Tonewoods

[leftybassman392]

I think this is the right forum for this one...

I've always thought that the wood(s) used to make a bass (or guitar for that matter) are a critical element in determining how it will sound, and that time spent selecting the woods for a high-end instrument build is time well spent as it provides a 'uniqueness' to the sound. However I recently had a fascinating conversation with a respected specialist builder on another forum, to the effect that whilst high quality woods are an important element in producing a high quality instrument, the actual choice of wood is less of a factor in determining the specifics of the sound than I had supposed, and that other factors such as pickup/preamp choice, string choice and setup are at least as important (if not more so).

The implications of this are fairly substantial IMHO, because if true it means that in selecting tonewoods a customer is exerting less influence on how the instrument will sound (and probably more on how it looks) than he/she might believe.

I'm aware that I may be stirring a bit of a hornet's nest in asking this, but I'm considering having a bass built for me (although the same basic considerations would surely apply to off-the-shelf instruments) and I really would like to know what people think.

[Adrenochrome]

Generally only a small amount. Of course, that small amount could be the 'missing link' in getting the perfect tone for you.

[OutToPlayJazz]

Obviously a lot of the sound will depend on pickups, electronics & cleanliness of strings, but yes the wood does have a lot to do with it. Some of the differences will be in the age of the wood, how long it's been seasoned, as well as the type of wood.

I live about two miles down the road from D4Dve. We both have Status S2-Classic 5-stringers. Both identical specs with walnut tone blocks, same guage strings and setups done by myself. Dave's bass is about five years older and has a maple top. Mine has the myrtlewood top. I've a/b'd the two together and the difference is astounding. The maple bass is punchier with a much more pronounced top end. The myrtlewood bass is much more hifi across the range but a little less bright at the top end. Is it down to the top wood? Who knows!

[Paul_C]

I have often been heard to say that:

the fingerboard wood makes a difference
the neck wood (and shape) makes a difference
the type and size of the frets makes a difference
the construction (neck through/bolt-on/set/etc.) makes a difference
the body wood and design makes a difference
the pickups (and their placement/height) make a difference
passive or active tone circuits make a difference
the gauge/type/make/age of strings makes a difference
where on the string and how the string is struck (thumb/finger/pick/etc.)makes a difference
fx/preamp/amp/cab type/number of cabs all make a difference
distance from the wall/corner/etc. makes a difference
the size and shape of the room makes a difference
the number of people in the room makes a difference
where an individual listener is standing in the room makes a difference

and I'm sure there are many other things that have a large or small effect, but there is one certainty ..



only you give a damn.

[bubinga5]

I have always thought that the natural reverbaration and acoustic qualities come from the bass unplugged...the selection of woods is where the core tone come from....if a pickup is chosen, that does not color the bass in any way, the sound you get is coming from the choice of woods....Different body woods can definately change the tone of an instrument...This is where the tone starts from... its all about the way the wood vibrates...All pickups are doing are amplifying these vibrations....i would say they ae both important to bringing out a good tone..

The sound of Wood..

A passive instrument with ash or alder (lets say) is going to sound better(or different) than a passive bass made of plywood..this is a simplification but you get my point...Pickups and preamps should not and is not really where the core tone is coming from..

Edited January 11, 2010 by bubinga5

[jakenewmanbass]

10 words:

'The whole is greater than the sum of the parts'

I've got a stupidly expensive bass, it is simply the best bass I've ever played by a huge margin.
frankly I couldn't give a sh*t what it looks like, if it plays and sounds like it does. Thats enough.
Doesn't mean that yours is not an interesting point, in fact I think it is, but ultimately for me, what I have put above completely cuts through that.

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

The tone also comes from your fingers. I've tried using cadburys chocolate fingers & birds eye fish fingers, but found that my original ones sound best in an A/B comparison.

[Pete Academy]

When I first bought my Tobias Classic 5, I settled for whatever was available. It had a Lacewood top, alder back, and a wenge sandwich plate. I bought it because our guitar player (who's also a bassist) had one. His was a bubinga top and walnut back. My bass had a distinctive back pickup sound, like Jaco's. I tried my mate's in a gig situation and couldn't get that back pickup burp. However, the bass end with his Tobias was far warmer than mine. A couple of years later another mate bought one with quilt maple top and walnut back. I gigged that one and the sound was smack in the middle.

So, IMO, the type of wood makes a difference. Obviously, it's in the fingers, but choosing the right wood is a starting point for your ideal sound.

[henry norton]

+1 on all that but I would add, if you're having a bass designed and made by a good luthier I would choose the woods I liked the look and feel of rather than trying to 'tune' the sound by wood choice. 'Tune' the sound by pickup, string and electronics choices as they are far more consistent than wood will ever be. Some luthiers go to extraordinary lengths to pack in loads of different woods in order to get a certain sound yet others (Mike Pedulla on his classic basses for instance), will just use one type of the best wood in the best way they can. There's no right answer but a well made bass should sound good in maple, ash, bubinga, walnut, ebony, whatever.

[leftybassman392]

[quote name='henry norton' post='709728' date='Jan 12 2010, 09:24 AM']+1 on all that but I would add, if you're having a bass designed and made by a good luthier I would choose the woods I liked the look and feel of rather than trying to 'tune' the sound by wood choice. 'Tune' the sound by pickup, string and electronics choices as they are far more consistent than wood will ever be. Some luthiers go to extraordinary lengths to pack in loads of different woods in order to get a certain sound yet others (Mike Pedulla on his classic basses for instance), will just use one type of the best wood in the best way they can. There's no right answer but a well made bass should sound good in maple, ash, bubinga, walnut, ebony, whatever.[/quote]

This is pretty much the point made by the luthier I spoke to. Normally I wouldn't have bothered, but it came as a surprise to me to hear it after many years of hearing the 'wood is everything' approach so eloquently expounded above by Bubinga5.

[chris_b]

A few years ago I had 2 Wal Custom 5 string basses and as these are built with the same components I could A/B them in rehearsal and on gigs. One bass had olive ash facings and sounded thin and toppy and the other had American walnut facings and sounded fat, deep and full. That demonstrated to me the difference that wood can make to the tone of a bass.

[bubinga5]

[quote name='henry norton' post='709728' date='Jan 12 2010, 09:24 AM']+1 on all that but I would add, if you're having a bass designed and made by a good luthier I would choose the woods I liked the look and feel of rather than trying to 'tune' the sound by wood choice. 'Tune' the sound by pickup, string and electronics choices as they are far more consistent than wood will ever be. Some luthiers go to extraordinary lengths to pack in loads of different woods in order to get a certain sound yet others (Mike Pedulla on his classic basses for instance), will just use one type of the best wood in the best way they can. There's no right answer but a well made bass should sound good in maple, ash, bubinga, walnut, ebony, whatever.[/quote]
I really dont think you should be getting the tone of your instrument from the pickups or preamp...it is after all why instruments are made of wood!... Luthiers choose these woods wether they be one or two woods, or a multiple wood combo through years of experience in tone shaping...Getting a bass to sound good in any of those mentioned woods is not really the issue..its wether you like that tone...

if i was having a bass made i would certainly be asking the Luthier what sort of tone i will be getting from certain wood combos.. and they would prob think it odd your choosing woods on looks alone?...after all you may not like the sound..Weight is also an issue....

Im fairly sure NO Luthier builds a bass from the electronics backwards..there main aim is the sound of the wood

pickups and preamp's are for tweaking and amplifying the sound of the wood..IMHO

[velvetkevorkian]

Surely if you get the tone you want, it doesn't really matter how you get it? For example, when I play my 7 I tend to roll the treble right off, because I like how it sounds- if I relied on the woods completely it would be far to trebly for my taste! For a long time I subscribed to the "amp set flat automatically = good" idea (an extension of the same principle) and kept my preamp/tone controls flat, but lately I've come around to the position that whatever works is cool. As others have said, its the sum of the parts that make the noise.

[sdgrsr400]

From my recent experiences, I'd say bolt-on v. through-neck is a major differentiator. However, only you can decide...

[Bloodaxe]

Another factor is the [i][b]cut[/b][/i] of the wood - Quartersawn or Plainsawn? Also different boards cut from the same tree will exhibit different characteristics as the grain will vary considerably. Boards may also contain hidden "defects" that never become apparent during manufacture, but that nevertheless affect tonal response

Pickups [b][i]do[/i][/b] add their own character - there will be subtle differences in winding over the course of a production run. Ditto with hardware. As far as a manufacturer is concerned, if samples pulled from a batch are within tolerance, that batch is good to go - what is deemed an acceptable tolerance will vary by manufacturer.

I personally don't believe that a true A/B test is ever possible as no two instruments are identical, even more so on a luthiered instrument where the intense degree of hand-finishing will inevitably result in subtle variations from one instrument to the next.

It all adds up:

[quote name='jakesbass' post='709508' date='Jan 11 2010, 10:27 PM']10 words:

'The whole is greater than the sum of the parts'[/quote]

Occasionally, it's less as well - it's all in the ear of the beholder.



Pete.

[Adrenochrome]

I'm sure someone did some proper research on this and found that the pickups (and their position), string length and type of strings have the major contribution to the sound of a solid electric bass. I can't remember who it was though...
The examples above (same bass with different wood tops etc) do demonstrate the effect that woods can have on tone over and above that basic sound.

[henry norton]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='710743' date='Jan 13 2010, 12:06 AM']I really dont think you should be getting the tone of your instrument from the pickups or preamp...it is after all why instruments are made of wood!... Luthiers choose these woods wether they be one or two woods, or a multiple wood combo through years of experience in tone shaping...Getting a bass to sound good in any of those mentioned woods is not really the issue..its wether you like that tone...

if i was having a bass made i would certainly be asking the Luthier what sort of tone i will be getting from certain wood combos.. and they would prob think it odd your choosing woods on looks alone?...after all you may not like the sound..Weight is also an issue....

Im fairly sure NO Luthier builds a bass from the electronics backwards..there main aim is the sound of the wood

pickups and preamp's are for tweaking and amplifying the sound of the wood..IMHO[/quote]
Well I would say it was more like amplifying the sound of the strings mounted on the metal bridge & frets that are in turn mounted on the wood. I agree wood choice makes a difference but construction, electronics, hardware and strings are all major contributors. Compare an ash bodied Precision with an alder version, they'll both sound like a Precision - the difference will be in the details and [i]most[/i] people choose one or the other because they either like the look of ash and are prepared to put up with the extra weight or they prefer solid colours and/or prefer it lighter.

[henry norton]

Just to be doubly contentious, I might add the 'back to back' tests OTPJ and chris_b did on their respective Status' and Wal's may not be as conclusive as they first appear because I would presume high end instruments like these are always subject to constant development in the design, construction and electronics which may well count more for the differences in sound than the differences between two pieces of wood. (OTPJ's very different sounding Status basses were both walnut so what does that tell you about nailing down your sound by wood choice!)

Anyway, you can all print off a copy of my avatar and throw darts at it now. I'm off to laminate up some mahogany and quarter sawn Canadian rock maple for my next bass neck

[leftybassman392]

[quote name='henry norton' post='711226' date='Jan 13 2010, 01:04 PM']Just to be doubly contentious, I might add the 'back to back' tests OTPJ and chris_b did on their respective Status' and Wal's may not be as conclusive as they first appear because I would presume high end instruments like these are always subject to constant development in the design, construction and electronics which may well count more for the differences in sound than the differences between two pieces of wood. (OTPJ's very different sounding Status basses were both walnut so what does that tell you about nailing down your sound by wood choice!)

Anyway, you can all print off a copy of my avatar and throw darts at it now. I'm off to laminate up some mahogany and quarter sawn Canadian rock maple for my next bass neck [/quote]

Actually I was kind of thinking the same thing myself but didn't really feel qualified to criticise since I've only ever had one Wal and no Statuses (or should that be Stati?) On a related point, the tone shaping on a Wal is incredibly powerful, which I would have thought would make a direct comparison hard to make anyway - I mean how can you be sure the settings are completely identical, strings identical, action identical, etc. to the point that the only possible difference is due to the wood choice?

To be clear, I'm not trying to question anyone's judgement; but given the complexity of the interaction between the various, er, variables I'm still not sure how anyone can be certain that any one of them (in this case the choice of wood) can dominate the equation to the extent that some clearly feel it does.

Not that I'm complaining of course, since I own several high-end instruments that use exotic woods. I love them all, and they're as good to look at as they are to play. But they're all either off-the-shelf models or else made originally to suit someone else's needs.

At the risk of sounding anal and/or cheapskate (which I'm not BTW), I'd just like to know what a £200 exotic tonewood facing is actually going to do for my sound BEFORE I spend the money. But then again maybe the visual beauty of a top quality instrument is meant to be part of the feelgood that comes from owning and using it.

[skankdelvar]

FWIW, I've recently heard that using wood cut from the [i]top[/i] of the tree will make a difference in a good way. That wood which resides at the bottom will have had the weight of the tree bearing on it, thus compressing it. This renders the wood more dense and thus more 'inert', resulting in a warmer (or duller) tone.

True? More voodoo? Who can say. Either way, anyone who's heard a Dan Armstrong acrylic-bodied bass will recognise that there ain't [i]that[/i] much difference in tone between that and an all wood bass.

Logically, wood type must affect your core tone. But, IMO, for the marginal difference is all but submerged by the succeeding elements in the signal chain.

[Adrenochrome]

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='711339' date='Jan 13 2010, 02:31 PM']Either way, anyone who's heard a Dan Armstrong acrylic-bodied bass will recognise that there ain't [i]that[/i] much difference in tone between that and an all wood bass.

Logically, wood type must affect your core tone. But, IMO, for the marginal difference is all but submerged by the succeeding elements in the signal chain.[/quote]

Heresy! Burn him!

[wavey_davey]

Does the wood choice alter the sound? I think you have to admit it will. But not to the same degree and the strings, pickups, electronics or style (finger / pick etc) and definately not as much as the dumb ar*e guitarist who insists on eating you midrange on stage, or the sound engineer that insists on turning you down front of house cos you might blow his bins up!!

If you're buying Hi-Fi kit, you can quite easily spend an absolute fortune on gold cable and connectors, and for the vast majority of the public, the nuances of the improvement will go unnoticed. On a similar vein, you can have your £3,000 per metre cable hooked up to a sack 'o spanners tape deck and it will still sound like a sack o' spanners! That follows the plywood bass post earlier.

I've just gone Custom on one of Tom Clements Bass's [url="http://www.clementbass.com/web"]http://www.clementbass.com/web[/url] and I pretty much had free rein on what wood I wanted. I had a good trawl through various sites and forums see who said what. Thing is with describing sonics, one mans mwah is another mans bwaah! What exactly is Growl? Burp? Fart? Sounds more like my dog!!

I ended up none the wiser and opted for a tried and tested Ash body / Spalt Top / Maple Neck.

My opinion is that wood does make a difference, but will you be able to hear it in a full-on band situation? I doubt it. What's more important is getting consistent quality throughout the instrument.

[chris_b]

[quote name='henry norton' post='711226' date='Jan 13 2010, 01:04 PM']Just to be doubly contentious, I might add the 'back to back' tests OTPJ and chris_b did on their respective Status' and Wal's may not be as conclusive as they first appear because I would presume high end instruments like these are always subject to constant development in the design, construction and electronics which may well count more for the differences in sound than the differences between two pieces of wood. (OTPJ's very different sounding Status basses were both walnut so what does that tell you about nailing down your sound by wood choice!)[/quote]
Dismiss what I say with facts not guesses and presumptions!

[The Burpster]

Cant remember who above said it all makes a difference but I agree. Wood, hardware and signal chain all make a difference.

You can get a very good idea how an instrument will sound by playing it unplugged but you can also massively effect its tone with strings and the signal chain.

If you get all these right first time you are either
i) Paul Reed Smith.....Joking of course, lots of top luthiers have the skill to select bits to work together to get close to what you want.

Or

ii) Exceedingly lucky.

You can guess at a rough mental image of what a piece of wood will sound like but you will only KNOW when it is finished into the instrument. 2 bits of wood from the same tree are capable of sounding different so think of the number of vairibles.

You can of course engineer out some inconsistancies with using very good hardware and electronics, but to say that the signal chain doesn't make as much difference as the wood or vice versa, is I'm afraid frought with self conflict.

The only bass that I would be completely happy that I could spec and order one to replicate one that I already had, would be a one peice Carbon or Aluminium neck thru design (as you could gaurantee the density and diemensions of the finished article).

Other than that, as soon as wood is involved, you pays your money and takes your choice.

[bubinga5]

Somebody mentioned Wal...What was there slogan? "The Sound of Wood"..., im not sure how much there electronics color the sound...i hate the thought of getting your bass sound just from the electronics....Bass sounds are suppose to be an organic thing...

I would agree it is the sum of the parts,and im a big fan of preamp's etc but the starting point is the Wood...surely its the biggest factor, the whole instrument is made of it?

iv had a bad day...