Why does wood affect bass tone?

[David Jayne]

i understand now. the pickup is not a fixed point when attached to the bass, and movement through it's magnetic fields creates sound. So if the pickup is moving then it will make sound.

Kinda. A vibrating pickup all by itself won't make a sound, but a vibrating pickup near a stationary string will. Relative motion between string and pickup is what I'm talking about. Doesn't matter which one moves. Again, minimal impact, but it exists.

 

[SwamiRob]

I think something that is very much testament to how wood effects tone is simply if you have a tone which has a noticeable amount of harmonic content (i.e. not a jazz with the tone rolled with some uber reggea EQing) and you hit the body quite sharply with the strings muted you will hear the noticeable tone of the wood, or whatever else crazy kids make their basses out of now, of your body. Obviously the sound will be altered by how the pickup interprets that sound, but it will be there.

Not know the physics of why you hear that sound, obviously it will have something to do with either the strings or pickups vibrating, but it will sound very woody, it's not like things have to make up a very high percentage of your sound for it to be very noticeable, plenty of people get worked up by hissing when the majority of the time those hisses will be at very negligible volumes relative to the sound of their playing.

 

[Ric5]

The whole bass vibrates. The neck, the bridge, the body, the nut, the tuners, and of course the strings. It becomes a whole unit. All the different parts effect each other and the sound. The different parts will deaden different frequencies at different rates. Different woods will accentuate different overtones, and there will be "noise" added as the bass vibrates. All of this will work together for the tone.

 

[wsmerwin@hotmai]

To some degree everyone is right. Wood resonates. That resonance affects the way the strings vibrate. The pick ups convert the vibrating string into sound. Ears (especially those trained to do so like musician's) detect the subtle differences in those vibrations. They can be blocked (the Alembic Bass is a good example) but not completely. So everything (the wood, the nut, the bridge, the string, the atmosphere) affects the sound of the bass guitar. The whole instrument vibrates and those vibrations feed back on themselves, so the whole instrument is involved in creating the sound.

If the guitar is made of some other material (plastic, graphite, aluminum, resin) that allows you to control the properties of that material you will have a more uniform sounding instrument (Steinberger, Court). They will not sound identical but very similar.

 

[Vakmere]

So, if I swap the electronics out on my MTD 535 with my Ken Smith will my Smith now sound like the MTD and visa-versa? BTW, this is one of the better discussions in quite some time here....

 

[David Jayne]

So, if I swap the electronics out on my MTD 535 with my Ken Smith will my Smith now sound like the MTD and visa-versa?

More or less, IF the pickup locations are identical.

 

[Vakmere]

More or less, IF the pickup locations are identical.

OK, with that and the identical amp and bass knob settings on these 2 basses, then it seems wood has little to do with the resultant sound and the choice of electronics is possibly 90% of what we hear amplified?

 

[David Jayne]

OK, with that and the identical amp and bass knob settings on these 2 basses, then it seems wood has little to do with the resultant sound and the choice of electronics is possibly 90% of what we hear amplified?

I'm gonna say more like 80%, but yeah, that's the idea. Take a P bass pickup, put it in ANY 34" bass, in the correct location for a P bass, and it will sound like a P bass. Different P basses sound different from each other, but they all sound like P basses.

 

[Brad Johnson]

 

[Rickett Customs]

Short answer:

Wood affects tone because it a resonant material.

I look at wood as an "enrichment" to making sound, we all know the obvious other culprits.
Once you go further than that, you're splitting hairs.

 

[alexbib]

I'm a physicist and we had a talk at the department about stringed instruments some time ago. Was quite interesting.

In an electric instrument, if you ignore the accoustic sound the instrument makes and look only at what comes out of the amp, I think the way the wood affects the sound is by its dampening effect on the strings. It dampens certain frequencies preferentially, which changes the tone.
Personally, I would evaluate that this effect is fairly small and affects the tone much less than the actual strings and electronics used. After all, these are the parts that actually generate the sound.

Also, as was pointed out, the pickups themselves vibrate with respect to the strings since they are attached to the body. However, since the vibration amplitude of the pickups is small compared to that of the strings, this effect is even smaller. I would be surprised if you could detect this effect by ear.

 

[Rickett Customs]

I could give you one variation, this bass:

Does not use magnetics...... This one uses piezo "cable", underneath the bridge.

I believe the resonance of the wood, does make more of a difference in this case, bridge is Oak, aluminum saddles.

What would your view on this be, in this situation?

 

[Grate1]

Forget bass for a minute. If you were to go to a music store, pick up a shiny new fender 6 string guitar with a maple neck, and play it. Then play one with a rosewood fretboard. With everything else but the fretboard the same, you will hear a difference. There’s a clear difference even acoustically. Same holds true for bass guitar material.

 

[Ric5]

Does it change the vibrations of the string???

The short answer is yes.

 

[Rickett Customs]

Forget bass for a minute. If you were to go to a music store, pick up a shiny new fender 6 string guitar with a maple neck, and play it. Then play one with a rosewood fretboard. With everything else but the fretboard the same, you will hear a difference. There’s a clear difference even acoustically. Same holds true for bass guitar material.

Take the same two, put duncans in one and EMG's in the other

 

[David Jayne]

Take the same two, put duncans in one and EMG's in the other

Better yet, put singles in one and humbuckers in the other. Oh, and plug them in.

 

[OrionManMatt]

I'm a physicist and we had a talk at the department about stringed instruments some time ago. Was quite interesting.

In an electric instrument, if you ignore the accoustic sound the instrument makes and look only at what comes out of the amp, I think the way the wood affects the sound is by its dampening effect on the strings. It dampens certain frequencies preferentially, which changes the tone.
Personally, I would evaluate that this effect is fairly small and affects the tone much less than the actual strings and electronics used. After all, these are the parts that actually generate the sound.

Also, as was pointed out, the pickups themselves vibrate with respect to the strings since they are attached to the body. However, since the vibration amplitude of the pickups is small compared to that of the strings, this effect is even smaller. I would be surprised if you could detect this effect by ear.

+ 1

I would only add that how well and what type of electric bass is crafted and fitted together change the percentages of the effect. I think a well-crafted bass allows more of those other factors to influence the resultant tone. It is a combination of every part of the bass that contributes to its "tone."

Of course, the hotter the pickups and whether it is "active," the less of an effect I think the rest of the factors have on the overall tone of the electric bass.

Percentages, people.

 

[Vakmere]

I'm a physicist and we had a talk at the department about stringed instruments some time ago. Was quite interesting.

In an electric instrument, if you ignore the accoustic sound the instrument makes and look only at what comes out of the amp, I think the way the wood affects the sound is by its dampening effect on the strings. It dampens certain frequencies preferentially, which changes the tone.
Personally, I would evaluate that this effect is fairly small and affects the tone much less than the actual strings and electronics used. After all, these are the parts that actually generate the sound.

Also, as was pointed out, the pickups themselves vibrate with respect to the strings since they are attached to the body. However, since the vibration amplitude of the pickups is small compared to that of the strings, this effect is even smaller. I would be surprised if you could detect this effect by ear.

Well then why spend over $4500 for an MTD, Ken Smith, or Fodera (Sadowsky included) when you can buy their electronics package and (if they will fit with little modification) place them in your bass and have a very similar sound to the high enders? I did this to a Fender USA 5 (installed all Sadowsky stuff) and I have to say it was a very much improved Sadowsky like sound regardless of the alder body wood of the Fender. And Yes, I did own a Sadowsky NYC 5'er for a spell (w/humbuckers) and the sound was very very close. Impressive for that matter....

 

[powerbass]

Not only does the wood species effect tone but the amount of humidity in the wood, and the exposure to vibrations too. Check this out from http://www.leedsguitar.com/pages/tips.html "Musicians have said that the sound of an instrument gets better the more you play it, and we have found a basis for that,"

"There is research to indicate that the molecular bonds of wood actually break because of vibration and that this what affects the tonal qualities. So I think there may be more to it than moisture bonding."

 

[Atomik Rooster]

I am sorry. this is incorrect The pickup itself vibrating has no effect whatsoever on the sound.

To prove it get a bass and record it. Then take the pickup out and have something not connected to the bass hold it on the other side of the strings, the same distance from the strings.

Make sure that you play over the same part of the string in the same location. The bass will sound the same through the pickup.

Pickups pick up magnetic field changes from metal strings passing through it's magnetic field... pickups do not sense ANYTHING about physical vibrations directly.

The Strings however are the ones that "sense" the physical vibration directly, and react directly to different woods, tone blocks, bridges etc.

Ever had a pickup go microphonic? Seems to me that lends itself to a direct response to physical versus magnetic stimulus, and it can certainly affect what goes into (and comes out of) the amp. Not that a pickup is acting properly that way, but it's certainly capable of it. I think any degree of microphonic activity would influence the tone in some way.