Shaggy

(I like) Trucking - Not the Nine o’clock News

Over my shoulder - Mike & the Mechanics

No, pickups don't function like microphones; they create an electrical signal in the pickup windings caused by the steel strings moving across a magnetic field, and in doing so also pick up the harmonic frequencies fed back to the string from resonant vibrations created within the bass - usually made of wood. As musicians we perceive these extra harmonics as "character", and it's why electric guitars and basses sound like guitars and basses, not synthesisers. Piezo transducers "hear" the sound one way, pickups do so in another.

Johnny come home - Fine Young Cannibals

Agreed. To be honest I’ve no idea how gluing together a sandwich of exotic hardwoods a la Alembic or Wal compares to (for example) Fender gluing together longitudinally 2 or 3 bits of often indifferently seasoned cheap hardwood - though you’d think the former would be preferable. Many many years ago I wrote to Electric Wood (Wal) asking what difference the different wood facings made to the tone, and Pete kindly wrote back to me with a list; he seemed quite convinced about the differences (American walnut was best for “fretless growl” apparently......took me a long time later to be able to actually afford one, but that was the spec). In the 1960’s Gibson and Guild had a reputation for using really top quality - usually tropical - tonewoods for their solid body guitars and basses, with bodies usually made in one piece of wood. Gibson in particular had stockpiled massive quantities of exotic hardwood in the early 20th century during the mandolin craze that fizzled out, and which got used for guitars instead. Despite this, the fact that vintage Fenders are now far more valued than vintage Gibsons I guess indicates the importance of design and ergonomics over quality of tonewood and methods of construction - though as a long scale player I’d personally take a ‘60’s Thunderbird over a ‘60’s Fender any day. Roll on Tokyo Olympics.....

Is that a cover of the Syd Barrett song? Anyway: Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey - Paul McCartney

The snow goose - Camel

Slightly surprised by the current of this thread going against body tonewood being a significant factor in tone, as to me it’s always been very much apparent that it is. Yes, an electric instrument may have little in common with an acoustic one, but it does have acoustic properties. A plucked string will transmit its vibrations to the body (and neck) on which it’s mounted, causing resonant vibrations within the wood, which will be transmitted back to the string as harmonics (causing the simple sound waveform generated by the vibrating string to become more complex) and also tending to dampen it (altering the attack / sustain / decay of the sound). So at one extreme a hollow-bodied bass will tend to have a harmonic-rich tone and relatively poor sustain, then going into solid bodies with resonant woods like mahogany or alder which will tend to have a “warmer” tone than denser woods like maple and ash, and at the other extreme very dense and homogeneous materials like stone (as the guitar posted earlier) or dense metal, which will have the tone closest to the pure vibration of the string. Being an inveterate bitsa builder I definitely notice the difference when swapping bodies and necks around the same hardware and pickups. Plywood, just like solid wood, varies immensely; from dense void-free ply like marine ply, to cheesy stuff that’s more air and glue than wood. My only ply bass - a Columbus Jazz copy- was made of the latter, and undoubtedly the vilest bass I’ve ever owned (though probably more due to the feeble pickups than the body). As posted above; ply basses can be superb. No mention yet of MDF - one of my favourite basses was my very first; a mid-1960’s Kalamazoo KB1 which was Gibson’s first budget venture. They subcontracted the bodies to a manufacturer of toilet seats using dense compressed wood pulp composite (effectively MDF) excuse rambling post.......

Lie to me - Chris Isaak

High horse - Kacey Musgraves

Planet Claire - B52’s

Rye whiskey - Tex Ritter

Sixth Avenue heartache - The Wallflowers (Oops just beaten to it - ignore post)

The JCB song - Seamus Moore

Babylon’s burning - The Ruts

Unchain my heart - Joe Cocker

Joe the lion - David Bowie (beaten to it, but still works......)

PM sent re 1 & 3

Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel

Superfly - Curtis Mayfield

You win again - Bee Gees

Miss Demeanor - The Sweet

Thick as thieves - The Jam

Pull up to the bumper - Grace Jones