The neck is a 1-piece maple neck with graphite reinforcement.
Poplar is the standard body wood, alder ($50) and swamp ash ($100) are available as options for anyone interested.
As for the qualities of poplar, if you look at a black & white photo of alder and poplar, I'd bet you couldn't tell which was which - poplar has a bit of a "greenish" hue (can range from almost undetectable to "wow, there's a lot of green in that"), while alder has a kind of pinkish-peachy hue to it. As for tone, blindfolded, or if they had solid colors so you couldn't see the wood, they are indistinguishable from one another. They even WORK the same from a woodworking perspective - very smooth, even grain, easy to get nice and level for finish, tight grain so there isn't much filling to do before color (unlike swamp ash, which is why that wood is a $100 option - significantly more labor in the finish process). Weight can vary tremendously from one billet to another in the same species - heck in the same BOARD, it can. I've had 12 lb swamp ash bodied basses, and 7 lb mahogany bodied basses - there's more to it that the species for weight. Yes - if you took 100 billets of ash and 100 billets of mahogany, the mahogany stack will weigh more, but it isn't as simple as that. You have to consider many factors when weight is the question - for example, is the billet from the base of the tree (denser = heavier) or up near the top (less dense = lighter), or is the wood figured in any way (figured woods tend to be denser)?
Several builders use poplar, or maybe you've seen it called "tulipwood" when referring to a body wood....
As for why we use it - well, it's common in NC, in my yard, there are probably 10-15 trees big enough to justify harvesting and milling for body blanks (not saying I will...). It is locally sourced, grows rapidly, and is priced very reasonably.
