Resonant bodies

[chris_b]

1 hour ago, JottoSW1 said:

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

 

I believe I covered that on the first line.

[xgsjx]

12 hours ago, drTStingray said:

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 😂😀)

There’s been P basses made out of just about every material possible, from cardboard to metal & one thing that they all have in common is they sound just like a P bass. 
What different woods or other materials give the player, is vibration feedback through the body. This will vary depending on how dense /resonant it is. 
The other thing that it does is give a feel & look that the player may/may not like. 

[BigRedX]

And we are still projecting the attributes of acoustic instruments onto solid electric ones.

 

Have none of you actually looked to see how different the methods of construction are? Take a typical acoustic guitar. The body will have been made from 5 pieces of very thin wood (2 back, 2 sides and the top) held together with the minimum amount of glue and bracing needed for the construction to not come part under the tension of the strings. It's a design and method of construction that has developed over hundreds of years. Other than a similar shape a solid electric instrument has nothing in common when it comes to construction. Several chunky pieces of wood slathered in glue to hold them together. Take a look at a typical selection of two and three piece bodies and your see that the joins aren't even consistently placed. It's done simply to get the greatest number of instruments out of the fewest number of planks.

 

As I keep saying, the problem I have with assigning tonal properties to the wood used for solid electric instruments is that firstly every piece of wood is different - even pieces cut from the same plank. It is naive to assign those properties to a single piece of wood within an instrument without also considering all the other factors that also go towards making two instruments sound different. You simply can't isolate a single item in a guitar and say that it and it alone is responsible for making this instrument sound different from another one. And all the user experiences concentrate on why two different instruments sound different. There should be no surprise there. It's easy to produce two instruments that sound different. If wood in solid electric instruments behaved in a predicable way, then every Fender P-bass made with the same body neck and fingerboard woods would sound EXACTLY the same. But they don't. It's an universally acknowledge fact that you will have to try multiple supposedly identical instruments to find "the one".

 

By the way, here's great sounding P-Bass:

 

 

The only wood used in the construction are two soft wood fillets glued onto the back of the aluminium T-section that forms the bulk of the neck and fingerboard, and were probably used because they were easier to shape than aluminium to form the back of the neck.

 

I could also post the Ritter and Bas Extravaganza basses made out of plywood. While each sheet of wood that made up Mr Ritter's bass was probably individually selected, the Bas Extravaganza bass was made from a couple of standard sheets of ply picked at random from his local DIY superstore.

[Fishfacefour]

39 minutes ago, xgsjx said:

What different woods or other materials give the player, is vibration feedback through the body

Ah yes. That's a much better description than resonance! 

[rwillett]

37 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

And we are still projecting the attributes of acoustic instruments onto solid electric ones.

 

Have none of you actually looked to see how different the methods of construction are? Take a typical acoustic guitar. The body will have been made from 5 pieces of very thin wood (2 back, 2 sides and the top) held together with the minimum amount of glue and bracing needed for the construction to not come part under the tension of the strings. It's a design and method of construction that has developed over hundreds of years. Other than a similar shape a solid electric instrument has nothing in common when it comes to construction. Several chunky pieces of wood slathered in glue to hold them together. Take a look at a typical selection of two and three piece bodies and your see that the joins aren't even consistently placed. It's done simply to get the greatest number of instruments out of the fewest number of planks.

 

As I keep saying, the problem I have with assigning tonal properties to the wood used for solid electric instruments is that firstly every piece of wood is different - even pieces cut from the same plank. It is naive to assign those properties to a single piece of wood within an instrument without also considering all the other factors that also go towards making two instruments sound different. You simply can't isolate a single item in a guitar and say that it and it alone is responsible for making this instrument sound different from another one. And all the user experiences concentrate on why two different instruments sound different. There should be no surprise there. It's easy to produce two instruments that sound different. If wood in solid electric instruments behaved in a predicable way, then every Fender P-bass made with the same body neck and fingerboard woods would sound EXACTLY the same. But they don't. It's an universally acknowledge fact that you will have to try multiple supposedly identical instruments to find "the one".

 

By the way, here's great sounding P-Bass:

 

 

The only wood used in the construction are two soft wood fillets glued onto the back of the aluminium T-section that forms the bulk of the neck and fingerboard, and were probably used because they were easier to shape than aluminium to form the back of the neck.

 

I could also post the Ritter and Bas Extravaganza basses made out of plywood. While each sheet of wood that made up Mr Ritter's bass was probably individually selected, the Bas Extravaganza bass was made from a couple of standard sheets of ply picked at random from his local DIY superstore.

 

This is a topic that I've been wondering about for a few months and the picture above clarifies it for me.

 

Just so we are clear, I'm a pretty rubbish bass player, I dabble for my enjoyment and thats about it. if I rated my knoweldge of the bass guitar from 1 (clueless) to 10 (God like John Paul Jones etc), I'm coming in at about 1.5. 

 

I've been thinking about what was the simplest bass guitar I could make. I am not a luthier at all and the last piece of decorative woodwork I did was over 40 years ago at school, a letter rack for my mum. It wasn't very good then and it's not much better now. No idea why she keeps it.

 

My thinking was that the essential elements of a bass guitar are:

 

1. Neck - I have a 97 MIJ Fender Jazz that has a wonderful neck. When I brought it the pickups weren't very good, but I thought that electrics are cheap to solve, so brought it anyway. A new loom from Kl0gion and  it sounds great. I also have a Fender Mustang MIM which also plays great and sounds great. We'll not talk about the Ibanez Mikro The neck holds the tuners, nut and frets.

 

2. The bridge - The strings have to end somewhere. There appears to be lots of different types of bridges, but the ones on each of my fenders appear to be quite simply made with bent metal. Thats not a dig at Fender, it works for them. I am also aware that there are far more complex and higher mass bridges, but I'm not clear what value they really offer. They may make a massive difference to an expert player, the Fender ones seem to work for me. See my value as a bass player above.

 

3. Something rigid needs to hold the neck and the bridge apart.

 

4. Pickups and something to hold them.

 

The rest appears to be not that important. Looking at the guitar above, it's clear that there is no wood body to resonate. No idea how the metal resonates, but I'm sure it's wholly different.  Stuff like strap buttons and controls can be put in different places. I'm happy to take @BigRedX statement that it plays well. The guitar above doesn't have a body so whats actually important. I have seen acrylic guitars, both bass and 6-string, played by guitar hero's, so I'm assuming they are happy enough it. On the counterside, we have the money paid for the guitars from Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmour, Peter Green. Whilst these have provenance, who wouldn't like a guitar played by EC, people seem to think they play better and sound better. We've had this argument over Stradivarius for centuries about how wonderful they sound and no one understands why.

 

So is the bass guitar body really needed? There is enough evidence to make the answer blurred to me.

 

Perhaps I need to build one to find out

 

Thanks

Rob

[Geek99]

2 minutes ago, rwillett said:

decorative woodwork I did was over 40 years ago at school, a letter rack for my mum. It wasn't very good then and it's not much better now. No idea why she keeps it.

 

My thinking was that the essential

If it’s not much better now, it’s still better, maybe the wood has seasoned and improved and it’s a better letter rack now that time has passed. Why have a well-made CNC-machined sturdy letter rack when you could have a nice, resonant but indifferently-made one crafted from older and thus better wood ? 

 

#irony (just in case) 

[Woodinblack]

28 minutes ago, rwillett said:

On the counterside, we have the money paid for the guitars from Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmour, Peter Green. Whilst these have provenance, who wouldn't like a guitar played by EC, people seem to think they play better and sound better.

 

No, they are paid for because they are historic items, like £120k for a titanic menu or £260k for ghandis glasses - they clearly weren't any better than all other ones but they are related to history.

Clearly all those artists you mentioned sold those guitars, while carrying on playing, and they have all appeared playing other guitars and sounded exactly the same.

 

Some guitars you gell with, some you don't, and it doesn't mean it is a bad guitar or anything, I have a guitar that I love that I got because someone else hated, its personal. While there are objectively bad guitars, good guitars are more subjective

 

35 minutes ago, rwillett said:

We've had this argument over Stradivarius for centuries about how wonderful they sound and no one understands why.

 

And in test after test, top level concert violinists have failed to pick out the stradivarius over other top level violins, even up to the level you would get if you picked one at random.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25371-pro-violinists-fail-to-spot-stradivarius-in-blind-test/

 

But we are human, we get impressed with things we think we should be impressed with!

[ezbass]

6 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

But we are human, we get impressed with things we think we should be impressed with!

If there's a way to make money, someone will push that way, eventually it becomes ingrained in the human psyche that (insert marketing plan here) is good/great/fantastic/never bettered/the way to go.

[xgsjx]

2 hours ago, rwillett said:

 

This is a topic that I've been wondering about for a few months and the picture above clarifies it for me.

 

Just so we are clear, I'm a pretty rubbish bass player, I dabble for my enjoyment and thats about it. if I rated my knoweldge of the bass guitar from 1 (clueless) to 10 (God like John Paul Jones etc), I'm coming in at about 1.5. 

 

I've been thinking about what was the simplest bass guitar I could make. I am not a luthier at all and the last piece of decorative woodwork I did was over 40 years ago at school, a letter rack for my mum. It wasn't very good then and it's not much better now. No idea why she keeps it.

 

My thinking was that the essential elements of a bass guitar are:

 

1. Neck - I have a 97 MIJ Fender Jazz that has a wonderful neck. When I brought it the pickups weren't very good, but I thought that electrics are cheap to solve, so brought it anyway. A new loom from Kl0gion and  it sounds great. I also have a Fender Mustang MIM which also plays great and sounds great. We'll not talk about the Ibanez Mikro The neck holds the tuners, nut and frets.

 

2. The bridge - The strings have to end somewhere. There appears to be lots of different types of bridges, but the ones on each of my fenders appear to be quite simply made with bent metal. Thats not a dig at Fender, it works for them. I am also aware that there are far more complex and higher mass bridges, but I'm not clear what value they really offer. They may make a massive difference to an expert player, the Fender ones seem to work for me. See my value as a bass player above.

 

3. Something rigid needs to hold the neck and the bridge apart.

 

4. Pickups and something to hold them.

 

The rest appears to be not that important. Looking at the guitar above, it's clear that there is no wood body to resonate. No idea how the metal resonates, but I'm sure it's wholly different.  Stuff like strap buttons and controls can be put in different places. I'm happy to take @BigRedX statement that it plays well. The guitar above doesn't have a body so whats actually important. I have seen acrylic guitars, both bass and 6-string, played by guitar hero's, so I'm assuming they are happy enough it. On the counterside, we have the money paid for the guitars from Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmour, Peter Green. Whilst these have provenance, who wouldn't like a guitar played by EC, people seem to think they play better and sound better. We've had this argument over Stradivarius for centuries about how wonderful they sound and no one understands why.

 

So is the bass guitar body really needed? There is enough evidence to make the answer blurred to me.

 

Perhaps I need to build one to find out

 

Thanks

Rob

This might be of interest to you. 
 

I spent months doing research & going through different videos. This one is a great example of how much the body & neck matters to the tone. 
 

 

That’s not to say a good body & neck isn’t important, as you want a neck that has good intonation & is comfortable in your hand, and a body that feels comfortable & makes you happy (yes, women have been looking for that for eons 🤣). 

[jonnybass]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

And we are still projecting the attributes of acoustic instruments onto solid electric ones.

 

Have none of you actually looked to see how different the methods of construction are? Take a typical acoustic guitar. The body will have been made from 5 pieces of very thin wood (2 back, 2 sides and the top) held together with the minimum amount of glue and bracing needed for the construction to not come part under the tension of the strings. It's a design and method of construction that has developed over hundreds of years. Other than a similar shape a solid electric instrument has nothing in common when it comes to construction. Several chunky pieces of wood slathered in glue to hold them together. Take a look at a typical selection of two and three piece bodies and your see that the joins aren't even consistently placed. It's done simply to get the greatest number of instruments out of the fewest number of planks.

 

As I keep saying, the problem I have with assigning tonal properties to the wood used for solid electric instruments is that firstly every piece of wood is different - even pieces cut from the same plank. It is naive to assign those properties to a single piece of wood within an instrument without also considering all the other factors that also go towards making two instruments sound different. You simply can't isolate a single item in a guitar and say that it and it alone is responsible for making this instrument sound different from another one. And all the user experiences concentrate on why two different instruments sound different. There should be no surprise there. It's easy to produce two instruments that sound different. If wood in solid electric instruments behaved in a predicable way, then every Fender P-bass made with the same body neck and fingerboard woods would sound EXACTLY the same. But they don't. It's an universally acknowledge fact that you will have to try multiple supposedly identical instruments to find "the one".

 

By the way, here's great sounding P-Bass:

 

 

The only wood used in the construction are two soft wood fillets glued onto the back of the aluminium T-section that forms the bulk of the neck and fingerboard, and were probably used because they were easier to shape than aluminium to form the back of the neck.

 

I could also post the Ritter and Bas Extravaganza basses made out of plywood. While each sheet of wood that made up Mr Ritter's bass was probably individually selected, the Bas Extravaganza bass was made from a couple of standard sheets of ply picked at random from his local DIY superstore.

Totally agree about some elements of this post but other points get me thinking.  While it feels illogical to ascribe sonic characteristics to some materials for electric instruments, there can be no denying the skill of a luthier. In addition I often wonder how much is the placebo effect.  Do musicians play better on certain instruments because they are comfortable and feel better (for them)? I think they do, in the same way artists use certain brushes, writers use certain implements etc..

 

I remember starting out playing and reading Chuck Rainey's bass method.  His advice was pick a bass you like the sound of unplugged, as on an electric instrument it can only get better when you plug it in.  This is something I kinda agree with.  

[rwillett]

2 hours ago, Geek99 said:

If it’s not much better now, it’s still better, maybe the wood has seasoned and improved and it’s a better letter rack now that time has passed. Why have a well-made CNC-machined sturdy letter rack when you could have a nice, resonant but indifferently-made one crafted from older and thus better wood ? 

 

#irony (just in case) 

 

I would have never guessed that was ironic (says he ironically AND sarcastically

 

Rob

[rwillett]

2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

No, they are paid for because they are historic items, like £120k for a titanic menu or £260k for ghandis glasses - they clearly weren't any better than all other ones but they are related to history.

Clearly all those artists you mentioned sold those guitars, while carrying on playing, and they have all appeared playing other guitars and sounded exactly the same.

 

Some guitars you gell with, some you don't, and it doesn't mean it is a bad guitar or anything, I have a guitar that I love that I got because someone else hated, its personal. While there are objectively bad guitars, good guitars are more subjective

 

 

And in test after test, top level concert violinists have failed to pick out the stradivarius over other top level violins, even up to the level you would get if you picked one at random.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25371-pro-violinists-fail-to-spot-stradivarius-in-blind-test/

 

But we are human, we get impressed with things we think we should be impressed with!

 

@WoodinblackI'm actually saying the same things as yourself, we are in violent agreement. I may be clumsy in my words.

 

The only guitar that I am aware of that has some sort of unique sound is the Peter Green one. It seems to be a mistake in the coil windings (or whatever). Is it worth the aledged £1M paid for it, I don't know, I'll never be good enough to know.  agree that the Dave Gilmour and Eric Clapton guitars aren't that different from a guitar of that era at all. The fact that DG or EC has played or (swoon) Jimi Hendrix has played adds to it's provenance and adds value. I can smash up a guitar like Kurt Cobain, that doesn't make it worth $6M, wish it did.

 

The Stradivarius discussion/argument goes over my head, I don't know how good it is, but I do know that if one came on the market, collectors and musicians will be fighting over it. Is it very good? thats for discussion, will people fight over buying it? that's a fact. I wasn't aware of the New Scientist link but I'm not surprised. I have to say that amuses me.

 

Collectors like rarity, they like having something that nobody else has, the Mona Lisa. Thats one of a kind and appears to be worth somewhere between £500M and £1,000 million. I know I have a set of trade cards (like Brook Bond or cigarette cards) in a locked drawer from when I sold post cards and cigarette cards with my dad when I was younger, that nobody else in the world has. We have a complete set, other collectors have partial sets. It's worth about £500 and thats it.  I'll happily swap my one unique item with the current owner of the Mona Lisa. In fact they get a better deal as they get 25 cards and I just get one small painting of a unknown women with a dodgy smile. Thats why Titanic glasses go for what thay sell for. It's worth what somebody will pay.

 

I put my money where my mouth is. I loved playing the MIJ 97 Jazz and I played a MIM Fender Mustang at the weekend and brought that as well. I tried other basses but that one just felt good. I'd love a 62 Precision becase it's my year of birth but thats an illogical reason to have it. I'll never justify buying it, but it's be cool to have.

 

@xgsjx

 

Thats a great looking video and will watch

Edited August 24, 2023 by rwillett

[Geek99]

21 minutes ago, rwillett said:

 

I would have never guessed that was ironic (says he ironically AND sarcastically

 

Rob

Some people do take such ironic comments literally, I’m afraid, which is why I added the caveat and hashtag 

[drTStingray]

8 hours ago, BigRedX said:

And we are still projecting the attributes of acoustic instruments onto solid electric ones.

I think you’ve misunderstood when it comes to the points I made. I can’t imagine anyone would make the mistake of trying to argue that the constructional attributes of a solid body electric have exactly the same characteristics and reasoning as the materials and construction of an acoustic - that would be silly.
 

However so would arguing the construction materials and fundamental design of a solid body electric somehow defies the laws of physics and makes absolutely no difference to the tone, timbre and sustain. Of course, so does the string choice and possibly most importantly, the skill (or lack of) if the player. 
 

It’s interesting looking at some of the types with more consistent quality - such as a Wal. They all have similar sound qualities (and you don’t hear of people trying 15 before they find the ‘one’). They’re all consistently good. There is variation and particularly where the body wood is different - in fact the fundamental design of a Wal is based on a mahogany body - the early ones with ash may well sound slightly different. I’ve found a similar thing with Stingrays and Bongos - consistent sound and quality although there are marginal variations in tone and sustain - and also where body wood is different (eg a mahogany bodied Stingray) - similarly, there are sound differences (marginal) between a maple board and a rosewood. The latter is particularly true with guitars - in fact Hank Marvin is on record saying that his use of rosewood board fiesta red Strats was based on feeling the tone was more mellow than the early maple board one he played initially. 
 

So @BigRedX we will have to agree to differ on this subject - I do know that people have produced electric guitars out of numerous items including simple planks of wood and got acceptable (to some) results. That the pick up design and position is probably a major contributor to the sound is not disputed - however the rest of the instrument clearly is - that some people can’t hear a difference is not a reason to argue differences don’t exist.
 

All of the pro luthiers say so as well. 
 

At one time, I could barely hear the difference between series and parallel on a Stingray pick up, such was the marginality of it - however I can now hear a clear difference, and especially in certain mixes and EQ levels. 

 

 

[xgsjx]

1 hour ago, drTStingray said:

I think you’ve misunderstood when it comes to the points I made. I can’t imagine anyone would make the mistake of trying to argue that the constructional attributes of a solid body electric have exactly the same characteristics and reasoning as the materials and construction of an acoustic - that would be silly.
 

However so would arguing the construction materials and fundamental design of a solid body electric somehow defies the laws of physics and makes absolutely no difference to the tone, timbre and sustain. Of course, so does the string choice and possibly most importantly, the skill (or lack of) if the player. 
 

It’s interesting looking at some of the types with more consistent quality - such as a Wal. They all have similar sound qualities (and you don’t hear of people trying 15 before they find the ‘one’). They’re all consistently good. There is variation and particularly where the body wood is different - in fact the fundamental design of a Wal is based on a mahogany body - the early ones with ash may well sound slightly different. I’ve found a similar thing with Stingrays and Bongos - consistent sound and quality although there are marginal variations in tone and sustain - and also where body wood is different (eg a mahogany bodied Stingray) - similarly, there are sound differences (marginal) between a maple board and a rosewood. The latter is particularly true with guitars - in fact Hank Marvin is on record saying that his use of rosewood board fiesta red Strats was based on feeling the tone was more mellow than the early maple board one he played initially. 
 

So @BigRedX we will have to agree to differ on this subject - I do know that people have produced electric guitars out of numerous items including simple planks of wood and got acceptable (to some) results. That the pick up design and position is probably a major contributor to the sound is not disputed - however the rest of the instrument clearly is - that some people can’t hear a difference is not a reason to argue differences don’t exist.
 

All of the pro luthiers say so as well. 
 

At one time, I could barely hear the difference between series and parallel on a Stingray pick up, such was the marginality of it - however I can now hear a clear difference, and especially in certain mixes and EQ levels. 

 

 

Go & watch the video I posted further up. 
 

The difference you hear between 2 basses with different woods is more likely to be due to the pickups not being the exact same height, wound slightly different or the string height being different than it is the type of wood. 
 

Most bass cab manufacturers constantly try to sell bass rigs as 4x10 with a 1x15 under it. It shows that they know what the consumer has been led to believe & can sell on it, even though it’s a poor combination. Why would bass builders be any different?  It’s a business. 

Edited August 24, 2023 by xgsjx

[Fishfacefour]

So..... Sidestepping the inevitable tonewood handbags... Please. We've already established that it sounds great plugged in, it feels good to play. 

 

We're talking 'vibration feedback through the body' 

What are the elements that contribute to that? Is it wood, paint thickness, paint colour, bridge, strings, marketing hypnotism? 😁

 

 

[Geek99]

Abundance of popcorn in the locality? 
 

I may need a comfy chair also 

[2pods]

Not basses, but the lap steel guitars I have (one Korina, the others Mahogany) resonate like billy-o.

 

There is enough volume and sustain for me to practice without an amp.

You'd swear I was going through an Origin Slide Rig !

 

All just planks with steel nuts (!) and bridges