Are plywood bodies necessarily a bad thing

[ezbass]

1 minute ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

Nope.  These were part of the Fender Fotoflame series.  The top is a print.  On paper.  Not even a veneer.

I had a fotoflame Strat (yeah, I know, pitchforks and flaming torches to follow), it was an absolute boat anchor for a skinny stringed thing, definitely Les Paul territory. I dread to think what the equivalent bass version would’ve weighed.

[Stub Mandrel]

12 hours ago, Kiwi said:

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.

 

Some say the same about carbon fibre... Which is just another composite. 😁

[BigRedX]

2 hours ago, PaulThePlug said:

Flats... on my Epi LP and my Eldest's Bowl Back acoustic... Nice wound 3rd as well Olympia stainless steel flatwound electric guitar strings 10-48 gauge £8 - Bargain!

https://amzn.eu/d/dImVlCq

 

Are you in the right thread?

[PaulThePlug]

Yep... @Stub Mandreland @Maude earler, just a bit late thats all...

[Chienmortbb]

My Peavey Milestone 4 is plywood with a maple mech and rosewood fingerboard. I have often gigged it when my main bass needs adjusting and there is no time before a gig. No one, especially me has complained about the sound. IMHO, the contribution of the body to the sound is minimal. Most important is electronics (pups and controls plus preamp, if fitted). Then it’s the strings, the. The neck, then the body. The bridge has very little impact, the machine heads nothing except if they don’t stay in tune. 

[Maude]

I'm sure I've asked it before, but when does multi laminate become ply?

The high end Yamaha bodies are an alder/maple/alder sandwich. Is this ply? 

Shouldn't a plywood neck be stiffer and more resistant to twisting than a single piece neck? 

[casapete]

11 minutes ago, Maude said:

I'm sure I've asked it before, but when does multi laminate become ply?

The high end Yamaha bodies are an alder/maple/alder sandwich. Is this ply? 

Shouldn't a plywood neck be stiffer and more resistant to twisting than a single piece neck? 

You would think so. In fact Martin have been using a laminated birch composite on the necks

of their lower end acoustics for a while now, calling it ‘Stratobond’. 

[Ralf1e]

8 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

Nope.  These were part of the Fender Fotoflame series.  The top is a print.  On paper.  Not even a veneer.

Paper is generally made from wood pulp. So what's the wood they pulped 😉

[Kiwi]

9 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Some say the same about carbon fibre... Which is just another composite. 😁

Some people on the internet don't let ignorance get in the way of expressing an opinion.  Carbon composite generally has a flatter frequency response which means it's possible to use softer materials in other parts of the instrument to provide some selective dampening of frequencies.  That sculpting of timbre provides character but what I think those commenters might really mean is that carbon necks don't hide their sloppy left hand technique.  Besides which,  we're talking bodies rather than necks and they have a slightly different structural role depending on how the instrument is constructed. 

[Kiwi]

5 hours ago, Maude said:

I'm sure I've asked it before, but when does multi laminate become ply?

The high end Yamaha bodies are an alder/maple/alder sandwich. Is this ply? 

Shouldn't a plywood neck be stiffer and more resistant to twisting than a single piece neck? 

There's a few points to address here. 

 

1)  Ply generally uses lots more glue and can be relatively heavy

2)  Laminated necks are a different construction to ply but both use the process of lamination. Hence potential for confusion.  

 

If someone were to make their own ply from, say luthier quality 3mm veneer and laminate using epoxy resin rather than PVA and a vacuum bag to cure...they might end up with something that sounded closer to a carbon composite.  But it would probably be quite heavy compared to a piece of alder. 

[JoeEvans]

14 hours ago, Maude said:

I'm sure I've asked it before, but when does multi laminate become ply?

Plywood is a laminate of quite thin layers in which the grain of each layer is at right angles to the previous layer. This makes it great for large, thin sheets, which would tend to split if they were made of a single layer of wood, because not only is wood weak across the grain, it tends to swell and shrink across the grain with changes in humidity. If you look at a Victorian door, you'll see that all the main dimensions are set by frame timbers run along the grain, so that the dimensional change in the door is minimised as the wood moves; and the panels are held in grooves that let them shrink and expand.

The necks of basses have a load running mostly one way, so the grain needs to run that way too - there are no significant loads across the neck. So laminated necks are great but not plywood necks.

The bodies of basses aren't really under load so either is fine from that point of view; whether the sound of a bass comes from the vibration of the body to any significant degree is another matter. I suspect it doesn't, myself, and that any stiff, solid lump of matter would do the job.

 

Edited November 14, 2022 by JoeEvans

[NancyJohnson]

A generalism for plywood basses always seems to allude to the body being manufactured from sheets of material akin to that with which you'd use for roofing a house; that said, moving to the neck construction, Kubicki Factor basses (both the Key and Ex models) both utilised a plywood-neck of 32 strips of maple.  I've never heard anyone moan about these.

 

[Chienmortbb]

2 hours ago, JoeEvans said:

The necks of basses have a load running mostly one way, so the grain needs to run that way too - there are no significant loads across the neck. So laminated necks are great but not plywood necks.

Is this not a reason why Les Paul necks are so weak? The angle of the headstock means that there is no real grain strength there.

 

2 hours ago, JoeEvans said:

The bodies of basses aren't really under load so either is fine from that point of view; whether the sound of a bass comes from the vibration of the body to any significant degree is another matter. I suspect it doesn't, myself, and that any stiff, solid lump of matter would do the job.

Yes, most of the "sound" comes from the other parts of the bass.

[BigRedX]

2 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

Is this not a reason why Les Paul necks are so weak? The angle of the headstock means that there is no real grain strength there.

 

It's not the angle that's a problem, but the fact that the neck and head are a single piece of wood with a minimal volute. If the head was a separate piece (still cut from the same blank as the neck) and scarf-jointed to the neck it would be far stronger.

[Ralf1e]

3 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

A generalism for plywood basses always seems to allude to the body being manufactured from sheets of material akin to that with which you'd use for roofing a house; that said, moving to the neck construction, Kubicki Factor basses (both the Key and Ex models) both utilised a plywood-neck of 32 strips of maple.  I've never heard anyone moan about these.

 

Laminated timbers are far more stable than single pieces of timber. Yes for sure there would be nothing to complain about there unless it was allowed to get wet/damp but then that will wreck havoc with any piece of wood with a few exceptions like African mahoganay and Teak family timbers which are known to wander off course anyway.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Ralf1e
missed out word

[Grimalkin]

3 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Is this not a reason why Les Paul necks are so weak? The angle of the headstock means that there is no real grain strength there.

 

 

That, and the fact that they are made of mahogany, which splinters up a treat.

 

I've witnessed a Gibson EBO bass, Gibson Les Paul Junior, a white Gibson SG with a trem and a Gibson 335 dot, all having head-stock breaks.

 

The Les Paul Junior was in case that fell on its side, that's all it took.

[LeftyJ]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

It's not the angle that's a problem, but the fact that the neck and head are a single piece of wood with a minimal volute. 

 

...and an unnecessarily HUGE truss rod access hole which further weakens it.

Edited November 14, 2022 by LeftyJ