fauxtoe

Wow! Seeing the measurement really shows how close it is. I’m glad the neck is proving to show how it does affect the tonal signature. That comes as no surprise to me whatsoever and I think you’re well on your way to getting it dialed in even closer. Other than my Wal-ish bass, the only other bass I’ve owned that had a mahogany body was a vintage SD Curlee bass. My gosh that little thing was a monster with its single DiMarzio model P pickup at the bridge. Its maple neck was uniquely attached to where it was a 3/4 neck thru, but was also a bolt on with a gigantic brass plate on the back. It had a very distinct, aggressive, but also slightly compressed sound to it. Whether that compression was from body wood or its other features like a brass nut and brass bridge that contributed, I don’t know. However, when you played it without amplification you could hear the basis for the tone before the electronics came into play.

What's funny is that I vastly prefer the EMG tone and the way the preamp operates. On my old Q5 I swapped the all Bart setup for EMG and it was night and day better. That Bart preamp was a little touchy and got out of hand quickly. Not sure if it was the frequency they chose or the amount of dB boost or cut built in per EQ, but I could never get it to operate as smooth as I would have liked. No such problem with EMG!

Totally agree, and that attack is ever present in carbon fiber necks. They need to be paired with the right electronics for what you're aiming to achieve or else it can become clank city really fast. There's a major difference between my Modulus Flea Bass 5 with a Legacy Lane Poor pickup and Bartolini preamp and my three G. Gould basses which all have different setups of EMG pickups and preamps. The Gould's can get as bright as you want them, but they tame down significantly more. It's a rare day that I'm ever dialing in extra treble!

I know you and I have talked about neck construction being a big part of the equation. My Wal-ish bass has an all wenge neck because the basses I've played with them exhibited a more dense mid-range and brighter tone, and I also own four different basses with carbon fiber necks. Most other things being equal, carbon fiber is immediately distinguishable from the rest. I've always felt that the stiffer the neck gets, the more the tone starts to open up and noticeably change. Now whether that changes for the better or for your preference becomes a personal taste. Not everyone likes the sound of a carbon fiber. There's no denying it's a different tone (usually brighter), plays very evenly, and has sustain for days (can't emphasize that enough!). So why then, when it comes to wood necked basses, would that be any different? I've played on plenty that were dead as can be, and others that would just absolutely sing. Wood, is not a (mostly) synthesized and controlled product like carbon fiber, so it inherently is going to exhibit differences. Wal figured it out a long time ago in their process that if they dry it to a certain humidity and do a multi-wood construction that the tone will remain relatively consistent from one bass to the other. I bet if you changed the neck on a Wal to carbon fiber that it would still sound like one, but different characteristics would start popping out and others might disappear. Body wood remains on the bottom of the list for me for a major tone factor in a solid-body, bolt-on neck construction, with a top loading bridge. I think there is a good relationship between the neck and the body and the connection between the two needs to be tight to resonate properly, but the body wood itself is less of a factor. The bridge I feel also does more than the body wood does, and I've experienced that first hand swapping them out on a few basses and hearing the immediate difference. Wal uses their own design which is not found on anything else in the world, so unless someone swapped their original for something else it would be hard to say how much it is a contributing factor...but I bet it's enough to notice. I've also had a conversation with a buddy of mine who has owned hundreds of guitars and works at a boutique guitar company. On a strat style setup the pickups are mounted to a plastic pickguard, and if equipped with a tremelo the bridge floats between the two posts and the springs. So what tone are you actually hearing in this case? The neck? The pickups? This could bring the argument that a lot of bass pickups are screwed to the body wood and it might make a bigger difference, but then there's Wal which functions more like a Gibson style humbucker that floats on a pickup ring. So again, what tone combination are we actually hearing? In my mind, and minus the type of strings, it goes like this: Pickups>Preamp>Neck>Bridge>Body

I just listened to some of the isolated tracks again and I totally agree that something is being driven. Whoever mixed and mastered that album had a lot of quality tone to work with and the ability to punch it up where needed. That brings me back to Peter's dilemma - a Wal-ish bass still has to have that fundamental distinct tone even before an amp or other gear. If that isn't there, then no amount of cab/amp sim is going to help. You were right to show it without one. I also think Geddy's studio recorded tone of his basses is much more of a raw Wal sound for comparison purposes.

As a major user of being amp-less on stage and going direct through in-ears, I think that having an amp/cab sim is sometimes a necessary part of the equation. There is a definite harshness that comes with hearing bass direct and it needs a little fluffing up along the way. I've found that the Tech21 YYZ pedal does a great job of this for me in conjunction with the Nordstrand Starlifter preamp at the end of the chain (which has its own vintage and modern tone shaping capabilities, should they be needed). I don't know how they recorded Flea's Wal on BSSM, but there is definitely compression added somewhere along the way and in the videos you do see his GK/Mesa rig.

Hello everyone! I have followed along with this thread silently as @funkle and I have conversed on TalkBass about building Wal-ish basses. For those of you who might have planned to use anything from Rautia, he just put out a message today that his business is now shut down - "THE SHOP IS CLOSED. THANK YOU SO MUCH TO ALL MY CUSTOMERS. 36 YEARS OF GUITAR WORK BEHIND, THE LAST 10 YEARS MAINLY PICKUPS. NOW SOMETHING ELSE...." I put a set if his pickups in my "Jazz-Wal" hybrid bass and they are everything that I could have ever hoped for with that build, so it's unfortunate we are now down one less multi-coil builder in the world.