Tonewoods

[wavey_davey]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='711716' date='Jan 13 2010, 06:39 PM']Somebody mentioned Wal...What was there slogan? "The Sound of Wood"...,[/quote]

Marketing can be an evil thing......

[bubinga5]

[quote name='wavey_davey' post='711722' date='Jan 13 2010, 06:42 PM']Marketing can be an evil thing......[/quote]
He He

[bubinga5]

QUOTE>>>You can of course engineer out some inconsistancies with using very good hardware and electronics, but to say that the signal chain doesn't make as much difference as the wood or vice versa, is I'm afraid frought with self conflict.

What about say, a passive Jazz?

[velvetkevorkian]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='711716' date='Jan 13 2010, 06:39 PM']Somebody mentioned Wal...What was there slogan? "The Sound of Wood"..., im not sure how much there electronics color the sound...i hate the thought of getting your bass sound just from the electronics....Bass sounds are suppose to be an organic thing...[/quote]
"The sound of electric wood" if I'm not mistaken. Which seems to suggest something slightly different, to me at least.

[velvetkevorkian]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='711763' date='Jan 13 2010, 07:07 PM']QUOTE>>>You can of course engineer out some inconsistancies with using very good hardware and electronics, but to say that the signal chain doesn't make as much difference as the wood or vice versa, is I'm afraid frought with self conflict.

What about say, a passive Jazz?[/quote]
What about it? Overall, the same process of sound processing is going on, surely?

[bubinga5]

well the pickups are passive, there is no preamp, so the biggest factor is the wood?...a good passive pickup should only amplify the sound of what the bass is made of...so the process is different to an active setup

Edited January 13, 2010 by bubinga5

[Adrenochrome]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='711716' date='Jan 13 2010, 06:39 PM']Somebody mentioned Wal...What was there slogan? "The Sound of Wood"..., im not sure how much there electronics color the sound...i hate the thought of getting your bass sound just from the electronics....Bass sounds are suppose to be an organic thing...

I would agree it is the sum of the parts,and im a big fan of preamp's etc but the starting point is the Wood...surely its the biggest factor, the whole instrument is made of it?

iv had a bad day... [/quote]

The available evidence strongly says that it isn't the biggest factor. Doesn't mean it's not significant though.

[leftybassman392]

I loved my Wal, but the preamp design makes it extremely difficult to identify the actual 'sound' of the instrument IMHO. Actually, I would suggest that most active circuits would do essentially the same.

I've just taken delivery of a new boutique Telebass by Regenerate Guitar Works in the USA. The only reason I mention it here is because it's a remake of one of the earlier versions, with a single pickup and passive controls. I would suggest that this type of configuration is about as close as you can get to the 'natural' sound of the instrument with any kind of amplification (which kind of comes back to the point made earlier about playing the instrument unamplified - but then doesn't that largely defeat the point of having an electric bass in the first place?)

[stevie]

[quote name='Adrenochrome' post='710872' date='Jan 13 2010, 08:25 AM']I'm sure someone did some proper research on this and found that the pickups (and their position), string length and type of strings have the major contribution to the sound of a solid electric bass. I can't remember who it was though...[/quote]
It would be really interesting if you could remember.....

[leftybassman392]

[quote name='stevie' post='711848' date='Jan 13 2010, 08:01 PM']It would be really interesting if you could remember.....[/quote]

I've had a look around myself, and the closest I could find was [url="http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Musician/Guitar/ToneWoods/tonewoods1.html"]this[/url].

[tarcher]

If an instrument was made of an acoustically inert material then in theory there should be no overtones to colour the sound.That way the only sounds you would hear would be the string vibration and whatever coloration the electronics provided.
Whether or not that would be good or just provide a characterless and uninteresting tone,I dont know.
Be a good way of listening to what the electronics are actually doing though.
As another point I would have thought through neck construction would provide a more efficient signal path for the mechanical vibrations to travel through the instrument and set up the overtones that give an instrument its character/tone,than an interuption that must occur with a bolt on neck,although that interruption could work as a mechanical filter and could possibly work in a good way.
As Jake says its the sum of the parts and what they do that matters.

[velvetkevorkian]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='711820' date='Jan 13 2010, 07:41 PM']well the pickups are passive, there is no preamp, so the biggest factor is the wood?...[b]a good passive pickup should only amplify the sound of what the bass is made of...[/b]so the process is different to an active setup[/quote]
But they don't, do they? Even top end uber-jazzes (and you of all people should know!) still sound essentially like a Jazz bass, and that really isn't that natural a sound at all, especially with both pickups on. Likewise, a Precision with a "good passive pickup" still sounds like a Precision because of the electronics- there's not much different in their construction otherwise. Maybe its different when you get to more exotic breeds like QTuners, piezos etc but to be prefectly honest, I doubt it. Look at how much grief DB players go through trying to find a pickup that's "their bass, only louder"- it just doesn't happen.

IMO, YMMV etc of course

Edited January 13, 2010 by velvetkevorkian

[Adrenochrome]

[quote name='stevie' post='711848' date='Jan 13 2010, 08:01 PM']It would be really interesting if you could remember.....[/quote]

Yeah sorry, I think Ross (ARGH) may have originally posted it up.

[henry norton]

[quote name='stevie' post='711848' date='Jan 13 2010, 09:01 PM']It would be really interesting if you could remember.....[/quote]
Warmoth do quite a good guide to the effect each type of wood has on the sound of a solid instrument. I still maintain you should choose the wood you like the look and feel (weight, grain) of - if the luthier's any good they'll know what they're doing and it'll sound good whatever wood you choose.
[url="http://www.warmoth.com/Guitar/Bodies/Options/BodyWoodOptions.aspx"]Warmoth Wood Guide[/url]

[Mikey R]

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='711339' date='Jan 13 2010, 02:31 PM']FWIW, I've recently heard that using wood cut from the [i]top[/i] of the tree will make a difference in a good way. That wood which resides at the bottom will have had the weight of the tree bearing on it, thus compressing it. This renders the wood more dense and thus more 'inert', resulting in a warmer (or duller) tone.[/quote]

In the case of swamp ash, which is just American white ash grown in the southern states, thats not true - the lightest and least dense swamp ash is taken from the trunk right by the ground. The boards get heavier and more dense as you go up the tree.

I dont know if thats also the case for other species.

Edited January 14, 2010 by Mikey R

[tarcher]

A pick up will only reproduce the vibration of the string not reproduce the sound of the whole bass.
The wood will interact with the string and add some character to the sound.
Theres a lot of complex physics going on.
If a string were put under tension in free air and plucked it will produce a note.
Put a pick up under it and you can then amplify that note and get a louder sound.
Put a different type of pick up there you get the same note but it will sound different in tone because of the difference in the construction of the pup.
Now lets move the string from being under tension in free air to being under tension on a framework of nut,neck body and bridge ie a guitar.
The string will be vibrating.in a magnetic field provided by the pup,the note will still be the same but its tone will have altered because the strings vibrations will have altered slightly by the interaction of vibrations running through the wood and getting back into the string via the bridge and the nut.
This is all common sense basic physics if you think about it.
I can understand expensive tonewoods in acoustic instruments because there you have a direct interaction between string wood and air.
With a solid bodied electric instrument not quite so much.I really dont get the idea of putting a layer of expensive tone wood on an existing core except to make it look nice,because then you have to have a layer of glue between two surfaces,again something to interfere with the path the vibrations take to get back to the bridge.
Remember that pickup is just transforming mechanical energy into electrical energy via the vibrations of the string.

Maybe I've got it totally wrong if so I'll not be offended I'm dead happy to learn cause thats one of the reasons we're here.

[henry norton]

[quote name='tarcher' post='714852' date='Jan 16 2010, 03:30 PM']I can understand expensive tonewoods in acoustic instruments because there you have a direct interaction between string wood and air.[/quote]

Actually not as much as you'd first think because construction has a much bigger impact on acoustic instruments than it does on electrics - The bracing, carving etc. has a profound effect on the tone whereas the woods have proportionally much less. It all makes a difference but the devil's in the detail when it comes to tonewoods.

[leftybassman392]

[quote name='henry norton' post='714923' date='Jan 16 2010, 03:40 PM']Actually not as much as you'd first think because construction has a much bigger impact on acoustic instruments than it does on electrics - The bracing, carving etc. has a profound effect on the tone whereas the woods have proportionally much less. It all makes a difference but the devil's in the detail when it comes to tonewoods.[/quote]

I agree with this. Internal bracing design is generally accepted as one of the most critical elements in the construction of a top end acoustic.

[tarcher]

[quote name='henry norton' post='714923' date='Jan 16 2010, 03:40 PM']Actually not as much as you'd first think because construction has a much bigger impact on acoustic instruments than it does on electrics - The bracing, carving etc. has a profound effect on the tone whereas the woods have proportionally much less. It all makes a difference but the devil's in the detail when it comes to tonewoods.[/quote]


Don't suppose Stradivarius ever used ply

[Vibrating G String]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='709505' date='Jan 11 2010, 02:26 PM']I have always thought that the natural reverbaration and acoustic qualities come from the bass unplugged...the selection of woods is where the core tone come from....if a pickup is chosen, that does not color the bass in any way, the sound you get is coming from the choice of woods....Different body woods can definately change the tone of an instrument...This is where the tone starts from... its all about the way the wood vibrates...All pickups are doing are amplifying these vibrations....i would say they ae both important to bringing out a good tone..

The sound of Wood..

A passive instrument with ash or alder (lets say) is going to sound better(or different) than a passive bass made of plywood..this is a simplification but you get my point...Pickups and preamps should not and is not really where the core tone is coming from..[/quote]I would argue the other way. Consider a bass with 2 pickups. Imagine each of those 2 pickups soloed as 2 different basses with identical woods and hardware and strings but different pickups in different locations. Do each of the pickups sound the same as dictated by the identical woods or do they sound very different as dictated by the differing pickups?

In my opinion all woods in a bass could be replaced by a different genus without giving any identifying audio clues to which particular wood was used. For example make a dozen jazz basses. Half with alder bodies, half with Pacific soft maple. Paint the basses a solid color and no one will ever hear the difference until they are told which is which.

[Vibrating G String]

[quote name='leftybassman392' post='711838' date='Jan 13 2010, 11:52 AM']I loved my Wal, but the preamp design makes it extremely difficult to identify the actual 'sound' of the instrument IMHO. Actually, I would suggest that most active circuits would do essentially the same.[/quote]
To carry that thought a bit further. An onboard preamp is often credited with having huge tone shaping abilities. The EQ section of an onboard pre is just a battery powered version of the EQ in a bass amp. Since all basses go through EQ and preamps on at least one side of the cable that should make passive basses just as unidentifiable.

And as long as this soapbox continues to hold my weight... preamps are seen as being identical from one instance to another but electrical components are specced with large tolerances sometimes up to + or - 10%. We accept that wood varies and should think of electronics in the same "organic" way.

[Prosebass]

[quote name='tarcher' post='716446' date='Jan 18 2010, 11:45 AM']Don't suppose Stradivarius ever used ply [/quote]

true, but in the early 17th century he was the pupil of Nicolo Amati of Cremona Italy noted as one of the greatest double bass makers ever to live.

Watch this space for an MDF bodied plywood necked Picobass I am putting together as time permits. Fitted with a top pickup and top electronics courtesy of Silent Fly [SFX] it will be interesting to see how it sounds and maybe put this arguement to rest with some solid (well MDF solid at least) evidence.

Edited January 19, 2010 by Prosebass

[henry norton]

[quote name='tarcher' post='716446' date='Jan 18 2010, 12:45 PM']Don't suppose Stradivarius ever used ply [/quote]
Hah! Probably not but he did use 'cheapo, inferior' wood to make some of his instruments. Most people think of violin family instruments being made of highly figured sycamore, yet quite allot of makers back then - Strad included - used other, cheaper woods like poplar. You don't hear Stradivarius owners complaining about the quality of their tonewoods....

[The Burpster]

[quote name='Prosebass' post='717646' date='Jan 19 2010, 11:34 AM']true, but in the early 17th century he was the pupil of Nicolo Amati of Cremona Italy noted as one of the greatest double bass makers ever to live.

Watch this space for an MDF bodied plywood necked Picobass I am putting together as time permits. Fitted with a top pickup and top electronics courtesy of Silent Fly [SFX] it will be interesting to see how it sounds and maybe put this arguement to rest with some solid (well MDF solid at least) evidence. [/quote]

PB that could actually be a stroke of genius.

An MDF body will be very dense and providing its strong enough ( dont see why not) would provide a reasonable tone. Added to that providing it was finished in a solid colour (its not very attractive) who would know...? A massive bonus would be that its tone would be easily replicated as one piece of MDF is the same as the next unlike regular sourced woods.

Watching interestedly!

[tarcher]

[quote name='Prosebass' post='717646' date='Jan 19 2010, 11:34 AM']true, but in the early 17th century he was the pupil of Nicolo Amati of Cremona Italy noted as one of the greatest double bass makers ever to live.

Watch this space for an MDF bodied plywood necked Picobass I am putting together as time permits. Fitted with a top pickup and top electronics courtesy of Silent Fly [SFX] it will be interesting to see how it sounds and maybe put this arguement to rest with some solid (well MDF solid at least) evidence. [/quote]



Nice one,I look forward to seeing/hearing the result.
Also be interesting to see how it sounds with an ordinary run of the mill pup.
There is a company that are making guitars and basses from recycled plastic and from memory they sounded not at all bad.
Good for the environment as well.
Save the trees,love a shrub, pamper a pansy.Green is good.

By jove mrs,this thread gets better and better.

Edited January 19, 2010 by tarcher