James Jamerson on a maple neck?

[raphaeldc]

I have Chromes on my Jazz with a maple fingerboard and can make it thump very well when I play near the fingerboard. Whatever the difference between maple and rosewood is, it can be made up for with eq and technique, in my experience. A P pickup helps, but a Jazz can do it, too.

+1

 

[JTE]

]After 30+ years of gigging, and spending 11 years managing a guitar store where I did sales, teaching, repairs, set-up, maintenance, mods, etc. I believe that whatever impact the fingerboard has is so variable and negligible as to be meaningless. And I ain't in the "wood doesn't matter camp" at all. But the fingerboard isn't that key to it. I've simply played too many maple neck Fender-style instruments that were darker and too many rosewood-necked ones that were brigther to be able to say that it makes a real difference.

IFF (as in "if and only if") ALL things were identical, one might be able to make a case for a maple board being brighter. But they ain't the same. It's different chunks of wood every single time and that's going to cause more differences than the species. Plus, one thing frequently ignored in these discussions is that that a Fender maple neck is generally a one-piece maple neck while a rosewood board has two different species glued together.

It's a statistically meaningless comparison, but the rosewood board Laklands I've played compared to the maple board Laklands (all US Laklands have quarter-sawn maple necks with the fingerboard glued on) is that there's no sonic difference.

Plus, Duck Dunn sounds great with flats on his maple-board basses (both his ancient Fender 'burst with the anodized guard and the Lakland Bob Glaubs he played before Lakland made his signature model). And Jamerson's first Precsion was a maple neck one and I believe his early recordings were done with that bass.

My philosophy is that what the bass is made of isn't nearly as important as what THIS chunk of wood and metal sounds like in MY hands when I play it. If it sounds good, then that's the bass for me whether it's a 1962 sunburst P with rosewood board, a 1978 Antigua Jazz with blocks 'n' binding (my all-time worst nightmare of a bass), or a brand new MIM Standard P. Because I'm going to be playing the bass, not the catalog nor the specs.

John

 

[mongo2]

My philosophy is that what the bass is made of isn't nearly as important as what THIS chunk of wood and metal sounds like in MY hands when I play it. If it sounds good, then that's the bass for me whether it's a 1962 sunburst P with rosewood board, a 1978 Antigua Jazz with blocks 'n' binding (my all-time worst nightmare of a bass), or a brand new MIM Standard P. Because I'm going to be playing the bass, not the catalog nor the specs.

+1

Therein lies the essence of the crapshoot that is tone.

 

[chadds]

]After 30+ years of gigging, and spending 11 years managing a guitar store where I did sales, teaching, repairs, set-up, maintenance, mods, etc. I believe that whatever impact the fingerboard has is so variable and negligible as to be meaningless. And I ain't in the "wood doesn't matter camp" at all. But the fingerboard isn't that key to it. I've simply played too many maple neck Fender-style instruments that were darker and too many rosewood-necked ones that were brigther to be able to say that it makes a real difference.

IFF (as in "if and only if") ALL things were identical, one might be able to make a case for a maple board being brighter. But they ain't the same. It's different chunks of wood every single time and that's going to cause more differences than the species. Plus, one thing frequently ignored in these discussions is that that a Fender maple neck is generally a one-piece maple neck while a rosewood board has two different species glued together.

It's a statistically meaningless comparison, but the rosewood board Laklands I've played compared to the maple board Laklands (all US Laklands have quarter-sawn maple necks with the fingerboard glued on) is that there's no sonic difference.

Plus, Duck Dunn sounds great with flats on his maple-board basses (both his ancient Fender 'burst with the anodized guard and the Lakland Bob Glaubs he played before Lakland made his signature model). And Jamerson's first Precsion was a maple neck one and I believe his early recordings were done with that bass.

My philosophy is that what the bass is made of isn't nearly as important as what THIS chunk of wood and metal sounds like in MY hands when I play it. If it sounds good, then that's the bass for me whether it's a 1962 sunburst P with rosewood board, a 1978 Antigua Jazz with blocks 'n' binding (my all-time worst nightmare of a bass), or a brand new MIM Standard P. Because I'm going to be playing the bass, not the catalog nor the specs.

John

So well said. "My philosophy is that what the bass is made of isn't nearly as important as what THIS chunk of wood and metal sounds like in MY hands when I play it."
That really nails it. Kinda unarguable! It is our own experience. Whether Talkbass existed or not we'd still be selecting basses WE like.

 

[Double Agent]

My philosophy is that what the bass is made of isn't nearly as important as what THIS chunk of wood and metal sounds like in MY hands when I play it. If it sounds good, then that's the bass for me whether it's a 1962 sunburst P with rosewood board, a 1978 Antigua Jazz with blocks 'n' binding (my all-time worst nightmare of a bass), or a brand new MIM Standard P. Because I'm going to be playing the bass, not the catalog nor the specs.

John

Well said...it is why some basses sound great when other people play them, but when I play them they sound terrible...and vice versa. It is about the way you and the instrument interact more than anything and there is variance even between identical makes/models.

 

[J. Crawford]

I've been doing it for years now.. it works. Trust me. I've had more than one recording engineer say it was the best recording bass they've ever tracked.