I have several basses. They all are made with wood. They all have good tone.
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Tonewood Club
- Thread starter GodPlayedBass
- Start date
Likewise placebo can and does work to reinforce the existing viewpoint of believers of a certain issue, such as tonewoods; it's not just a one way street. In the recent thread there were a couple of videos that showed it wasn't consistent or important to 'good tone' and I have others as well. I can also show how various biases and belief systems will affect a persons position, as well as how flawed many of the testing methodologies are as I've done sensory testing in other fields and have a fair bit of experience in the subject.
I’m pretty sure that word was in use before WW2. For hundreds of years.
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I’ve never really dove into the flat earthers theories, & arguments for a flat earth, sounds like you are quite knowledgeable in that realm tho.
I'm happy to believe that, yet I've seen little evidence that it's so. It's come to much more prominent use in recent years for those who speak against the general narrative on certain in and as a way to devalue that person and their opinion. It's well beyond the scope of this board and it's rules to discuss the history of this and why, but I can and have in other appropriate fora before. This subject I know well and a certain recent legal decision and the history behind it backs it up.
I'm not sure if you're intending to be insulting, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt.
Let's say you were in a group that believed the Loch Ness Monster were a real creature. If you explicitly disallowed anyone who presented any opposite evidence, such as the extensive sonar testing done in the Loch, and only allowed evidence to be included that reinforced what the members believed, there would be little benefit to it except as a social club. That's what I meant. As for flat earthers, just get on YT and look at some of the videos that twist physics into a Gordian knot, not just a pretzel.
A simple search finds several dictionary articles saying it’s from 1600’s French: probably Latin
before that. It’s an old word who’s meaning hasn’t changed much. As a compound word with various other words, it’s use may have increased somewhat lately, but by itself, it’s pretty mature.
Fine. I'm going to clarify that I'm referring to it's increased use as an insult, especially in recent years, and as a put down as I explained in the post following the one you just quoted.
Exactly, in the general context of the word, it’s a rather harmless word that can be assigned to pretty much any debatable subject matter, material, philosophy, ideology & so forth. Edit: simply put, it just means to deny something. What that “something “ is, obviously can run across a huge spectrum of things.
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Thanks to all who participated in the discussion, im going to “self moderate” and quietly leave the discussion, before contentious things start to arise, as they inevitably do..
And while I had some lighthearted fun, it’s so easy to get drawn into divisive arguments on these forums.
This one hasn’t quite made it there yet, but it’s bent in that direction… We are all bass players, and while it’s ok to disagree, and attempt to have positive discussions on things we disagree on, after reflecting on this thread, I think im going try to stick to the stuff that we all really have in common, that unites us & not divides, the love of all things bass, peace
& love y’all.
And while I had some lighthearted fun, it’s so easy to get drawn into divisive arguments on these forums.
This one hasn’t quite made it there yet, but it’s bent in that direction… We are all bass players, and while it’s ok to disagree, and attempt to have positive discussions on things we disagree on, after reflecting on this thread, I think im going try to stick to the stuff that we all really have in common, that unites us & not divides, the love of all things bass, peace
& love y’all.
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Okay but what if you don't believe in tonewoods, but you're pretty sure Nessie is chilling just out of the sonars range?
Granted a Poplar Electric Bass would be different but Poplar is second only to Spruce, when building a Double Bass so in my neck of the woods Poplar is
definitely a “Tone Wood”
Thanks to all who participated in the discussion, im going to “self moderate” and quietly leave the discussion, before contentious things start to arise, as they inevitably do..
And while I had some lighthearted fun, it’s so easy to get drawn into divisive arguments on these forums.
This one hasn’t quite made it there yet, but it’s bent in that direction… We are all bass players, and while it’s ok to disagree, and attempt to have positive discussions on things we disagree on, after reflecting on this thread, I think im going try to stick to the stuff that we all really have in common, that unites us & not divides, the love of all things bass, peace
That was a calm, rational post, which of course, has no business being on Talkbass.
It kinda sounds like you are a believer in tonewood, but not one who believes that it’s quantifiable or absolutely deterministic. IMHO, one can only generalize about the tonal characteristics of a given type of wood, much like one can only generalize about the personality inherent in a given type of dog or cat. There’s way too much variation to nail it down.
I don’t believe there is a scientific method that can resolve this debate one way or the other. Experience and anecdote are all we have.
Well 2 add 2 cents to the never ending debate. My take is Wood has a minimal effect 10-15% of the overall base tone straight passive no eqing. Can that difference be heard is the question? Possibly, but is easily overcome by a couple db of eq at the right frequency. More of the tone is derived from Pickup placement, pickup type, strings, and preamp. This is where 40-50% of the tone comes from and the other 35-50% comes from playing style. So, if you decide to never have a preamp or use any sort of eqing, never challenge yourself to find different styles of playing, maybe wood plays a still minimally significant role in overall tone of the bass amplified. I would say not enough to spend extreme amounts of money on exotic woods for tone specifically! Looks go for it! Tone NAH!
I like tonewood discussions because it usually means more pics and links and rabbit holes... a OCD smorgasbord of delight! I can hear the difference, but if you saw a graph of my messed up ears (from birth), you would start to understand I don't hear the same way most of y'all do. I never knew till the doc told me. The difference I hear can be described as warm/bright. Maybe next time you try to hear the difference, take out all your mids.
Mix in nitro vs poly to the tonewood discussion and then you got yourself a Club. 
I would say that choice of tonewood would make some minor difference, and that one wood would sound “brighter” while another wood would sound “darker,” but on the ground even two basses with the same wood from the same tonewood tree and the same electronics would differ in sound slightly due to miniscule pickup wind and capacitor value differences, and this would matter more than what tonewood would impart on the sound. Tonewood probably makes much more of a difference with semihollow and hollow bass and guitar, but with solidbody the wood would make only a tiny impact that would only matter with clean tone, in a recording or live show with ample space for the wood to show its quality. Oh, one more thing about tonewood: I would say that how well the neck, body, tuners, bridge, and strings are assembled together and resonate would have more effect than the wood would. However, all else being equal, I would say that tonewood would matter, just not as much as would other factors...
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Hope I didn't give anyone a stroke reading this. That WOULDn't be good.
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Hope I didn't give anyone a stroke reading this. That WOULDn't be good.
