sounds of different basses/strings/pickups/etc. it seems like the tests usually prove most people wrong. Can some people pick out the differences consistently? Sure, there are some. But it always seems like the majority can't once the people post their responses.

I also like hearing the rationalization. It's often "I played the samples through my computer speakers so that's not a valid test. If I could play it through my home theater system I'd easily identify them." For one thing, in a live setting I think the wood (for example, since that's the A/B we're talking about in this case) would be even less noticeable than in recordings. Also, how will a lot of people listen to your music? I'll bet there are an awful lot who are going to be listening through earbuds on their iPod. Will they be valid tests where the listeners will suddenly notice the small tone difference and think, "Wow, that bassist sounds like he made a bonehead move by making THAT change. I'm not listening to THOSE losers anymore?!?!" Well, I kind of doubt that will happen.

OK, so some people can tell the difference in a blind test. I'll grant that. But once you put those bass tracks in a mix and then put it in a live setting or on people's iPods, the differences will be so small virtually no one but a very small few would even notice that there's a difference, let alone be able to tell what you changed to cause that difference. If all those who say they can always hear those minute differences actually can consistently identify them in real world tests, then I'm truly impressed.

I know that sounds sarcastic but it's not. I really think that's pretty impressive and I wish I had ears that were so discerning.

It doesn't really matter much to my bass playing what "some people" can or can't hear. It also doesn't matter much to me what people hear in their ear buds or what type of speaker people use to listen to things on their computer.

I play bass and I am most likely standing within 5 feet of my amp, what matters to me is that I can tell the difference. I'm not going to argue with people that can't hear the difference.

Funny enough I play in a 11 piece band, there are 4 people in the band that have perfect pitch. Sometime we play a game and blow into a half full beer bottle and see who can recognize the pitches quickest. We'll tune the bottles by removing water to see if they can pick out which is which. I'll admit I am probably the worst of the 11 at this. But I don't think I'd go around telling them they can't hear what they're hearing because I can't....

 

[kb9wyz]

Mr. Ned was saying that he wondered why the body was needed at all, and I can dig where he's coming from. "Thinking outside the box" has yielded some fun creations in all sorts of places. But I have to say that I don't totally agree with him that the body of the instrument isn't necessary.

Comfort of playing is important to every person I know who plays something with strings on it. A small rectangle is not, by the definition of most, comfortable. Yamaha recognized this with their electric bass and cello and put contoured frames on them to make them comfortable to play. So this is one reason to not just dump the body.

Of course, the really big issue here is the effect of body wood on tone. (Some people have brought up neck woods, but Ned didn't talk about that on the audio clip, so I won't deal with that. Suffice it to say, I agree with everyone else on this post about the effect on tone by neck wood.) Tonally, I do hear differences between basses with different woods, but only when they are hugely different types of wood. The tone from wood get classified as a) Thick Bottom, b) Sharp Top, or c) Smooth All Around. I could hear two basses, identical in all respects but the body wood, and could tell you which one is Mahogany and which is Maple. But if it was between Maple & Walnut, or Mahogany and Black Korina, or Alder and Ash, I would be totally buggered to tell the difference. And so would 99.97% of those listening to you play. (The 0.03% are the bass-playing tone-snobs you run into here and there) Of course the right pickups & electronics and the right bridge, etc. and you can mold the sound very much. Case in point, I bought a MIM Jazz. Liked the tone when I got it, but not too excited about it. Upgraded to Badass II bridge and an Audere JZ3 preamp and shielded the bejeezus out of it. Now I love the tone.

For me, the greatest thing about body wood density. I like Mahogany, Alder, Walnut, Maple, Ash, and Koa. These are all great tonewoods. I hate Basswood. Hate, Hate, Hate. I think it sounds nice enough, but it sustains like pudding, and will suck the overtones out the first chance it gets. And if you have a Maple neck, like most basses have, you will be able to get a free subscription to Neck Dive Monthly. So I prefer that the wood be dense enough to give the body sufficient mass to keep the neck where it should be (I'm speaking about most bass bodies which the horn extends to or about the 12th fret area) and notes sustain well and keep the tone from becoming dead before the string stops doing it's thing. (The previous damning comment about Lacewood makes me want to see these two woods face off in a fight for Worst Tonewood Ever)


Also, I do consider looks. More for myself than anyone else. (I just think that we should like to look at the instruments we play.) If I'm going to have a painted body, I am going to choose a wood based solely on how much sustain I want, but if I am going with a "natural" finish, then I am going to choose the nicest looking wood. As an example, if I want a Sharp Top sound, then I would choose Maple for a painted body; Walnut for a clear finish, since I love the color of Walnut.


So in my opinion, the body plays a very important role on a solid body instrument, even if tone isn't necessarily the big player. A nice body can be very comfortable to play; it can give the mass needed to give the sustain you want; and it can make it good looking enough to inspire you to play it. Things that the Steinberger bass will never be able to do for me.

P.S. Great thread topic. I can't wait to see who disagrees with me and why. Lots of fun.

 

[elgranluis]

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/audio/play/80766080

I mean, I agree that different woods give different tonal properties to electric guitars and basses when played unplugged but... so what? You only play your solid-body electric unplugged for practicing or fiddling around, and those differences become extremely subtle when your instrument is amplified (and I think that's how all of us play our instrument). QUOTE]

Que hay marica! (vistited colombia 2 years ago!)

Anyway, I have 3 precision basses from roughly the same time frame. One is alder with rosewood, another is ash with maple, and the third one is rosewood with a walnut body. Being essentially the same bass, they have completely different tonal characters. Plugged in of course.

I agree that you can EQ them to sound very close to one another, but that's not the point really.

If I put the pups of any one of my basses into a steinberg, I'm not going to get the sound of my basses on the steinberd. If I swap the pups around my own basses, I'm not going to make any of them sound like any other.

To me, there's a lot more than a good set of electronics that come into play.

 

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Que hay marica! (vistited colombia 2 years ago!)

Anyway, I have 3 precision basses from roughly the same time frame. One is alder with rosewood, another is ash with maple, and the third one is rosewood with a walnut body. Being essentially the same bass, they have completely different tonal characters. Plugged in of course.

I agree that you can EQ them to sound very close to one another, but that's not the point really.

If I put the pups of any one of my basses into a steinberg, I'm not going to get the sound of my basses on the steinberd. If I swap the pups around my own basses, I'm not going to make any of them sound like any other.

To me, there's a lot more than a good set of electronics that come into play.

Of course:

Construction methods, construction tolerances, pickup design, pickup placement, scale length, etc. All these things, to me, play a far greater role than what the body is made of, or in the case of some of the NS designs, whether there's a body at all.

That's my point, but anyway I've seen lots of interesting responses that make me think of digging even more into the subject.

 

[dave64o]

.
.
. But I don't think I'd go around telling them they can't hear what they're hearing because I can't....

I didn't do that either.