The heretic thread approved by Roger Sadowsky or For those who pretend tone doesn't come from wood...

[Al Krow]

14 hours ago, 4000 said:

Once again Hellzero, apologies for the derailment - which I thought had previously righted itself - hopefully this can now be an end to it. I know I’ve definitely had enough of it. 

 

Not sure you have any need to apologise! I mean "Does the choice of wood have a material impact on bass tone or is it largely there for aesthetic reason?" was pretty well covered in the first 17 pages of this thread and on numerous predecessor threads.

 

On 17/11/2021 at 10:06, 4000 said:

“Does/will the audience notice?” is the worst possible justification for any creative or artistic choice. 

 

The discussion your post kicked off and some of the responses it drew, particularly from Mr Mandrel who has clearly thought deeply about this subject over many years, were actually brilliant in terms of insights into the creative process for you and others and to what extent being mindful of your audience / customers plays in shaping what you and others are creating (in your case pretty much zero). And, if it's not welcome on here, it would certainly have merited its own thread. 

[tegs07]

35 minutes ago, Muzz said:

'Marketing flim flam'...it might be no worse, but it's certainly no better. Ceramic brakes, of course, actually do work better than their cheaper alternatives at high temperatures, that there's a scientific fact. Expensive custom paint jobs...look nice, if you like that sort of thing. And as for expensive perfume...I was bought some of that Johnny Depp's Sausage aftershave last Christmas, and I'm still waiting for my Mustang convertible... 😕

 

I doubt if Roger S said 'Look, it doesn't matter much what wood it's made from, but we make them really, really well, and they look lovely' his sales would go up...I'd still stand by the fact that yes, he has an expensive product to sell, but making extravagant claims which have no scientific basis* is chicanery and I'm calling it... 🙂

 

* I'm always willing to reconsider this should something actually be proven but, like James Randi's million dollars, I'm staying put till this happens.

 

 

My take on this is most of these cars are bought by podgy middle aged blokes who take their kids to school and drive to the office. There may be some scientific basis but it’s a load of expensive smoke and mirrors for most of those that pay for it. The same is most likely true for most purchases of high end instruments. The same podgy middle aged blokes are probably buying and playing them. This is all perfectly fine but I like to think that the people behind the design and build of the cars and instruments may just be striving to produce the very best they can even if  the improvements are just small and largely inconsequential for most people and their real requirements. I certainly don’t think they are just charlatans.

[peteb]

1 hour ago, Muzz said:

I doubt if Roger S said 'Look, it doesn't matter much what wood it's made from, but we make them really, really well, and they look lovely' his sales would go up...I'd still stand by the fact that yes, he has an expensive product to sell, but making extravagant claims which have no scientific basis* is chicanery and I'm calling it... 🙂

 

 

I suppose that you could make more of a case to say that about ACG, Overwater and the like (although whether that would be justified is another thing). You have to look at how Roger Sadowsky built his business, i.e. by becoming the go-to guy for NYC session players for repairs and customising their Fender basses. He then started building basses for this same client group that would be like souped up Fenders (but nether less still sounded basically like a Fender). He mainly used relatively mundane woods like ash and alder, rather than fancy exotic woods (not including those used for tops, which are purely for aesthetic reasons). 

 

As far as woods having different sounds, I have a few basses made of ash that sound more or less similar when you play them unplugged. However, I have also had a couple of Warwick Streamers with solid maple bodies. When you play them unamplified, they sound completely different to the ash bodied basses. Therefore, I would suggest that different woods must have some influence on the sound of a bass. As with everything, any one factor is pretty marginal when you play through an amp / PA, but enough marginal gains will make a better instrument (or at at the very least, a different sounding one). 

 

[Muzz]

I agree with both of the above, (and only Roger S's sales records would show the ratio of buyers who are professionals to those who are podgy middle aged blokes (just like McLaren's or Ferrari's or whoever)), but I still contend that in the real world, for Pros and PMABs alike, there are much more important factors to a bass's sound (unless anyone's getting unamplified gigs) than the wood - pickups, pickup placement, EQ, construction, etc - but that doesn't seem to get the same emphasis that tonewood flim-flam does...perhaps because pickups and EQ can be placed in various positions in more or less any bass to get 90% of the sound, and that's not Sadowsky's gig, making, as he does, copies (albeit far better built and therefore expensive) of tried and tested designs.

 

I've never discounted that different woods can make a different sound, only that it's marginal, and almost impossible to nail down scientifically, given the variances in wood of even the same type. There was a thorough list of variables given above, and that illustrates the murky waters we're operating in here; all sorts of claims can be made, but because they can't be empirically proven, they can't be disproven, either. There's no sense of that in the original info from Roger S, and he knows it, which is I guess what irks me...

 

I had a maple-bodied, wenge-necked Warwick once (probably the furthest from a 'standard' set of woods that I've had), and it did make a very slightly different sound to the alder/ash-bodied, maple-necked ones I had, but amplified it was all about the pickups, EQ and placement. I've also had basses that in terms of wood content should have sounded the same, but didn't.

 

I should add for full disclosure that I'm a Shuker fanboi, and yeah, when I've ordered basses I've specified particular woods, but that's been purely on a weight and/or looks basis. Jon and I stay diplomatically away from tonewood discussions... 🙂

 

There's a great Terry Pratchett line (referring to a bloke selling hot food of possibly dubious provenance) which goes 'To sell the sausage, you've got to sell the sizzle'

[Drax]

If tonewoods made a clear difference we'd all agree on it. 

[Woodinblack]

10 minutes ago, Drax said:

If tonewoods made a clear difference we'd all agree on it. 

True, like vaccines, global warming, and moon landings!

 

[Hellzero]

11 minutes ago, Drax said:

If tonewoods made a clear difference we'd all agree on it. 

It depends of your signal chain, if like the guy (producer) in the guitar video posted way earlier, you put loads of distortion or tons of effects, you won't hear any difference between the crappiest instrument and the best ever made. It's as simple as that.

 

The video started well with clean sounds for both guitars that were totally different sounding and then he started adding massive distortion...

[peteb]

6 hours ago, Muzz said:

I agree with both of the above, (and only Roger S's sales records would show the ratio of buyers who are professionals to those who are podgy middle aged blokes (just like McLaren's or Ferrari's or whoever)), but I still contend that in the real world, for Pros and PMABs alike, there are much more important factors to a bass's sound (unless anyone's getting unamplified gigs) than the wood - pickups, pickup placement, EQ, construction, etc - but that doesn't seem to get the same emphasis that tonewood flim-flam does...perhaps because pickups and EQ can be placed in various positions in more or less any bass to get 90% of the sound, and that's not Sadowsky's gig, making, as he does, copies (albeit far better built and therefore expensive) of tried and tested designs.

 

 

I think the point is that Roger built his brand on the custom of top players who do know the difference, which was the test for his opinions about wood and how to build a bass in general. I suspect that these days the big majority of his custom will come from the PMABs, who want to own the same bass as the top players and are prepared to pay to do so. 

 

I would agree that wood is just one component of what determines the sound of a bass. I would say that all of these components on their own are pretty marginal in isolation, but if you get a lot of marginal gains in the same instrument then you get a good bass. Whether you really need to pay Sadowsky prices is another thing entirely. 

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by peteb

[rmorris]

Of course. we could bypass the whole timber argument and go all Carbon Fibre ?

I'll get my coat 🙄

[Woodinblack]

5 minutes ago, rmorris said:

Of course. we could bypass the whole timber argument and go all Carbon Fibre ?

I'll get my coat 🙄

 

Yeh, but what sort of carbon fibre, and what sort of glue? Makes a difference!

[rmorris]

12 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Yeh, but what sort of carbon fibre, and what sort of glue? Makes a difference!

I have an acrylic bass. It's blue - do other colours sound better ?

[Hellzero]

Punk rock died in 1976. Spread the information.

[Muzz]

It's interesting that a premium brand like Music Man who, while not quite in the luthier stratosphere like Sadowsky, have also built their brand on pros and huge exposure over decades, don't mention body wood at all (other than 'select body woods') in the sales pitch for their £2,800 Stingray Special H. They sell it on the small design improvements, the pickups and the preamp, plus the build....oh, and weight...

 

Maybe they don't think the wood is much of an influence on the sound of the bass? More likely is their product is built around a different marketing model than Sadowskys (and a different production method), and this trumps any wood-based hoohah...

[peteb]

6 minutes ago, Muzz said:

It's interesting that a premium brand like Music Man who, while not quite in the luthier stratosphere like Sadowsky, have also built their brand on pros and huge exposure over decades, don't mention body wood at all (other than 'select body woods') in the sales pitch for their £2,800 Stingray Special H. They sell it on the small design improvements, the pickups and the preamp, plus the build....oh, and weight...

 

Maybe they don't think the wood is much of an influence on the sound of the bass? More likely is their product is built around a different marketing model than Sadowskys (and a different production method), and this trumps any wood-based hoohah...

 

Not so sure that they actually do. A quick look at the Musicman website has a section titled 'How to manufacture electric bass guitars in the USA' on the first page that says "At our factory in San Luis Obispo, California, we start with hand-selected tonewoods imported from only the finest wood suppliers in the world; bodies of alder, ash, poplar, basswood, mahogany, and maple are individually chosen and matched for their rich tonal qualities, consistent grain characteristics and exceptional natural beauty". 

 

I think that most top end bass makers are going to talk about the wood they use, as most people (outside of Basschat of course) think it is of some influence to how a bass is going to sound. As discussed above, probably a marginal one, but still important enough for many buyers to consider when they are looking for a new instrument. 

 

[Muzz]

Yeah, that description is kinda tonally vague and establishes the quality of the woods and construction without getting into anything specific, which is fair enough, and about as far as I'd like to see tonewoods described... 😀

Edited November 24, 2021 by Muzz

[tegs07]

22 minutes ago, peteb said:

I think that most top end bass makers are going to talk about the wood they use, as most people (outside of Basschat of course) think it is of some influence to how a bass is going to sound. As discussed above, probably a marginal one, but still important enough for many buyers to consider when they are looking for a new instrument. 

I post here and think wood selection has an influence on how a bass sounds. How much of an influence and whether it even matters is another issue. When people mentioned tonewood the first things that I generally think of are grain and weight.

[rmorris]

Again not wood but anyone else remember these - Magnesium Alloy / GRP - and from Pete Townsend's brother I believe...ToneMetal ?

http://guitarz.blogspot.com/2011/10/staccato-mg-bass-circa-1986-made-from.html?_sm_au_=iVVQRMM0jS7Jjk2s1F81QKHFkHCjJ

[Stub Mandrel]

4 hours ago, peteb said:

individually chosen and matched for their rich tonal qualities, consistent grain characteristics and exceptional natural beauty

 

I wonder what happens to the wood with rich tonal qualities, full of knots and ugly as sin*.

 

 

 

"Actually, Manton made a wonderful sounding bass from 100-year old pine, full of knots, but it wasn't unbeautiful. actually is wood ever ugly? Plain at worst.

[Doddy]

5 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

I wonder what happens to the wood with rich tonal qualities, full of knots and ugly as sin*.

 

I'm guessing it's either sold on to another manufacturer, or used in either a cheaper line or for solid finishes.

[Stub Mandrel]

Just now, Doddy said:

I'm guessing it's either sold on to another manufacturer, or used in either a cheaper line or for solid finishes.

 

I was being cynical.

 

Let's be 100% honest, different pieces of wood do sound slightly different, but no-one can tell which have the 'richest tonal qualities' until they are made into a finished instrument.

 

Wood is chosen chiefly on its appearance. I doubt any burled walnut or zebrano body has been rejected for mediocre tonal qualities...

[SumOne]

5 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

I was being cynical.

 

Let's be 100% honest, different pieces of wood do sound slightly different, but no-one can tell which have the 'richest tonal qualities' until they are made into a finished instrument.

 

Wood is chosen chiefly on its appearance. I doubt any burled walnut or zebrano body has been rejected for mediocre tonal qualities...

 

Something that gets me is that burled wood is a discected warty sort of growth caused by fungus or stress....however nice it looks that thought puts me off it a bit!

[RhysP]

5 minutes ago, SumOne said:

 

Something that gets me is that burled wood is a discected warty sort of growth caused by fungus or stress....however nice it looks that thought puts me off it a bit!

Same a spalting, which is a fungal growth found in dead and diseased trees.

[ezbass]

18 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

I was being cynical.

 

Let's be 100% honest, different pieces of wood do sound slightly different, but no-one can tell which have the 'richest tonal qualities' until they are made into a finished instrument.

 

Wood is chosen chiefly on its appearance. I doubt any burled walnut or zebrano body has been rejected for mediocre tonal qualities...

Your comment is supported by a video I watched featuring Carey Nordstrand talking about P basses. In the video he referred to making basses with wood as a “crâp shoot” as they never really know what they’re going to get with any certainty. 

[SumOne]

8 minutes ago, RhysP said:

Same a spalting, which is a fungal growth found in dead and diseased trees.

If I was into spiritual and into mystical stuff (I'm not) I'd possibly equate playing a diseased/dead tree's fungal growth as bad karma/mojo/vibes etc.  

 

 

[RhysP]

1 minute ago, SumOne said:

If I was into spiritual and into mystical stuff (I'm not) I'd possibly equate playing a diseased/dead tree's fungal growth as bad karma/mojo/vibes etc.  

 

 

I've always equated it with being a good way to get people to pay a premium for rotten/diseased wood. 😂