They really do differ from one to another!

[SixtyCycleHum]

Heyo!

Just had a blast hanging with a friend of mine, just a couple of long haired ****s messing with each other's basses. The way it should be. Haha.

There's something that I noticed tonight. My buddy also has an Affinity V, but he has replaced his with a maple fretboard and it's beautiful. He's dropped the EMG J set in his where I have the J Retro and Duncan QP's. Both of us have new strings as of less than two weeks ago. Yes I gave him a pack of my Elixirs, I'm an idiot. Haha. My rig sounds a BUNCH spankier and growlier and more articulate with the knobs wide open. He's actually getting this really lush classic tone in that position. It's so strange. His components and the maple neck alone are supposed to leave my Affinity for dead for brightness and sustain, where I was looking to add more warmth.

The active transformation and new pickups has turned mine into a snarling beast that can get "piano-y" and his into one of the easiest basses to dial in I've ever played. Yet, he wants what mine is doing. Is it possible to have two very similar instruments and yet one is just naturally brighter? I'm tripping on this one, tbh.

 

[Lackey]

Maple fingerboard doesn't do anything to brighten up bass tone. I believe it's actually a softer wood than rosewood. It's the electronics.

 

[mongo2]

Is it possible to have two very similar instruments and yet one is just naturally brighter?

Yes. I notice differences in tone when trying the same type of basses in shops. For example two Fender P basses made of the same woods with the OEM pickups and OEM strings can sound very different.

 

[TrevorG]

I think looking for specific bass tones is a trip down the rabbit hole. Everybody talks about a classic Precision tone but what is that?! A 62 will sound totally different to another 62 which will sound really close to a 75. How your ears are that day, what amp you’re going into, the shape of a room- all help make the search a bit trivial if you ask me.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

Maple fingerboard doesn't do anything to brighten up bass tone. I believe it's actually a softer wood than rosewood. It's the electronics.

It's the "spank" of pretty much every maple neck I've played that comes to mind. Weirdly, his doesn't come up spanky at all.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

I think looking for specific bass tones is a trip down the rabbit hole. Everybody talks about a classic Precision tone but what is that?! A 62 will sound totally different to another 62 which will sound really close to a 75. How your ears are that day, what amp you’re going into, the shape of a room- all help make the search a bit trivial if you ask me.

This is true. But yeah, we all have a damn good idea of what we're hunting for and it can be infuriating when we just can't get it.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

Yes. I notice differences in tone when trying the same type of basses in shops. For example two Fender P basses made of the same woods with the OEM pickups and OEM strings can sound very different.

It's bizarre how that works. They're made to specifications.

 

[nmiller]

While it's true that there are differences from one instrument to another of the same model, these differences can easily be swamped by the effects of different setups. I would consider that before attributing it to the basses themselves.

 

[GreyBeard]

Maple fingerboard doesn't do anything to brighten up bass tone. I believe it's actually a softer wood than rosewood. It's the electronics.

You are correct in that rosewood is harder than maple. However, I have owned 2 of the same model basses, one with rosewood and the other maple. The maple fb sounded more open and snappier to me. I think it has something to do with the fingerboard and neck being of the same density. The difference is really small compared to the pickups and electronics.

Janka Hardness chart for Exotic Wood and Domestic Wood | Bell Forest Products

 

[jazzyvee]

I think looking for specific bass tones is a trip down the rabbit hole. Everybody talks about a classic Precision tone but what is that?! A 62 will sound totally different to another 62 which will sound really close to a 75. How your ears are that day, what amp you’re going into, the shape of a room- all help make the search a bit trivial if you ask me.

Agreed, if i heard a bass that had a specific sound i wanted, i would prefer to try to buy that specific bass or try a number of that type to find what i want, rather than take the gamble of uncertainty trying to change my own get that sound. I tried changing bits in and out with guitars and was never satisfied and spent too much money. Woods to me as long as they are stable, i choose for cosmetic aesthetic not alleged tonal properties.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

While it's true that there are differences from one instrument to another of the same model, these differences can easily be swamped by the effects of different setups. I would consider that before attributing it to the basses themselves.

I do have narrower spacing and lower action, but we enjoy similar sounds and play in similar bands. A shared enthusiasm for a certain kind of clean grit, I guess. He's just scratching his head over why his bass doesn't want to growl and mine doesn't wanna play nice

 

[Volker Kirstein]

A 1mm difference in the distance between string and pickup will alter your sound. Sometimes significantly.

The number of winds in a pickup will alter your sound. Sometimes significantly.

Ditto the strength of the magnet(s).

 

[shoulderpet]

You are correct in that rosewood is harder than maple. However, I have owned 2 of the same model basses, one with rosewood and the other maple. The maple fb sounded more open and snappier to me. I think it has something to do with the fingerboard and neck being of the same density. The difference is really small compared to the pickups and electronics.

Janka Hardness chart for Exotic Wood and Domestic Wood | Bell Forest Products

+1 all the maple fretboard instruments I have played have sounded brighter, in fact when I get a bass with a maple fretboard the first thing I mod is usually the pickups which get swapped out for a darker sounding set

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

A 1mm difference in the distance between string and pickup will alter your sound. Sometimes significantly.

The number of winds in a pickup will alter your sound. Sometimes significantly.

Ditto the strength of the magnet(s).

Ooh. Truth, actually. I've angled my bridge pickup closer to the strings, where the neck is recessed a bit further in. He hasn't touched his.

 

[tpaul]

Sounds like you two should swap basses.

 

[sikamikanico]

Yeah, there is the inherent tone of each bass you IMO cannot escape. You can do all the mods, but they will only get you so far. At the end of the day, the particular pieces of wood and how they fit together will determine the outer limits of what is possible on that bass. The trick is to not fight it, but "feel it" and play it up as that bass's strength.

IMO, IME, the following is roughly the order of things to look at when chasing a sound:

• Technique. You and your fingers can do a lot (but not everything).
  
• Setup. It will influence the sound directly (pickup height) and interact with technique (action).
• Strings. Probably most cost-effective solution for sound. Can get pricey if you try many strings, but very rewarding, with a high ROI.
• Pickups and electronics. Can be very effective too, but within reason. One vintage P pickup will sound a lot like the next vintage P. But going from a humbucker to a single coil will sound quite a bit different, obviously. Electronics are important too, and I would add that passive components can do more than most people realize. Wire pickups in parallel and use caps to tune the resonant peak, and you can do so much (for so little).
• Changing pickup position and design. This is a bigger mod and more than just a swap, but pickups' location and design have a big influence, and you can do it on any bass. With design, I mean particularly the architecture, which sometimes also requires a different shape (e.g. from J to soapbar). But this can be a risky mod, because it's not reversible.
  
• New bass. Technically, a new neck might help by itself, but when you consider the woods, construction, pickup placement, body type, scale, etc. you are really looking at a new bass. It's debatable how much these influence the sound, but I believe that they do set the outer limits of what is possible, and when you hit that point, you need a different bass.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

Sounds like you two should swap basses.

Nahh. I quite like my snarling beast. I've got other basses that sound a heck tonne warmer

 

[Durham52]

Unfortunately and despite what some might claim, building electrified instruments out of different woods and with electrical components that have quite slack tolerances, makes it hard to make all the instruments of a particular type end up sounding exactly the same.

As many people have pointed out before in similar threads, no two pieces of wood, from the same species, or even from the same tree, will be exactly the same in regard to density, hardness or weight. Pickups may be wound slightly differently, capacitors often have variances of plus or minus 10%, necks might fit in pockets slightly better or worse and neck bolts might be tightened more or less tightly, or evenly.

All the possible variables can add up to two instruments which appear the same sounding anything but the same. (At least at fairly low volumes in a small space and played in isolation, or in a small group. Hear them from the back of a noisy bar room at high volume in a band setting and the differences are probably not noticeable.)

I've built, repaired and customized quite a few electric guitars and basses over close to forty years and at various times I've thought I had worked out some truths concerning the affects on tone of certain wood types and in general those "truths" apply in a not to specific sort of way, but sometimes I've put certain woods together, as I have done before and the results, even with the same pickup types and controls, will be noticeably different. So go figure...

How often do members here post about trying a whole range of say P basses, for the sake of an example and picking the one that sounds best to them? Or advising someone to try a bunch to find a "good" one? (to them)

I always remember Lee Sklar talking about his Frankenstein P bass, how he tried a whole heap of raw alder bodies at a factory, tapping them and then deciding which had the best tone to his ears and that body going into what is probably the most recorded bass in modern music. Of course that doesn't make Lee's choice the best ever P bass body, just the one which appealed to his ear. In the end what appeals to our ear, is what we are all hoping to find.

Custom made instruments can allow for the fine tuning the variables to a large extent, selecting wood by weight or density, or tap tone, or all those elements, to suit the characteristics a customer might be looking for. (Yes, I do believe that wood plays a part in the overall sound properties of a solid body instrument, just not to anywhere like the extent it does in an acoustic and not always to the same degree, instrument to instrument. I doubt anyone can reliably quantify a percentage attributable to the woods used.) In a large factory operation where wood may well be bought in thousands of board feet at a time, workers may not have the opportunity and luxury of being able to select and match wood so carefully, due to the pressures of production and the sheer volume of wood on hand.

I think part of the frustrating beauty of wood based electrified musical instruments is the degree of variation that is sort of built in. If you want endlessly repeatable and predictable bass sounds buy a synth.

 

[micguy]

You have an uncontrolled experiment with more variables than you can shake a stick at. Attributing what you hear in this case to one particular thing is.....while tempting (we all love to do that), it's completely silly. If you want to every decide the impact of one variable on your tine, you need to perform an experiment with that as the only variable.

 

[tpaul]

You have an uncontrolled experiment with more variables than you can shake a stick at. Attributing what you hear in this case to one particular thing is.....while tempting (we all love to do that), it's completely silly. If you want to every decide the impact of one variable on your tine, you need to perform an experiment with that as the only variable.

I had a ham sandwich with tomatoes, lettuce, pickles and mustard on rye and my friend had peanut butter and jelly on toasted white bread, and his sandwich was sweeter than mine.

Next time I have a ham sandwich I'm putting it on toasted white bread.