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Are plywood bodies necessarily a bad thing


Guest MoJo

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10 minutes ago, Maude said:

This is more like it, some long overdue love for plywood Kay guitars. Once they get the recognition they truly deserve they'll be changing hands for close to £50. 😉

Yeah but yours is a work of art, now!

Plywood is fine for guitars and basses for the most part, I don’t see why people look down on it really, as long as nobody’s charging top dollar for it. A studio I used to use in London has a no-name plywood Strat copy among its collection that always sounded great to record with. And I’ve got a mid-80’s Ibanez copy of a D-18 which is plywood top, back and sides which records well too. I might need to put some stickers on it tho...

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19 minutes ago, meterman said:

Plywood is fine for guitars and basses for the most part, I don’t see why people look down on it really, as long as nobody’s charging top dollar for it. A studio I used to use in London has a no-name plywood Strat copy among its collection that always sounded great to record with.

Oh I totally agree. My Hohner fretless P is plywood and one of my 'never selling' basses, as it's a far better bass than its monetary value. The only downside I've ever found with ply is that it's usually very heavy. Lots of ply basses are bad simply because they are poorly built, not because they're made of ply.

 

19 minutes ago, meterman said:

Yeah but yours is a work of art, now!

Very kind of you to say.

They say you can't polish a turd. Well I did, and I now have a shiny turd! 😄

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7 hours ago, meterman said:

Once I’d put a set of flats on there, stickers might be negligible tbh. Quite prepared to find out!

When I bought it, it had flats on. The only 6-string I have ever played that had flats on it.

 

Incidentally, my Maya fretless has a blockboard body. Two layers of blocks with thin layers between and top and bottom.

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Just now, Stub Mandrel said:

When I bought it, it had flats on. The only 6-string I have ever played that had flats on it.

 

Incidentally, my Maya fretless has a blockboard body. Two layers of blocks with thin layers between and top and bottom.

I'm about to get flats for my Melody acoustic guitar. Can you tell I love cheap rubbish........... that isn't actually rubbish, shhh. 😉

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19 minutes ago, Maude said:

I'm about to get flats for my Melody acoustic guitar. Can you tell I love cheap rubbish........... that isn't actually rubbish, shhh. 😉

I just put flats on my Telecaster and I’ve ordered a set of Chromes for my acoustic too. I’d put flats on everything 👍 

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  • 1 year later...

My first two basses had plywood bodies and maple necks.  They had poor sustain and an unmusical, lifeless timbre.  I replaced the second one with a Jaydee MK and it was a world of difference.  I'm sure it's possible to make an acceptable instrument from ply, if the construction and build quality is up to scratch.  But it's also possible to make a bass with too many laminations, whether it's the neck or body, and it kind of sucks the character out of the instrument.  They all start to sound fairly similar.  Someone's opinion of whether a ply bass is decent or not depends very much on what their baseline references are.

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On 19/02/2021 at 13:18, itu said:

The late Greg Curbow used plywood in necks (rockwood), that strange Aussie has also plywood neck. Many double basses are plywood, wooden aeroplanes are mostly plywood.

Guns... https://cwp.fi/en/

Boats as well. Marine ply isn't cheap either and it doesnt fall apart. Not to forget skateboards made on a mold.

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On 21/02/2021 at 15:07, mcnach said:

Sometimes these discussions sound like people arguing about how many grains of sand there are on the beach exactly, while the rest happily play, sunbathe and swim on the sea.

I thought it had all been unusually agreeable so far 🤔

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On 21/02/2021 at 16:20, BigRedX said:

Are you 100% sure? Have you tried it?

No of course you haven't. Hardly any of us have apart from a few people on YouTube and since their sample sizes are one of each and their scientific methodology is essentially non-existent, their results are irrelevant.

Trying to pin-point a tonal quality onto one aspect of a bass is close to pointless. So is trying to make generalisations about the sound of a particular "tone wood" as every piece is different. The best thing to do is to take each instrument as a whole. Does it look, play and sound how you would like it? Yes? The buy it. No? Then look elsewhere. Job done.

And don't forget if its active it will sound different with different makes of tone batteries in it😂

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6 minutes ago, Ralf1e said:

Maple top

Maple veneer, they have a rep for the veneer peeling off after a time.

 

1 hour ago, Ralf1e said:

Boats as well. Marine ply isn't cheap either and it doesnt fall apart. Not to forget skateboards made on a mold.

Yeah but marine ply is constructed differently to a maple laminated neck.

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