A great piece of wood may end up anywhere, in the hands of a master or slave (if any of you saw that NYT article about the working conditions iPhones are built under).
That's all anyone is saying.
Years ago, there was a huge bass shop online, I mean the inventory was huge, mostly used. The Bass Palace was run by a guy who called himself The Swami. I never got there in person, but there was something really different about the site, and that was the Swami's habit of every once in a while writing in the description "This is The One" or maybe he'd write "Reeks of Oneness" or "Nearly The One" or some such.
After reading hundreds, maybe thousands of his listings, I finally figured out that he was talking about magic wood. We used to laugh about it at work. There was a guy I always teased about magic wood, and we'd argue about elves who lived in the trees and stuff. But really, haven't we all played basses that were either much more or much less than our eyes and brains told us to expect? Basses where, unlike the majority of basses, the whole was much greater or less than the sum of the parts?
And I was pretty poor when I was trying to figure out tone wood and this weird site, so I read every posting for months, all basses I couldn't afford, trying to decipher the mystery. And then a MIJ Squier popped up with The Swami's pronouncement of Oneness all over it. I sweated it because even $350 was a big deal. And when I got paid, I bought it. The first thing I noticed was the heinous slop in the neck joint. It was loose as a goose, I'd say a good 1/32", maybe even 3/64" of slop there. I thought, well if this is Japanese, then they have started hiring the handicapped, or illegal aliens or something. And it had a Bart in there. I wasn't familiar with Bart P pickups. But it sounded meaty and loud as hell unplugged, so I plugged it up and yes, it was The One. The years often color our memories brighter, but this was better than my dearly departed blue claydot '63.
They inactivated my band in July 1991 and when I got to my new band, I was told to get what I wanted in a bass, so after looking at the book I said I needed a 5 with actives, and someone said to order a Ken Smith and I said sure, OK, so I ended up with one of those equal-length-horn neck-through basses he used to make that I ordered sight unseen and in the crush of deadlines. It was the only one they had in stock and we had to go to Saudi and Kuwait the Thanksgiving after Desert Storm and play for the troops who got left behind, so I didn't get my choice of woods, but it was a gorgeous plank anyway and played like you'd expect a $2500 bass to play. Now this is what most basses are like, they play like what you expect. Normally you can buy a US '62 or '57 RI through the mail as I've done and it is what it is, no more or less.
And most cheap planks are what you'd expect, too. I mean if I'm getting something made of agathis or poplar or basswood or nato, then I figure it's gonna suck to some degree or another, at least in comparison to something that can dish up any sound I want, like alder, or maybe maple over mahogany (I hate poplar; I had a bass with dead spots; I'd gone through a few necks and always the dead spots would drop the fundamental, leaving behind that harmonic an octave or two plus a fifth up, and when I finally threw out the body, I was fine).
Some things give what seems to me like amazing value, but maybe I'm remembering the abysmal foreign products of yesteryear. Maybe China and Malaysia are using CNC now or something. I'd read very favorable reviews of the Squier Affinity 5 by old guys like me, I checked and saw it was made out of alder with a maple neck and rosewood fretboard, I guessed it would make the noises I needed, and yep, sure enough it did for $200 shipped. And I watched Ed Friedland's youtube review of the G&L Tribute L-2000 and because it's made out of the same wood (well, basswood in black for the Tribute, which I'd skip, but the other colors are swamp ash, and for the US model the premium finishes are swamp ash and the rest are alder) and has the same circuitry as the US model, I would bet it is, as Ed says, just as good for around half the price.
But back to my cheap P. I like it for this example because there's no mystique to its construction. We know what matters. A production P-bass with lateral slop in the neck joint can be "just as good" as a boutique bass where the neck has to be hammered out of the pocket with the heel of the hand. It can be even better if the wood is better, 'cause a bolt-on is a bolt-on, the wood that makes the P sound is what it is, same wood same sound. The same quality of bridges is available, the same quality of pickups (this plank now wears an early 70s pickup, but it's nowhere near as good as a '62 RI pickup and if I can find that pickup I'll put it back in), it has Thomastik flats, a Gotoh bridge (I'll guess a Babicz is heavier and put one of those on to fix neck dive), it has a graphite nut (I cut several for different kinds of strings using number and letter drill bits for files to get perfect sizing), the neck changes all the time with the weather but it's part of the sound (one tour I had to take the neck off daily to readjust, that's why I had to shim the neck pocket with some knifemaker's vulcanized fiber material), and there's a Hipshot 3-string retainer on it that it seems the Thomastik A string needs. Sorry about the gory detail, but I see some bolt-ons out there going for over 2 grand, and I have access to the same hardware and strings and nut material and pickups that the boutiques have, maybe not figured woods and great paint and a 21st fret, but that doesn't affect the sound, so this is a good example because a bolt-on kills the mstique of builder magic pretty fast. Functionally speaking, for a bolt-on, it all comes down to the plank, the unique piece of wood that nature made without a thought in her mind about what name was going to get put on the headstock.
So let me say, OK, if you don't believe that accidents of nature can make a few trees noticeably better tone wood than others, then just go by price, weeding out the ripoff models. But if you have played planks that are way better and way worse than you expected, maybe you'll pluck a string on every bass you pass by, cheap or not, just to make sure The One doesn't get away from you.
