Resonant bodies

[Fishfacefour]

What factors affect resonant basses and how important is it to you?

 

I just got a new bass and I'm getting nowhere near the same feeling of resonance in my chest when unplugged. It's all fine and sounds decent when plugged in, but I'm missing that feeling of connection. 

 

Any thoughts? 

[Waddo Soqable]

If its a solid electric bass, and it sounds good plugged in.. that'd do for me ! 😁

Edited August 22, 2023 by Waddo Soqable

[miles'tone]

25 minutes ago, Fishfacefour said:

What factors affect resonant basses and how important is it to you?

 

I just got a new bass and I'm getting nowhere near the same feeling of resonance in my chest when unplugged. It's all fine and sounds decent when plugged in, but I'm missing that feeling of connection. 

 

Any thoughts? 

Moisture content of the body wood can be a factor but sometimes it can simply be a matter of finding the right strings and gauge that the bass likes. Imho and all that...

[3below]

Some basses do, some don't, even with the same strings. My SG bass is a real live wire to play, plenty of good resonance.

[ped]

I think technically you don’t want the body to resonate and rob the string of its vibe, and potentially cancel out string vibrations. I guess there’s a happy medium where you feel connected but it doesn’t affect the sound too much. 

[velvetkevorkian]

If it sounds fine plugged in I wouldn't worry about it 🤷

[Lfalex v1.1]

Two of my basses "plugged-in" sound suffer from an aspect of this. 

My Warwick Infinity SN is chambered.  If I wear the strap too tight,  it sounds dead. Loosen it a little and it comes alive.

Similarly, the G&L SB-2 Tribute sounds squashed if I'm seated and lean on the body too much.

 

In your case, although different, does the new bass lack the resonance you're used to (entirely possible) or is something damping it?

[Fishfacefour]

Thanks everyone, I'm wondering if it's the bridge, my others have substantial chunky modern bridges and this has a Wilkinson bbot style. Or perhaps the quite thick paint compared to thin paint? 

I changed the strings to chromes and it feels a bit better than the originals which were pretty dead and the XLs I replaced them with. Maybe the higher tension works better? 

 

I'm just thinking out loud really. Its fascinating all the myriad differences there are between basses that influence how they feel to play. 

[Woodinblack]

Can honestly say that unless the bridge is defective, the difference it makes from one bridge to another is so subtle you wouldn't be able to notice.

[NancyJohnson]

Isn't it about what you can make it do/sound like when plugged in that's important?

[chris_b]

16 hours ago, Fishfacefour said:

What factors affect resonant basses and how important is it to you?

 

I just got a new bass and I'm getting nowhere near the same feeling of resonance in my chest when unplugged. It's all fine and sounds decent when plugged in, but I'm missing that feeling of connection. 

 

Any thoughts? 

 

Tone is like wine. some appreciate fine wine some are happy with plonk.

 

Resonant basses have more tone than non resonant basses, but that won't matter if all you want is thump, or a low rumble, or get your tone from a pedal board.

 

The irritating thing is when guys who aren't interested in, or can't hear, the finer points want to insist that they don't exist.

[Lozz196]

The bass I had with the most individual stand out tone was also the most resonant bass I`ve had - my 1978 Precision. I loaned it to another bassist at a gig whose own bass took a knock rendering it unusable and he said he`d never had a bass resonate that much on his stomach & chest cavity before. 

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I find that my body is most resonant after eating a bean burrito.

[ezbass]

I understand wanting to feel that connection with the bass, but once plugged in, the connection is made with the actual output, you probably won’t feel anything from the body once the backline kicks in. 
 

3 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Isn't it about what you can make it do/sound like when plugged in that's important?

 

 

However, if you’re going IEM and ampless, this might still be an issue, in which case something like the Backbeat would be worth investigating.

 

Replacement bridge?

 

3 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Can honestly say that unless the bridge is defective, the difference it makes from one bridge to another is so subtle you wouldn't be able to notice.

 ^^^ this.

 

The inverse problem is vibration cancellation due to conflicting waves, as mentioned here…

 

16 hours ago, ped said:

I think technically you don’t want the body to resonate and rob the string of its vibe, and potentially cancel out string vibrations. I guess there’s a happy medium where you feel connected but it doesn’t affect the sound too much. 

 

 

If you’re not vibing (pun unintended) with the instrument, move it on, find another that works better for you.

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, chris_b said:

Resonant basses have more tone than non resonant basses, but that won't matter if all you want is thump, or a low rumble, or get your tone from a pedal board.

 

Litterally, if your bass is resonant then some frequencies are going to be cancelled and some are going to be boosted. Maybe they are ones you want cancelled, which is fine, but otherwise you will end up with a thump or a rumble or just feedback at one frequency. THats what resonance is.

 

 

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, chris_b said:

Tone is like wine. some appreciate fine wine some are happy with plonk.

 

Resonant basses have more tone than non resonant basses, but that won't matter if all you want is thump, or a low rumble, or get your tone from a pedal board.

 

The irritating thing is when guys who aren't interested in, or can't hear, the finer points want to insist that they don't exist.

 

"Good" tone is entirely subjective. And what works with one type of music and/or combination of instruments doesn't necessarily work with others.

 

In a resonant bass string energy is potentially being wasted exciting the the materials used in its construction, and unlike an acoustic instrument this is not always a desirable thing. A solid body doesn't directly affect the output of the pickups and it what little effect it has happens in a non-predicable way - if it was predicable we would be having this discussion in the first place.

 

Remember also that resonance is responsible for dead spots on the neck, something that you definitely don't want.

[NancyJohnson]

The more I read through responses and reconsider the OP the more I feel a knot of anxiety in my chest.

 

I've been playing 40+ years and not once - until I read the OP - have I ever considered resonance in my chest when I play the bass unplugged.  Sure I pick up all my basses and have a quick strum/noodle without them being plugged in, in fact I did that less than five minutes ago.  Construction materials are broadly traditional (mahogany, alder or maple bodies and maple or maple with rosewood boards for the neck), bolt on and set necks.  Everything else is broadly the same, I don't have a BBoT bridge on anything.  They all sound - unplugged - more or less the same, much the same goes if you plugged them into a desk and recorded them flat, you wouldn't be able to tell which one was which.

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

I’m curious about the specific basses the OP is referring to.

I’m not quite sure why though as the unamplified resonance of an electric bass has never figured on my radar 😎

[Fishfacefour]

As the OP It's not a big deal, just something I noticed and was curious about. 

I like to feel my instruments reacting when I play. Electric, Acoustic, semi acoustic, clarinet, pianos all react with your body in one way or another and influence the way you feel when you play. 

Most of my bass playing is at home at relatively low volumes at the moment so the big amp vibrations are minimal. 

 

The bass I'm talking about is an Ashdown short scale Grail. I'm comparing it to Sire V7 fretless and Cort Artisan B5. 

The ashdown sounds better than the cort plugged in imo but the resonance in the body is better (more rewarding?) with the cort. 

 

I'm not advocating that basses should be resonant or not, just curious and wanted to explore the topic. 

[BigRedX]

53 minutes ago, Fishfacefour said:

I like to feel my instruments reacting when I play. Electric, Acoustic, semi acoustic, clarinet, pianos all react with your body in one way or another and influence the way you feel when you play. 

 

This is a common mistake made by players of solid electric instruments who also play acoustic instruments.

 

While on acoustic instruments the body is crucial for shaping and projecting the sound, on a solid electric instrument it is there mostly to have somewhere to fit the bridge (and strings), pickups and controls and have an attractive and/or ergonomic shape. And while the construction and materials used for the body will have an influence on the amplified sound, it is minimal, unpredictable and inconsistent. This is why a lot of the time two identical looking instruments can sound very different when plugged in. Most of the time the materials used are picked mainly for their constructional strength and occasionally for their appearance; although most fancy looking woods are either veneers or thin laminates, glued onto something more practical but boring looking.

 

And this is why you don't really want the body to be resonant, or at least not in the frequencies that you want to project, because then they are being absorbed by the structure of the instrument rather than being captured by the pickups.

[Dan Dare]

And, of course, pickups are not microphones. They detect movement of a piece of tensioned wire in a magnetic field and generate a tiny electrical signal. They don't "hear" in the traditional sense, by sensing vibration of air molecules, in the way that a microphone does and nor do they detect vibrations of the instrument, in the way that a piezo does. So how can the unamplified sound of the instrument have a discernible effect on the amplified sound?

 

I agree that it's pleasurable to feel the instrument vibrate as you play it. My old J bass is quite resonant. It also sounds great amplified, but I don't think the two are connected. It actually sounds better since I had the pickups dipped. They had become microphonic with age over 50 odd years.

[drTStingray]

Unfortunately, this debate is likely to degenerate into the tonewood makes no difference debate - I tend to go along with the manufacturers of quality instruments who do this professionally and state that different woods create different effects etc. Debates amongst interested onlookers on the internet, and particularly those that claim the likes of Roger Sadowsky et al would say this wouldn’t they, seem to be deluded into a wild conspiracy theory!! 
 

Back to the OP - I would agree - a very resonant instrument translates into a certain tone, which I would describe as an improvement, and also an increase in sustain  - I have such a bass and can tell the difference between that bass and others which are similar but less resonant. Of course transmission through the bridge to the strings is not a one way process - the body transmits vibrations back to the strings via the bridge - and presumably via the neck to the tuning pegs and strings - it’s a system of parts. That’s not to say that in an electric instrument there aren’t other factors like pick up position, pick up design, electronics and other elements (not least the strings and the player). But resonance = good in my book. 
 

I have one production bass with a mahogany body where it would normally be ash - that bass has a subtly different sound from its more standard siblings.

 

I’m not a great officianado of Fender Precision basses but from personal experience, a bass with a maple fretboard and ash body, to my ears, has a different timbre to its sound than a rosewood fretboard, alder bodied instrument. Dare I say, they may even be more resonant at certain frequencies….. I know some people are only after the ‘thump’ but there are differences in my view (even though we all know wood, construction etc make no difference 😂😀)

[Owen]

I love to feel the bass resonating against me. I have sold basses which sound fantastic plugged in but have not resonated against me. Proper, proper high end stuff. It is part of the whole thing as far as I am concerned. Each to their own. 

[MichaelDean]

I also love the feel of a resonant instrument. I returned an otherwise very nice bass recently because it wasn't as resonant as my other basses. I found it also translated to the sustain. It wasn't as long and didn't ring out in the same way. 

 

I've had it with electric guitars too. I purchased a Harley Benton Tele a while back to mod as I see fit. One of the things I did was to replace the neck screws with bots and threaded inserts. It made it more resonant and increased the sustain. I can feel the neck resonate now where it didn't before. The whole thing feels a bit more alive. 

[JottoSW1]

13 hours ago, chris_b said:

 

Tone is like wine. some appreciate fine wine some are happy with plonk.

 

Resonant basses have more tone than non resonant basses, but that won't matter if all you want is thump, or a low rumble, or get your tone from a pedal board.

 

The irritating thing is when guys who aren't interested in, or can't hear, the finer points want to insist that they don't exist.

Equally not everyone aspires to Cork Sniffing / Hi Fi Buff standards of connoisseurship.

This in no way related to a Tone Wood debate ( that's something that Cherie Blair has to contend with afaic)