I should really address the main point in this post. There seem to be three main schools of thought in BC (it's something of a spectrum). There's the "wood is all" group who think that the type of wood determines the sound of a bass, and that the sound of a bass can be predicted from the wood type. There's the "wood is nothing" group who don't think that wood has any effect at all. And there's the "there's a bit" group, to which I belong, that thinks that there is some slight effect from the wood, but that the effect can't be predicted from wood type.