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Strictly speaking this arrived yesterday, but I spent all day either in (virtual) meetings or annoying the neighbours with badly played Faith No More. So here it is. ACG TKO Classic - a non-standard model with a new finish Alan’s not done before - I think we can all agree he has done a bloody marvellous job. This was commissioned with a little inheritance I received following my final grandparent dying last year, and arrived two days after a good friend from Univeristy - who was a sometime-luthier - took his own life. He would have loved what Alan has created here and I will cherish it for both the memory of all my grandparents and Kieran. Not to mention cherish it because it is so damn good to look at and sounds exactly as I wanted - big, ballsy and huge but with a nice soft politeness if you wish. Limba body with an ash top, ash neck, rocklite board. 30.5” scale. Passive electronics volume/tone/pickup select including series and parallel options. Single coil in bridge, reverse P in neck. Immense. (Photos courtesy of @skelf)

I have no doubt that these sound different to someone with superb hearing, but to me they all sound pretty much the same. Seriously. I'm listening through decent studio monitors at sensible volume levels, and I suppose there's a very slight tonal variation, but nowhere near enough to make me prefer one of these basses to another. I have reasonably bad tinnitus which interferes with my hearing of high frequencies, but not the mids and lows. Put that guy playing those basses in a band situation and I doubt if anyone could possibly hear a difference between them. As always with these demos, they've chosen an immensely talented bass player who thinks that he's there to show how quickly he can play lots of notes. There's no actual law that says you can't demo basses by playing a simple walking bassline that allows the listener to concentrate on what the video is supposed to be about.

I would like to hear a test where everything was the same....including the wood. Would they all sound the identical, or would there still be variation from one instrument to the next?

The extra B stands for birthday! On Tuesday I turned 40. I now find myself wondering where my pills are and despairing about the music my children listen to. But I digress. A couple of months ago, my long-suffering wife told me she wanted to buy me a bass for my birthday, and was there anything in particular I wanted. I initially tried to put her off as this wasn't going to be cheap, but she insisted! After some thought I narrowed it down to a bass I'd never owned but always wanted ever since playing a friend's on tour many many years ago. As luck would have it there was one for sale on here just at the right time, courtesy of @vincbt It's been living in a cupboard for the past fortnight but here it is!

Received today, from Bassdirect, my 50th birthday present, a tad late (I'm 51 next month!) because Bartolini have been stuffed by Covid. Mark has kept me up to date all the way through the process though, and I had a few offers of alternatives through the process. Just really wanted Barts in it. Here are the specs:- Century 5 + Fretless •Spanish Cedar Body, •Flamed Koa top •Finish - Natural satin finish •Three piece Maple neck with contrasting stringers •Fingerboard - Lined Black Diamondwood (resin, pressure impregnated wood) •Graphtech nut •35" Scale - 2 octave •Bartolini 3-band pre amp with volume, pan, treble/bass stack, mid/mid freq select push/pull (250/800hz) •Bartolini JJ Pickup in the JB position •Black ultralight Gotoh tuners •Black Hipshot B style bridge in Aluminium Sounds absolutely fantastic! Feels incredible to play, silky smooth neck. A tiny bit heavier than my Century Standard fretted, but in the same ballpark. Love how it looks though! Colour me chuffed

Oh... and some new shoes too... nice! Happy Birthday Cosmo 'Twinkle Toes' Valdemar

Feel the need to show off my latest in here. It’s exceptional.

Step 1) Pick a highly contentious topic that has been done to death already, and with vast swathes of people heavily entrenched on opposite sides. Step 2) Give the thread a suitably condescending title, suggesting that anyone who disagrees with your position is a moronic fraud. Step 3) Throw a hissy fit when when not everyone immediately sees the error of their ways and dares to continue to disagree with you. Step 4) Suggest that most people are disabled and lack your skill and nuance in relation to a field that everyone here is extraordinarily passionate about, again because they dare to disagree with you. Step 5) Who knows, is there a point to all this? Can we please put this thread out of its misery?

Useless experiment. For example, say, Maple from one tree will be a different composition from the sample from the next. Depending upon where abouts in the tree the wood is taken from, it will have a different density. The environment in which the tree grows, influences structure further. Wood by its very nature, can not be the same - each slab is unique. The only way to hear how a bass will sound is to play it when it's built. The rest of it? Nonsense. Next.

Aria Pro ZZ

@bassist_lewis inspired by your Mustang fettling I've had a go at darkening the fretboard on mine - quite pleased with the results; kept the grain of Pau Ferro (which I like) but darkened up it's grey-brown colouring. Couple of before & after's below, now what else can I mess around with...

I built a new Brooks bass! The EXB-12-2PR (EXplorerBass - 12 string - 2 Pickups - Reverse strings triplets) - Mahogany body - Laminated Mahogany set neck. Glued in - Black gloss finish - Checkerboard binding - Ebony fretboard - Brassl position markers - Nickel silver frets - 34" scale - Buffalo horn nut ? - ETS twelve string brass bridge set. Gold plated - Two spokewheel double action trussrods - Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck - Lace Alumitone Bass Bar in the neck position - Lace Alumitone Bass Bar in the bridge position - Switchcraft output. Gold plated - 2 x Stacked volume/tone knob. Gold plated - Pickup selector switch. Gold plated - Gotoh GB 350 lightweight bass tuners. Gold plated - Gotoh Stealth ST 31 guitar tuners. Gold plated - d'Addario EXL 170 - 12 strings - Weight: 4.5 kg Electronics circuit by Bas Becu. Pics of the build proces can be seen here: https://www.enkoo.nl/brooks-exb-12-2pr.html

New black bass born today!

I owned one of these, bought it from Wapping Bass Centre. I did one studio session with it where the producer remarked about it's 'Incredible rich piano-like tone', that's as maybe, but in hindsight, well, umm, no.

TBH this is probably the most iconic bass instrument from the early 80s...

So why are you quoting a non-controlled, non-peer reviewed 'experiment'?

In reality, you could string up any old table top with a bridge, a set of tuners, some frets, a couple of single coils (spaced like a jazz) - and it would sound within shooting distance of any other jazz bass. Would be a bit of a **** to play though.

My thoughts as well. It seems to more of a semantic point than anything around a definition of the word “impart”. Thinking through the potential physics at play I don’t necessarily buy the “the body wood can only subtract frequencies” premise either. The strings will transmit vibrations into the body at the nut and bridge. These will rattle and reflect around the body/neck materials in all sorts of random ways at different frequencies. Some will be, of course, absorbed and dampened (at different frequencies and different amounts) reducing the overall energy of the system. However, it’s just as plausible that at some frequencies interference patterns or even standing wave vibrations could be formed within the body increasing the amplitude of those frequencies at the expense of others. The vibrations in the body would then transmit back into the strings at two points (nut and bridge) creating more complex overtones in the string. However, again since these would enter the strings at both ends it seems plausible that interference patterns could be formed at certain points along the string, potentially enhancing some harmonics while dampening others. If positive nodes coincide with the sensing area of the pickups - given the short wavelengths of many of the harmonics of the fundamental that also seems likely - within the complex waveform of the vibrating string there are likely to be positive and negative nodes at different micro-frequencies with some, therefore enhanced and others diminished, without breaking the law of the conservation of energy. But as others have said, a bass sounds good if a bass sounds good and it’s core tone is a sum of the various parts (including player and playing style). It’s not simply attributable to one single factor and the organic nature of wood and potential variation in physical properties within one species - or even one tree/plank/piece of wood - means the effects on sound aren’t reliably predictable purely on the basis of species name (the usual contention at the heart of most online tone wood debates).

A couple paper clips plus vat. 🤣

I'm not afraid to cry, & on that day I did. The last of the original Ramones. Soon after Marky would publish his book, which I assume he had just been waiting for Tommy to pass before publishing it. Although, there was nothing scathing in there about Tommy, but plenty that would make people think twice about being a fan of Johnny, which Tommy may have defended. Anyway, I took a break from the interwebz for a month & just so happens I decided to return on the anniversary of Joey's death, which marked the beginning of the end for all the original members. R.I.P.: Jeff Hyman Douglas Colvin John Cummings Thomas Erdelyi

What bothers me about these sorts of comments is the attempt to invalidate others experience and knowledge... It really doesn’t matter at all. At all. I’ve never once bought a Bass because of the wood it was made from, ever. If it plays well, weight is good...and sounds right for what I want at the time, there we go. I don’t really understand what these threads are for - “SEE I TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE WRONG!” Slow clap. not specifically aimed at @Killed_by_Death or the OP. And then people do posts like mine and @AxelF‘s and it gets locked, or lost. Give it 3 months it will happen again.

Sorry, that was uncalled for, I guess I thought if I didn't quote you directly that would be OK somehow. I recently took a month away from the internet, because I'm an obnoxious so & so, hopefully I can reign in my inner Kwai Chang Caine to curb that habit:

£42.44 is a bit precise... what’s the 44p for? Anyway... just call me Ex-dubya. XWG is a bit formal

Okay, I've just done my own test. Same bass. Same amp. Same flat settings. Finger style in same position over pickup. Only variable, three glasses of Fitou in between. It does actually make a difference to the perceived tone. Tomorrow evening, I will repeat, but with a Montrachet and see what transpires.

It's always a fun read when this topic comes up. I just wish I had the time to do the research in order to be as passionate as people are defending their respective camps. The logic in my head tells me tone is the sum of all parts from player technique to every componet. Then experience also kicks in and tells me it doesn't matter how good an instrument is or what it's made of, if the player is rubbish, the tone in rubbish. I can prove this by sitting behind any drum kit, no matter how good the kit is it's going to sound terrible...

The tones in the timbre aren't coming from the wood, they're coming from the coils in the pickups. The wood just shapes which tones are attenuated. I repeat wood does not & cannot ADD anything, the components in a passive system are subtractive, except for the actual pickups. (even the pickups can have a scooped sound if they're designed that way) Disclaimer: some seem to be misconstruing my comment here Wood definitely impacts the overall timbre, but not in an additional manner.

Not quite! Musicman Big Al SSS bass, deal done, pick up next week.............collection............When my pal was interested GAS got the better of me!

I think Status have nailed the headless design and engineering. Rock solid tuning, ability to use double or single ball end strings, compact (mine fits in a guitar gig bag).

At last I've been an explanation for the delay: because of the non existence of air travel atm, there aren't enough planes flying around to take the mail that usually hitches a lift. So the bass will still be sat in a queue in NY. Which reminds me of Casablanca. All the bass guitars stuck waiting for a flight out of America go to Rick's every night to drink champagne cocktails, flog off diamond rings, and sing the Marseillaise.

In general I totally agree about OTT histrionic singing - can't stand it. ,..... BUT sometimes someone can make it work:

Featuring Bob Marley and the wailers I believe

Yes, the energy is conserved. However, it's changed to a different form as the energy from string vibration is absorbed by making the wood flex, which in turn heats the wood up, thus converting vibratory energy to heat. The string is also vibrating in a magnetic field (as you have pointed out several times) and some of the energy in the string is transferred to the pickup windings in the form of electrical energy.

Hamer Scarab:

Shergold Marathon and Guild B-302

Yes, the laws of physics have been re-written. Miss out at your peril 😜

And with significantly larger sample sizes.

That's definitely one of several generic bass sounds!! V popular in US studios in the 60s leading to popular resurgence around the millennium - no doubt if they were the Dan Armstrong plexiglass version rather than the traditional alder/rosewood combination used in Motown they'd also sound identical 😬😉😂

Fender P with flats - thats all you need

Why Does It Hurt When I Pee - Frank Zappa (I’ve used it before but couldn’t resist).

It's the version of this one (I think)

You'll be pleased to hear that the Fury II has finally found a new home, where it is the only bass amongst a handful of guitars, and I'm told that it is being very much appreciated

I thought you were unfollowing this nonsense? 😂

Well this thread seems to have taken on a different tone all by itself never mind what wood it's made of.

I have an old double coil Q-tuner in my no-adjustments-plain-output bass and it works well. I would not say it is like piezo. An ordinary pickup with limited top end. It looks good and I like the sound very much but magic it is not.

Couldn’t get past the intro sound of someone throwing a bag of spanners at another bag of spanners. Sorry.

You might want to check whether it uses double ball end strings or standard strings clamped behind the nut. There's less options on the market for double ball end end strings but there's stil a reasonable amount of choice. Some headless basses, like my Washburn Status, can accomodate both types of string, but the grub screw clamp on the A string on mine wore out/broke years ago, so that's maybe something to look out for.