Plywood bodies

[tom1946]

Has anyone successfully made a decent bass using a cheap plywood body?
Reason for asking is that I've just bought a Legend P bass for buttons with a fabulous maple neck & board and a ply body. The pickup is surprisingly good and punchy but the loom is [s]sh [/s]err poor but I can fix that. I was going to paint it some outlandish colour for a backup bass.

/discuss

[Roland Rock]

Plywood bodies tend to have a more 'layered' sound, kind of a 'multi-tiered' tone with alternating timbre directions
;-)

Edited November 11, 2013 by Roland Rock

[Adrenochrome]

Plenty of custom builders use 'laminate' bodies which are similar to ply - I'd suggest it's possible to make a good bass this way.

[Roland Rock]

Ritter:

[EssentialTension]

Danelectros are built on a plywood frame.

[ChickenKiev]

I always used to think the idea of an instrument having a plywood body as a bad thing.

It isn't bad. Its just different.

Although my friend did have a bass (I believe it was an entry level Peavey bass) that had a chipboard body? Oh dear..

[Musky]

Purely anecdotal, but I've seen plenty of posts where owners of expensive instruments have been impressed with the tone of their cheap Squiers (or similar), and been surprised when they've discovered it was ply. Ed Freidland uses what he describes as the Fabulous Egmond also for "roots music", and that also has a body made from ply.

Ply gets a bit of a bad rap IMHO. It's perfectly capable of making the basis of a good sounding body, but you'll have a hard time convincing anyone to overcome the association with low end instruments.

[Dom in Dorset]

My fretless was made using a cheap plywood body, works fine , sounds great. I even made a prototype out of a sheet of 18mm ply, even recorded with it.If you've they tried a plywood bass and it sounded crap the chances are that it was a crappy bass all round.
As I see it (and hear it) most materials for making bass bodies don't make an enormous difference, yes, some will give greater sustain, brilliance etc, yes some will give a duller tone, less sustain etc, but 90% of possible things you could use do the job perfectly well and I include plywood in that 90%.

[BigRedX]

Since the Ritter has already been posted, here's [url=http://www.bas-extravaganza.nl/?page=bassen&BassenID=25]Bas Extravaganza's Plywood bass[/url]. All ply except for the maple fretboard and hardboard control and truss rod covers!

[philw]

I think the issue here is that not all plywood is created equal...

Pop down your local DIY store and buy a piece of generic ply and you'll probably have something not much better than chipboard for a bass body. It'll be made form who know what and be full of voids and badly glued layers. However, find yourself some high quality. void-free, birch ply (sometimes known as "marine play" cause it's traditionally in boat building) of the kind beloved of numerous Scandinavian furniture designers, and 1970s BBC loudspeaker designers, and you'll have something completely different and probably quite well suited to a bass body (although it'll be heavy I suspect).

Phil

[such]

I've had an early (mid 90s) Peavey Milestone jazz-style bass that had body made of plywood. The unplugged sound was seriously good, and amplified one too, once I'd swapped the pickups. I was getting a lot of compliments on the bass' tone, especially after it was defretted and mostly from fellow bassists. Those who played it, always commented how resonant and responsive it felt. On the downside, the body was way too light causing really bad neckdive. The bass was also ugly as hell. But yeah, plywood can be perfectly adequate bass body material in my opinion.

[Kiwi]

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1384164085' post='2273298']
Plywood bodies tend to have a more 'layered' sound, kind of a 'multi-tiered' tone with alternating timbre directions
;-)
[/quote]
Vintage plywood even more so.

[Fat Rich]

When I bought my first bass I asked "Is it ply?"

The reply "No, It's laminated Birch"

Was a good bass as it goes but I always wanted a "proper" bass, even though it turned out that the alder bodied replacement sounded pretty much the same.

I would say decent quality ply maybe with some clever chambering to manage the weight could be made to sound good with some experimentation. The Kubicki ply neck was good and I'm surprised more manufacturers didn't try it.

It would maybe allow guitar builders to make more consistent instruments, but I think it's unlikely that a great sounding ply bass would ever sound have that "something special" about it like maybe a great vintage bass or a handbuilt mega pound bass.

Edited November 11, 2013 by Fat Rich

[Ou7shined]

I have a lovely old stripped ply 70s Jap P bass body in my workshop that I'm dying to turn into something one day. You tap it and rings out loudly because of it's dense mass (not weight). I'm not saying that it will impart anything substantial to the final tone but it definitely would be a solid starting point for a tight sounding bitsa build.

[Kiwi]

[quote name='Fat Rich' timestamp='1384175429' post='2273510']
The Kubicki ply neck was good and I'm surprised more manufacturers didn't try it.

It would maybe allow guitar builders to make more consistent instruments, but I think it's unlikely that a great sounding ply bass would ever sound have that "something special" about it like maybe a great vintage bass or a handbuilt mega pound bass.
[/quote]
My first bass had a ply body...and so did my second. So I upgraded to a Jaydee and never looked back because the ply bodies dampened a lot of the lows and didn't sustain anywhere near as well as the Jaydee. I've not tried the multi-hued ritter in RR's post above but generally I would take a solid body of super cheap meranti over "birch ply" any day.

The Kubicki necks are laminated but the laminates are a lot thicker than those in ply wood. It's probably not doing the design any justice to call the neck plywood any more than calling it is to call a steinberger 'plastic'.

[Grissle]

My son has a 90s Korean Fender squire series that looks to be ply. It's light and is crazy resonant. Unplugged its really loud and with the Fralin split jazz set we got him last Christmas its a pretty sweet bass.

[stingrayPete1977]

I think you could screw a musicman neck to a square sheet of ply then as long as you put the preamp and humbucker on it with the correct scale length and pickup placement it would sound just like a stingray? The body edges would be more like a Ricky granted

[Dom in Dorset]

My prototype bass made from 18mm low grade ply:

In a blind test you wouldn't have known what this bass was made from! The only serious limitation was that because the body was only 18mm thick it started to bend!

[ead]

I used to own an Antoria J bass that had a butchers block of mahogany strips with a thin layer of something between. Sounded lovely. I'll find a pic and post it.

[Ou7shined]

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1384178168' post='2273556']
I think you could screw a musicman neck to a square sheet of ply then as long as you put the preamp and humbucker on it with the correct scale length and pickup placement it would sound just like a stingray? The body edges would be more like a Ricky granted
[/quote]

[Ou7shined]

[quote name='Dom in Somerset' timestamp='1384178908' post='2273568']
My prototype bass made from 18mm low grade ply:

In a blind test you wouldn't have known what this bass was made from! [b]The only serious limitation was that because the body was only 18mm thick it started to bend![/b]
[/quote]

That and you put it on backwards.

[Dom in Dorset]

The reverse Jazz was the original idea, it's surprisingly comfortable, the prototype was to test this idea.
In the end to solve problems of accessing the upper end of the neck (not that I even go that far up on fretless) I ended up re-designing the Precision body.
The second prototype (with plywood body of a Tanglewood bass and plywood scratchplate) was so good that I'm still playing it now.

[stingrayPete1977]

I had a Kay sg with the pickups screwed onto the top basically like Doms prototype, it had a big sound.

[lee4]

[quote name='philw' timestamp='1384170296' post='2273413']
I think the issue here is that not all plywood is created equal...

Pop down your local DIY store and buy a piece of generic ply and you'll probably have something not much better than chipboard for a bass body. It'll be made form who know what and be full of voids and badly glued layers. However, find yourself some high quality. void-free, birch ply (sometimes known as "marine play" cause it's traditionally in boat building)
Phil
[/quote]
True enough that there are differing grades in plywood(mainly to do with the timbers used),but birch ply is not marine grade.
Marine ply has differing grades depending on the end useage(Lloyds and Anchor ratings are for boat hulls in salt water.Standard Marine ply is for making boxes etc which are above the waterline and not for immersion in salt or fresh water).
If you want to build a body from ply,get something that is hardwood throughout and not softwood with a hardwood veneer.There will be less defects in hardwood ply.

[philw]

[quote name='lee4' timestamp='1384199943' post='2273972']
True enough that there are differing grades in plywood(mainly to do with the timbers used),but birch ply is not marine grade.
Marine ply has differing grades depending on the end useage(Lloyds and Anchor ratings are for boat hulls in salt water.Standard Marine ply is for making boxes etc which are above the waterline and not for immersion in salt or fresh water).
If you want to build a body from ply,get something that is hardwood throughout and not softwood with a hardwood veneer.There will be less defects in hardwood ply.
[/quote]

Thanks Lee, I've learned some useful stuff there.

Phil

PS. Cobham Sound eh? I grew up in Oxshott. I guess you know that Paul Herman is building Wals only a couple of miles from you?