Like all Tonewood debates, this thread will produce no conclusive proof that will convince anyone , one way or the other, so I offer this case in point purely for conjecture, sans Science of any kind:
I bought a Steinberger XP-2 in 1986, the "budget" version with a bolt-on carbon/graphite neck and the same headless tuning system as the more expensive versions. The body is hard rock maple, 1-1/2" thick, and in a "flying vee" shape. It has a very thick and incredibly tough black finish, so hard I assume it is some sort of 2-part epoxy finish. This is a stock photo of the bass, but mine is identical.
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Steinbergers had a reputation for sounding very Hi-Fi, very crisp piano-like tone, very "clinical" and cold to some ears. I'd say that's fair, and it is also the most string-sensitive bass I've ever owned, in other words you get very different tone out of it depending on what strings you use. Re-reading @Bruce Johnson writing lit up a light bulb in my head on this, more on that later.
Having owned the bass for 30+ years, and never intending to sell it, I decided to tinker a bit, and see if I couldn't get a "warmer" sound out of it. Without intending to, I effectively created a tonewood test of sorts by relocating
everything, neck, tuners, electronics, and even the strings (which were nearly new stainless double-ball rounds), from a hard rock maple body to a one-piece mahogany body I built thusly:
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I slavishly reproduced the 1-1/2" body thickness, so I ended up pretty near to the original weight by feel, though I haven't weighed it on a scale. To my surprise, I achieved the precise effect I was "supposed" to hear in that the overall tone was less trebly, more bassy and "warmer", with a little less sustain, but with no idea why that should be so. Somebody is thinking "confirmation bias", it sounded warmer because I expected it to, but let's stipulate that after playing this as my #1 bass for 30 years, I had a pretty good idea what it used to sound like, and now it sounds a lot different. You'll just have to take my word for it.
Re-reading Bruce's post on the STIFFNESS of the entire system being more important than the actual wood selection has some interesting implications for this example. The Steinberger carbon/fiber graphite necks are extremely rigid. Ned Steinberger used to do a little parlor trick where he'd span a neck a between two chairs and stand on it with no visible bend on the neck. I'll wager you can do that with plenty of wood necks too, but they'd bend, the Steinberger neck just doesn't move. I can put any gauge of string I like on it, and it makes no difference to relief, which was cast into it in a mold.
The only added parts were different straplocks and the pup rings, I think we can agree their effect on Tone would be mimial to nonexistent? The 1-1/2" thick rock maple body was also extremely stiff, a minimalist slab with no "horns" to speak of getting torqued by your body, no voids other than a relatively small control cavity and pup routes. The neck was bolt-on, with 4 hex head machine screws threaded into brass inserts cast into the neck. The neck heel and neck pocket have a slight "dovetail" bevel, they are about 1/8" wider at the fingerboard than at the heel. This was done to allow them to pop out of the mold cleanly, and was the most difficult part of the body build for me. The effect on construction is that the neck bolts wedge the neck into the pocket ever tighter as you wind down the bolts, again, a very stiff system.
If you find Bruce's theory convincing (I do) then my results makes sense, not because mahogany is inherently "warmer" sounding than maple, but by substituting a less rigid body, I reduced the overall stiffness of the system, which bled off some high end and sustain.
Getting back to the issue of strings, I had always noticed that as soon as the strings went dead with the maple body, the bass just overall sounded crappy, which also makes sense if you buy the theory that a very stiff system simply broadcasts the sound of the strings, for good or ill. The mahogany body seems more forgiving of old strings, maybe because I'm literally hearing less of them?
Again, not expecting to convice anyone one way or the other, I'm still at least one foot in the Tone wood Agnostic camp, but I wonder if anyone else has done a similar unintended experiment that eliminated all variables except the body wood?
