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

[neepheid]

This has to be the bass equivalent of swirling the wine round your mouth, spitting it out then spouting some florid prose about what the sensation meant to you in an ill-advised attempt to sound authoritative?

 

Less cork sniffing, more playing and we all become better bass players.

[Beedster]

5 hours ago, Muzz said:

OK, I'll say it one more time, here's the headline:

 

Man Whose Living Is Selling Very Expensive Pieces Of Wood Makes Claims That Expensive Wood Is Very Important For Tone.

 

I received the exact opposite claim - wood makes NO difference to tone at all - from a very well known maker of pickups. Go figure 🤔 

[peteb]

4 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

I received the exact opposite claim - wood makes NO difference to tone at all - from a very well known maker of pickups. Go figure 🤔 

 

I don't understand that at all. I've had a bass with a maple body that sounded completely different to my other basses made from alder / ash. The difference between rosewood and maple fingerboards is pretty clear as well. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but there is a clear difference, even played unplugged. 

 

[Beedster]

Just now, peteb said:

 

I don't understand that at all. I've had a bass with a maple body that sounded completely different to my other basses made from alder / ash. The difference between rosewood and maple fingerboards is pretty clear as well. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but there is a clear difference, even played unplugged. 

 

 

I was not commenting on the validity of the argument, just that it served a pickup maker to suggest that pickups are where the tone resides

[Muzz]

It's weird, isn't it? It's almost like people are trying to sell us something...

[Muzz]

I've got another new one, too; a cheapo P made from very light Poplar (maple neck...just for the looks, really). I put a good bridge and tuners on it (mostly for weight and I don't get on with the BBOT), and a hot Dimarzio pickup and Kigon loom on it. Guess what it sounds just like?

[Beedster]

Every component makes a difference, and all other things being equal, the less engineered the component, the greater the potential magnitude of that difference. And if a difference exists it must exist in some amount and if it exists in some amount it can be measured (in theory). But in measurement we have noise (a metaphor in most cases of measurement, but literal fact in music/audio), which all too often means all bets are off when it comes presence of a wood-related difference versus the measurability of that difference and the importance of that difference. As the old scientific statement goes, 'not everything that can be measured is important, and not everything that is important can be measured'.

[peteb]

11 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

I was not commenting on the validity of the argument, just that it served a pickup maker to suggest that pickups are where the tone resides

 

I don't doubt that pickups make a bigger difference than wood, and to be honest, I can't really tell the difference between alder and ash (but I can with maple). 

 

Everything in your signal has an effect, either big or small. It all starts with your fingers and how you strike / fret the strings. Obviously that is the main factor, but everything else has an effect as well - wood, pickups, strings, amp, speakers, etc. Even the lead makes a tiny difference. Getting a bass to sound good is down to a decent technique and whatever marginal gains you get from each component in your chain, from fingers to speaker. 

 

Edited July 5 by peteb

[Beedster]

3 minutes ago, Muzz said:

It's weird, isn't it? It's almost like people are trying to sell us something...

 

That's a very cynical POV @Muzz  

[Muzz]

Moi? 😁

[ped]

I think the difference wood makes is a different difference to that made by pickups. 

[martthebass]

1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

Note for oneself: Too is better.

 

Is it the same kind of difference unplugged as well as plugged?

Yes pretty much, though perhaps not quite as pronounced 

[Muzz]

2 minutes ago, peteb said:

Everything in your signal has an effect, either big or small. It all starts with your fingers and how you strike / fret the strings. Obviously that is the main factor, but everything else has an effect as well - wood, pickups, strings, amp, speakers, etc. Even the lead makes a tiny difference. Getting a good bass tone is down to good technique and whatever marginal gains you get from each component in your chain, from fingers to speaker. 

 

Don't forget the room...

 

Look at it from the luthier's POV: you're trying to sell a premium product, for possibly 50 times as much as a functional entry level instrument. The quality of build can be shown, the components can be top of the line, you might well have some endorsees, what else have you got to distinguish yourself and promote your sales? The looks, but then looks can be very subjective. But if you can spin the actual woods used into something exotic and very important, you're onto something. Ritter and their Mammoth Ivory nuts (ooer Madam) are an example, albeit an extreme one, of such exotic marketing...

[tegs07]

Just now, Muzz said:

Don't forget the room...

 

Look at it from the luthier's POV: you're trying to sell a premium product, for possibly 50 times as much as a functional entry level instrument. The quality of build can be shown, the components can be top of the line, you might well have some endorsees, what else have you got to distinguish yourself and promote your sales? The looks, but then looks can be very subjective. But if you can spin the actual woods used into something exotic and very important, you're onto something. Ritter and their Mammoth Ivory nuts (ooer Madam) are an example, albeit an extreme one, of such exotic marketing...

Sadowsky was commenting on the necks. Rosewood, Maple and Ebony I think. Hardly obscure specialty woods.

[Baloney Balderdash]

13 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Don't forget the room...

 

Look at it from the luthier's POV: you're trying to sell a premium product, for possibly 50 times as much as a functional entry level instrument. The quality of build can be shown, the components can be top of the line, you might well have some endorsees, what else have you got to distinguish yourself and promote your sales? The looks, but then looks can be very subjective. But if you can spin the actual woods used into something exotic and very important, you're onto something. Ritter and their Mammoth Ivory nuts (ooer Madam) are an example, albeit an extreme one, of such exotic marketing...

Isn't taste in tone very subjective too?

 

 

I don't get why people are insisting on this being some kind of scam, resonance is a very real phenomena.

 

It's basic physics really.

 

That you can't hear the difference doesn't mean it isn't there, it means you have bad hearing.

 

But maybe that is hard to accept for someone who consider themself a musician, so it got to be a scam.

 

 

Also this discussion isn't actually at all about exotic woods somehow supposedly sounding objectively better, no one claimed that, except the people who are trying to make this look like a scam.

 

 

Edited July 5 by Baloney Balderdash

[BigRedX]

One of the problems with "tone woods" is that sometimes there is no choice. Not all of us play P or J basses or their copies.

 

One of the basses I play is only available with an alder body and maple neck and fretboard, so in many ways the choice of woods used to make the bass is irrelevant because there is no choice.

[neepheid]

19 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Don't forget the room...

 

Look at it from the luthier's POV: you're trying to sell a premium product, for possibly 50 times as much as a functional entry level instrument. The quality of build can be shown, the components can be top of the line, you might well have some endorsees, what else have you got to distinguish yourself and promote your sales? The looks, but then looks can be very subjective. But if you can spin the actual woods used into something exotic and very important, you're onto something. Ritter and their Mammoth Ivory nuts (ooer Madam) are an example, albeit an extreme one, of such exotic marketing...

 

You could just point out the amount of human time put into the build.  Everyone knows time is money, and that's a cold hard fact you can take to the bank instead of all this florid prose and subjective points of view being paraded as fact.

[Baloney Balderdash]

52 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

One of the problems with "tone woods" is that sometimes there is no choice. Not all of us play P or J basses or their copies.

 

One of the basses I play is only available with an alder body and maple neck and fretboard, so in many ways the choice of woods used to make the bass is irrelevant because there is no choice.

Another issue with "tonewood", or at least one of the common arguments against it, is that no two pieces of wood, even from the same species will be or sound exactly identical.

 

But while this is indeed very true it does not mean that specific species of wood doesn't have general tendencies and traits, tonally as well. 

 

Also the argument isn't really about all same types of wood sounding exactly identically, or that some types of wood objectively sound better.

 

So yes, you can probably find a specific rosewood fretboard out there that sounds very much like another specific maple fretboard out there, especially if the body wood and other (con)structural choices of each of those instruments makes them individually lean in a common direction, that is counterweights the characteristics of the fretboard wood somehow, but that isn't the norm or how those types of wood will sound on an average.

 

 

Edited July 5 by Baloney Balderdash

[peteb]

On 05/07/2024 at 14:55, Muzz said:

Don't forget the room...

 

Look at it from the luthier's POV: you're trying to sell a premium product, for possibly 50 times as much as a functional entry level instrument. The quality of build can be shown, the components can be top of the line, you might well have some endorsees, what else have you got to distinguish yourself and promote your sales? The looks, but then looks can be very subjective. But if you can spin the actual woods used into something exotic and very important, you're onto something. Ritter and their Mammoth Ivory nuts (ooer Madam) are an example, albeit an extreme one, of such exotic marketing...

 

The room is a bit beyond your, or the luthier's control. 

 

Remember that in Roger Sadowsky's case, he made his name by modding Fenders for top NYC bass players. When the particular type of Fenders he recommended started getting in short supply / too expensive, he started making what were meant to be superior quality Fender type basses, with the improvements that he had installed in the instruments for his clients. It was the very opposite of 'exotic', just a basic 'Fender on steroids'. He didn't have to make up anything about the woods he used, he could have just said it was because of his electronics, fretwork, etc. I'm quite happy to accept that he believes that the quality of the 'non exotic' woods he uses is important. 

 

Bits of wood can just be different. I've owned a number Fender America Standard Jazz basses. The one that I have on a stand beside my desk is one that I played when I was picking up a couple of secondhand cabs from Bass Direct. As soon as I picked it up I thought that it was just more resonant and lively than the other Fender jazzes I had owned. I had no intention of buying a bass that day, but I was thinking about it on the drive home and when I got back home, I rang Mark and bought the bass that I had been playing earlier. As I say, all the components on that bass are the same as the other Am Std jazzes I had owned, so I can only put it down to the wood! 

 

Edited July 6 by peteb

[Muzz]

20 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

It's basic physics really.

Not going to address the ad hominem bits of that because I'm better than you, but Roger 'became convinced over time' that for fingerboards rosewood is 'a softer and warmer' tone than maple, which is 'brighter'. Rosewood is significantly denser than maple. Roger even says maple, the less dense material, is better for slapping on. Graphite resin is around twice the density of Rosewood, so it should be very warm and much softer, and much less suitable for slapping on.

[Baloney Balderdash]

8 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Not going to address the ad hominem bits of that because I'm better than you, but Roger 'became convinced over time' that for fingerboards rosewood is 'a softer and warmer' tone than maple, which is 'brighter'. Rosewood is significantly denser than maple. Roger even says maple, the less dense material, is better for slapping on. Graphite resin is around twice the density of Rosewood, so it should be very warm and much softer, and much less suitable for slapping on.

I was referring to the physical phenomena of resonance, which I think should be clear in the context it was written:

 

45 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

...resonance is a very real phenomena.

 

It's basic physics really.

 

Also I am not really discussing Roger Sadowsky's beliefs here (honestly I couldn't care less about what he believes or not), whatever they might be, but the concept of "tonewood", from the perspective of using actual facts.

 

Edited July 5 by Baloney Balderdash

[tegs07]

I never understood this debate. Tonewood is just a generic term for a wide range of woods used by Luthiers to make instruments. They are selected for a broad range of reasons from weight, strength, appearance and yes how they may sound (arguably much more important in the days before electricity).

 

Its not a marketing concept. Swamp Ash is more expensive than Ash as it’s now a little harder to source. Scarcity and shipping costs will have more impact on the price than other factors. Boutique instruments cost more because they are not made in large quantities and have more labour involved in the build. This is more expensive than the materials.

 

The rest of the debate is open to interpretation. I can hear a slight difference in sound when I swap between a maple and rosewood neck on the same bass when it’s unplugged. Plugged in not so much but then I don’t have a great ear for these nuances. I doubt many people listening do either (if it’s me playing they will most likely have left the room anyway).

Edited July 5 by tegs07

[Muzz]

18 minutes ago, peteb said:

The room is a bit beyond your, or the luthier's control. 

Just pointing out the elephant in the room (SWIDT?) that affects getting a bass to sound good; I'm sure we've all played in places where we may as well have had a rubber band and a shoe box for a bass...

18 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

Bits of wood can just be different. I've owned a number Fender America Standard Jazz basses. The one that I have on a stand beside my desk is one that I played when I was checking a couple of secondhand cabs from Bass Direct. As soon as I picked up I thought that it was just resonant and lively than the other Fender jazzes I had owned. I had no intention of buying a bass that day, but I was thinking about it on the drive home and when I got back I rang Mark and bought the bass that I had been playing earlier. As I say, all the components on that bass were the same as the other Am Std jazzes I had owned, so I can only put it down to the wood! 

 

I have a Canadian Dingwall which is Ash and Maple, and it's leagues ahead in terms of being 'alive' than any other bass I've played made of the same (nominal) wood pairing (and I've had a lot, mostly because I like that wood pairing, because it looks nice). The design is a big factor, I'm sure, but so is the quality of build. It's handbuilt, and I'm positive that that level of detail (which I'm sure RS brings to his more expensive builds - he ought to for the money) in construction is a big factor in the way it sounds. The Fender production line stuff won't have anything like the time (= £, as it's been rightly pointed out) spent on them, but as with all tolerance-based volume production, sometimes you get a very, very good one.

 

I wonder what RS has to say about the cheaper basses he sells? Are they different woods, or do they sound and feel worse because of how they're made?

Edited July 5 by Muzz

[diskwave]

5 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Roger even says maple, the less dense material, is better for slapping on

I'll take Freddie Washington  over MM or Sir King, any day in the slap tone department. . Whether or not Mr S is a musician or not, (pretty sure hes not), I knew this when I was a kid. You play maple and it feels harder, colder "clangier" than RW. You play RW and it feels warmer, nicer if you like. And dont underestimate the look. Darker things tend in the main to make us feel better.. cozier if you will. If all adds up.

[Muzz]

7 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

I was referring to the physical phenomena of resonance, which I think should be clear in the context it was written:

 

Resonance in a material in identical contruction (and we assume a bass fretboard will be the same length under the same forces) is affected by density.