I think it's foolish to say that physical parts on the bass don't affect the tone because basic physics would disprove that claim. Hell, even your body affects the tone, and I don't mean "your fingers" (well, they do, obviously), I mean your friggin' stomach.
However, what a lot of people fail to mention on this topic is that a lot of wood/parts/etc sounds... different. Not necessarily better or worse in a lot of cases. Many tonal problems can be amended by simple EQing as long as the guitar itself doesn't have a serious defect (more on this later), and frequency response changes are uniform enough (even if we know they aren't due to different body shapes and weight distribution), but for practical purposes, this is often enough, which is why you can make a bunch of useful tones out of a single quality DI.
Granted, you can't make a jazz bass bridge pickup sound out of a P bass, because frequency response changes aren't uniform across the notes/fret positions, but you can make one P bass sound like another P bass, as long as the frequency response caught by pickups is wide enough so that you have something to work with.
The only time wood REALLY plays into the picture is when bass design/joints/wood just have a defect. At that point it's obvious something is amiss and problems like that have no place on expensive instruments, but can sometimes be fixed on cheaper ones. My SX originally had a really flimsy neck/body joint which caused a very dampened, thin tone, and when that was fixed, it started singing.
That cardboard guitar was put together so well that it didn't matter it was cardboard dipped in resin.
So, in essence, construction & material integrity > tonewood, even though the material matters, whether the piece of wood, plastic, metal or even stone has a defect and whether it fits the particular instrument, is more important than what the genus is called and what alterations in frequency response (that are fairly uniform) it brings
However, what a lot of people fail to mention on this topic is that a lot of wood/parts/etc sounds... different. Not necessarily better or worse in a lot of cases. Many tonal problems can be amended by simple EQing as long as the guitar itself doesn't have a serious defect (more on this later), and frequency response changes are uniform enough (even if we know they aren't due to different body shapes and weight distribution), but for practical purposes, this is often enough, which is why you can make a bunch of useful tones out of a single quality DI.
Granted, you can't make a jazz bass bridge pickup sound out of a P bass, because frequency response changes aren't uniform across the notes/fret positions, but you can make one P bass sound like another P bass, as long as the frequency response caught by pickups is wide enough so that you have something to work with.
The only time wood REALLY plays into the picture is when bass design/joints/wood just have a defect. At that point it's obvious something is amiss and problems like that have no place on expensive instruments, but can sometimes be fixed on cheaper ones. My SX originally had a really flimsy neck/body joint which caused a very dampened, thin tone, and when that was fixed, it started singing.
That cardboard guitar was put together so well that it didn't matter it was cardboard dipped in resin.
So, in essence, construction & material integrity > tonewood, even though the material matters, whether the piece of wood, plastic, metal or even stone has a defect and whether it fits the particular instrument, is more important than what the genus is called and what alterations in frequency response (that are fairly uniform) it brings
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