i learned about KINGWOOD in school today...

Hey, could you post some pictures of the bass so far, or maybe a link to that nameless luthiers website or something.

 

Hey, Fred,
what about that project of your own, then?

 

Being "completely" made of any wood would scare me off, Fred. Maybe you know something I don't.

But as good as the stuff is, the instrument would theoretically have the same resonant frequency and same modulus of energy throughout. In effect, that should add up to "tone dead."

I think luthiers, acoustic and electric, always use woods with a variety of tonal characteristics in one instrument for a very good reason.

 

You think the same way about your pre-CBS P-bass?

 

I think that Michael Tobias has said this before - that you need a mixture of woods.

Early Fenders were of course, "happy accidents" - but even these would all have had different woods in the body from those in the neck.

As to the original post - my view would be then - why not go with Ebony? I had a Yamaha TRB6P which had an Ebony fingerboard and wasn't too pricey!

 

Yes, it just reinforces my suspicion of a single-wodod bass as a tone killer, as Bruce finds..... although it would be cool if this one-wood bass could change the history of luthiery technology. I don't think de Torres and Martin were using different woods in a single instrument in the 1850's just because they looked pretty together .

My old Precis has a maple neck and an alder body - 2 different woods with different resonant freq's. I think the paint makes the body behave a bit more like the maple, even though the years have "warmed it", tonally by breaking up the paint.

YET, the neck is a single wood and has the "beloved" dead spots that plague a single-wood Precison neck because the one-wood neck has some resonant freq's that match a couple of fretted notes.

 

My Brubaker is all maple (one of them, anyway) and it has lots of tone. I dunno--maybe the maple's different density or something--it's real heavy but it works fine tonally.

 

Yeah, my Pedulla Rapture is all maple, and it sounds great to me. Of course, the neck is flatsawn hardrock maple, the fingerboard is birdseye maple, and the body is soft maple, so maybe the differences in wood density gives the neck and body different resonant frequencies.

 

I thought we only were talking about one single BODY wood and wondered what the heck the big deal was. Well, duh, I'm stupid. 1 + 1 = 2.

 

I don't doubt it sounds good, funky.

What I was saying about a bass made completely of a single wood is a principle in the luthiery world. However, as you may have seen on the internet, state something that is true almost all the time and you're sure to hear from those who are the exceptions.

But for me - I prefer to go with the odds-on favorite in these cases.

Multi-wood, laminated necks are the preferred way to go in bass luthiery. Yet there are people like Rick Turner who choose their wood carefully, know volumes about luthiery, and seem to do just fine with single wood necks. My Lakland Skyline has a single-wood neck but I trust the builder. I don't know who is building Fred's, so, I'm cautious.

Then there are those single-wood necks made by those who don't know what they're doing or don't care -

 

Let's just say he was from Baltimore.

Show me the pics

 

I do? Hmmm..

[thinking]

[not remembering]

[grrr....]

[getting angry with fred]


[checking Priceline.com for West Coast airfares]


[borrowing collapsible plastic shotgun from neighbor]


[picking up camoflauged sweatsuit from the cleaners]




maybe you should just send the pic...


m'kay?

 

Oh! That's a new ball game! Sounds intriguing (Schmill?)

As for the contest -one of my all time fave movies, Zappa's "200 Motels" (saw it 14 times and have the album).

Were the singers Howard Volman and Mark Kaylan a.k.a., Flo & Eddie (saw them live; really rank!)

Poisunally, I dug Jimmy Carl Black doing "Lonesome Cowboy Burt" -

"So come on in this place
And I'll buy you a taste,
And you can sit on my face,
Where's my waitress?

OPAL! Yew hawt lil biyutch!"