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Tonewoods
- Thread starter NineSpine
- Start date
+1
IME, the timbre is in the timber but it's only a small part of the overall tone and its contribution will vary from piece to piece and there's plenty of overlap.
IME, the timbre is in the timber but it's only a small part of the overall tone and its contribution will vary from piece to piece and there's plenty of overlap.
Oddly, I would have to agree with you on this one. It is just really hard to do complex formulas in forum format. I envision the whole system as an amazing complex multivariate integral with more factors than you can shake a stick at. In the end it all comes down to how it sounds to you!
For my very rough equation I consider design part of construction.
I have to give a giant +1+10E6 to everyone who has said that the most important criteria in selecting a bass is how it plays, sounds, and feels for you. I have my own preferences and dislikes for my own reasons, but in the end, what wood the bass is made of is low on my list of deciding factors.
Btw, I think this thread deserves some kind of award for staying so civil on what is normally a very opinion-driven topic.
You know what the funniest thing is when you record 10 basses equally at the same setting, same bass lines, and do a play back it's nearly impossible to tell the difference at all.
And yet engineers, whose ability to hear the slightest nuances in what they're recording is what they're paid to control, often times have favorite instruments when they record an artist.
I don't find that to be funny or even remotely accurate. I don't have a great ear but I can tell the difference between different basses real easily.
If wood doesn't matter why don't we all have plywood instruments? You can debate the severity to which it changes the sound but it does.
I am using all the time the same amp/speakers (25%, right?) & I have the same strings on all my basses (15%, right?); add the 25% for the human factor and also 10% for construction, sice all my basses are produced by the same company. That's a total of 75%. The only different things are the electronics and woods...and yet, it's a hell of a difference between them - that 25% percent is big enough to distinguish one from another and to make each model sound unique, so I'd say it's pretty darn important
.
I would like to mess up this debate a bit 
Newby here but longtime player and hobby-builder
IN my opininion the wood is a very important part of the sound, not perse the maple vs. bubinga, but the piece of maple and or bubinga in question.
I've found that basses that sound well unamplified are without fail the best sounding basses amplified. Logic would then dictate that the electronics do not do much more then exaggerate the good and bad points of the sound already present in the bass.
The question therefor should be. What has the biggest influence the wood quality or the craftmanship of the builder.
Being that from a batch of cheaply made f.i. Chinese or Korean instruments there are always some that do sound far better then the rest of the batch, and opting for same craftmanship on such a batch, my guess is that the woods do make a huge difference. But the distinction is in the quality, not in the type of wood.
To strenghten that point, quality builders (like MTD and Sadowsky) can make a fine sounding bass from any regular type of wood, but they will weed out all the bad pieces of f.i. maple before they come to the piece of tone-wood maple to build it from.
Peter
Newby here but longtime player and hobby-builder
IN my opininion the wood is a very important part of the sound, not perse the maple vs. bubinga, but the piece of maple and or bubinga in question.
I've found that basses that sound well unamplified are without fail the best sounding basses amplified. Logic would then dictate that the electronics do not do much more then exaggerate the good and bad points of the sound already present in the bass.
The question therefor should be. What has the biggest influence the wood quality or the craftmanship of the builder.
Being that from a batch of cheaply made f.i. Chinese or Korean instruments there are always some that do sound far better then the rest of the batch, and opting for same craftmanship on such a batch, my guess is that the woods do make a huge difference. But the distinction is in the quality, not in the type of wood.
To strenghten that point, quality builders (like MTD and Sadowsky) can make a fine sounding bass from any regular type of wood, but they will weed out all the bad pieces of f.i. maple before they come to the piece of tone-wood maple to build it from.
Peter
I often hear people talk about better woods, what specifically makes one piece of maple good and another bad?
- Jun 24, 2006
- 2,560
- 90
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: MTD basses and strings; Bergantino Amps & Cabs
the sound; resonance: luthiers tap on wood to hear the difference, and to find a 'good' piece, and even though you can't hear it (based on your past comments) luthiers and even us lowly musicians CAN here the difference. You can tap drumsticks on a countertop to hear the differences, as well; maple sticks sound different than hickory, and they ALL sound different than plastic-tipped sticks. Even two IDENTICAL drumsticks will sound a bit different. It has to do with weight, grain, structure, balance, age, curing, finish, and a lot of other stuff.
Cheers,
Cameron
Did you know that tap tones are to measure the thickness of violin tops and not to hear tone in the rough boards? This is how myths get started. If I ask a violin maker what do they look for in a tap tone I can get a specific answer. Something that is testable and repeatable.the sound; resonance: luthiers tap on wood to hear the difference, and to find a 'good' piece, and even though you can't hear it (based on your past comments) luthiers and even us lowly musicians CAN here the difference. You can tap drumsticks on a countertop to hear the differences, as well; maple sticks sound different than hickory, and they ALL sound different than plastic-tipped sticks. Even two IDENTICAL drumsticks will sound a bit different. It has to do with weight, grain, structure, balance, age, curing, finish, and a lot of other stuff.
Cheers,
Cameron
Still no one can give any specifics on what to look for in good wood for basses beyond the price tag except generic superlatives like goodness and the ever popular resonance.
I'm not convinced by the usual circular logic argument. There must be some quality in good woods that can be described using a specific that can then be compared and tested.
- Jun 24, 2006
- 2,560
- 90
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: MTD basses and strings; Bergantino Amps & Cabs
with Stradivarius (and Amatis, and Guarneris, etc) violins for centuries and nobody has yet. And even guitar builders tap woods, both when judging the thickness of an archtop, and just to hear if a piece of wood has a good 'resonance' to it. Have been to exotic lumberyards with several fine luthiers in my area; watched them tap everything from spruce and cedar planks to bubinga and Brazilian rosewood. They tapped; they listened.
Bye bye, now,
I can see this is about to go right in the ditch,
Cameron
What did they listen for?
It went with your first set of personal attacks but I was hoping you'd go beyond that and maybe explain your claims. Surely what to listen for can be described more succinctly than just "better".Bye bye, now,
I can see this is about to go right in the ditch,
Cameron
I see this claim so often, does anyone know what you listen for and what those qualities will do in a bass? I don't see why that question requires any attitude to answer, if you simply don't know don't attack the question.
I see a lot of reference here to the resonant powers of a piece of wood, but I think the entire point is that an electronic instrument does not sound by resonating. A pickup uses magnets, not a microphone, to pick up the sound. Since this is the case, the point in question is how can the resonant properties of a piece of wood dramatically change the way the string itself vibrates? Im afraid I just cant see the logic behind this. I know the string is vibrating against the bridge and nut which are attached to the wood but again, this is not really about whether it has any effect whatsoever, but if it is a truly noticeable and dramatic change in tone. I just dont see how it is possible.
I havent really made up my mind where I stand on this, but Im leaning toward that side of the debate because it seems like when someone asks for some kind of serious explanation for how this works, the person being questioned gets offended and refuses.
I havent really made up my mind where I stand on this, but Im leaning toward that side of the debate because it seems like when someone asks for some kind of serious explanation for how this works, the person being questioned gets offended and refuses.
Build a bass out of particle board or cheap plywood and build one out of stainless steel.
Add the same electronics and strings etc.
Will they sound (nearly) the same?
Extreme, but it will show that the wood influences things in a major way.
The strings vibrating energy gets translated to the body and neck, which in turn go happily resonating with the string, which in turn gets stranslated back into the string.
Thereby dampening some frequencies more than others (this depends mostly on the wood type (hence the maple crispness vs. mahogany warmth)
Tone woods (being the blocks of whichever type, that have great resonance) translate the vibrations back and forth better.
Peter
