[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='2740' date='May 20 2007, 10:10 AM']My first two basses had plywood bodies and I couldn't wait to get onto a solid wood bodied instrument. I found plywood doesn't really vibrate all that well and it sounded a little dead at certain frequencies (the ones I liked to listen to for slap). So I saved up hard for an instrument which didn't have those problems.[/quote]
The materials engineer in me keeps saying that something exotic, say a Wal Pro-something with expensive top and back wood facings is just 'expensive' ply-wood?
The reactive stiffness of the piece would be related to the orientation of the grain, relative modulus of the materials, the difference (if any) between the thermal expansions of the different woods etc.... A tricky finite element analysis calculation I think