Kiwi

Realistically I think the announcement bar probably has a limited life span in terms of exposure before it stops being effective. Perhaps that point has been reached for the time being. So I'm happy to hide it until late Summer and then bring it out again for three month periods.

I bought a cheap one a couple of months ago. Thirty quid and it probably flouts most CE mark standards for getting fingers caught in folding mechanisms. But it's sturdy enough and will fold away when not in use. I bought a second 1200W plunge router for about fifteen quid and a smaller 800w fixed one for six quid. OEM manufactured tools are sold at pretty much wholesale prices online here. After Summer I *might* get my own workshop but any progress on my builds really depends on finding suitable wood and swamp ash/alder are very hard to get hold of over here, as is figured maple. Most of it comes from Russia (often not dried properly) but also sometimes Canada. Nothing from the US thanks to tariffs.

I recognise that headstock shape...:)

I wonder if Roger Sadowsky is assuming the wood weighs the same and has the same density? If they do then he's correct but jazz basses sound very generic to me anyway...which is why I don't play one. For a bolt on construction, the mahogany will almost certainly have an impact. It comprises part of the structure that acts against the string tension, so how could it not? Replace the body with one made out of weakened MDF and see if you get the same timbre! When I had two Smith basses they were identical apart from one having mahogany core wings and the other having flamed maple (and was fretless). Both had different characters and were through necks! The maple winged bass was firmer in the mid range and had slightly less low end than the mahogany winged bass. So that would suggest also that the body wood has some effect even in neck through instruments. On the other hand, in the mid eighties, Musicman were mating necks to outsourced bodies made with poplar and alder (solid tints), ash and they all sounded like Stingrays and Cutlasses should. There were even a few examples with mahogany and those owners reported a slight change in timbre. Some times if the signature tone of a particular bass is wrapped up in the electronics (e.g. Status), then yeah the body wood will have less of an effect than one where the pickups and preamp are relatively clean.

It wouldn't be that much of a deal for them to update the op amps they use and it wouldn't impact on the sound at all. Jazzyvee is probably right, they don't fix something that ain't broke.

The passive and first active version were both 15mm, they were the bulk of the production run. The broad neck version with 18mm string spacing was limited in numbers and right at the end of production. They are around but they don't pop up often and the only examples I've seen seem to be heavily modified with pickguards and soap bar pickups.

Yeah my Status has 15mm string spacing and it feels like the strings just fall under my fingers. It's going to be a must have in the future.

I've been gassing this week for a BB5000A, mainly because it has 15mm string spacing and can do fairly traditional sounds.

Not characterless so much as adjusted. Manufacturers who claim flatter response pickups will typically engineer the pickups so that the inherent peak that all pickups have is shifted to a part of the frequency spectrum which isn't as audible. Alembic soapbar pickups (AXY but also Fatboy) also have low windings for a flatter and broader response and, while it means lower output, the idea was that the lack of gain would be boosted by the onboard active electronics. Flatter response pickups are also ideal for filter based eqs so it all kind of ties together in a well thought out package, even if the actual engineering approach and some of the parts they use are getting a bit long in the tooth.

Especially if they didn't use it properly so never got the full benefit! It seems like they treated it like a layer of fibreglass.

Nuno... is that you?

In the west, perhaps but it's also now the most popular website in the world. More popular than Google, even. It does some sinister things as an app though, I refuse to install it on any of my phones.

The earlier Ibanez Soundgear basses at least can be a bit whippy because they're too thin...despite laminated necks, which kind of supports Andy's suggestions about depth.

Or a huge amount of experience with a very limited number of species. I don't really trust luthiers who use too many species in their builds, they can't or don't guarantee any particular outcome tonally. Unless they use loads of laminates and then the outcome tends to lack character.

One of these perhaps?

I'd suggest stiffness of the fingerboard plus enough softer wood in the neck to dampen undesirable frequencies without so much it compromises structural rigidity. In terms of wood anything other than ebony would be a compromise. But Richlite might work as well and be both potentially cheaper and more convenient than faffing with phenolic resin. For the laminates you'll almost certainly need some maple in there but there's always a risk that hard maple will be too stiff and dominate things. Flamed maple laminated in a wenge neck (used often by AGC and Sei amongst others) sound fabulous to me but the wenge can make the upper mids sound a bit boxy which might take you away from the Wal sound a little. So probably following Yamaha's recipe of 3x maple and 2x mahogany - something they've employed for well over 40 years in both basses and guitars, might be the way forward. You could also experiment with a 2mm graphite laminate under the fingerboard if you can, to see what impact it has on overall stiffness. It's got a little bit of flex in longer, narrower lengths but is very rigid across narrow widths and it's not prohibitively expensive to buy it in sheets anyway. I've been making control panel and trem plates from it recently and it's possible to use woodworking tools on it if I take it easy.

I think playability is all about the neck. Later Wal necks also have a secret laminate of graphite under the fingerboard which contributes to stiffness, in addition to the wood laminates. If anything the wood in a bass neck dampens and filters while the fingerboard provides rigidity - Vigier necks are a great example of optimal rigidity (90/10 system plus phenolic fingerboard) while still allowing enough wood in construction to provide some character via dampening and yes, they have a very mid prominent sound. However I've found that beyond about five neck laminates can tend to homogenise the sound. Of course there are exceptions like the Warwick Thumb which uses a highly unique combination of wood laminates but a load of boutique basses out featuring combinations of walnut, maple, purpleheart and mahogany in seven laminates (along with laminated bodies) sound more or less the same as one another, regardless of electronics. I've long maintained the view that making musical instruments is a lot like a recipe - the ingredients require balancing against one another for an appetising outcome. In the case of necks, there's a balance in construction for playability vs construction for timbre vs construction for convenience. Some structural in-efficiency helps add character, too. Graphite necked basses are not all alike, either. Some, especially the early ones from the late seventies/early 80's, are over designed and I like how most of the dampening comes from body wood while the stiffness allows super low action with the right fret dressing. But later on in the mid eighties to mid nineties, some graphite necks had phenolic (aka Bakelite) fingerboards that were too stiff resulting in a brittle sounding bass (classic Bartolini soapbars and an SWR amp help tame things a bit). Likewise, some suffered from fingerboards that weren't stiff enough due to not mixing the phenolic resin properly and some necks became bowed. Modulus were notorious for this with the necks they made for Musicman and Alembic as well as their own instruments, but Status experienced issues with one mix of resin briefly in the mid nineties as well.

@Passinwind this is what we were discussing, also.

It's even got the note addressed to him personally!

Yes, drop me a PM with as much info as you can remember and I'll have a dig about to see what shows up.

Pete Stevens, one of the electronics engineers who built Clive's designs is fairly active on the Facebook Trace Elliot group and helps out members with technical requests.

Would you mind posting a link to a post you are specifically trying to edit?