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Best Wood for bass guitar


K_J

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For me Swamp ash body +

1/4 sawn maple neck as per the Fender CS range made that way because is the best, this of course means graphite and woods like Wenge are also very stiff and resonant so cant be ignored

lets not get into effects of strings, pickups and set up on your fave wood combinations 😁

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On 09/10/2018 at 12:18, TheGreek said:

 

Cue the floodgates...

You almost have as many choices as there are woods. 

What do you want from the wood? Weight? High figuring(prettiness)? Practicality? 

Narrow down your requirements to help with recommendations.

BTW...Welcome to the forum.

 

Welcome-Image.gif

Hi! Well I'm mainly looking for performance from the wood as I'll be covering it in carbon fibre so looks won't matter really.

Thank you:D The forum has already been so helpful!

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On 09/10/2018 at 12:31, 6feet7 said:

Have a look at GUS Guitars. Simon Farmer makes a cedar laminate body and neck with a carbon fibre exo-skeleton. 

If it's good enough for Prince then it should do for the rest of us :)

This is perfect! Thank you!!!!!!:D

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On 09/10/2018 at 13:14, BassTractor said:

Summed up: for your project it really really really doesn't matter other than the aspects of looks and how easy the wood is to work with. IMHO the fit of the neck to the body most probably is of greater importance than the type of body wood used.

Good luck!

Sorry this might seem a stupid question but what exactly is IHMO? Bass guitar world is all new to me! I have actually never played one and I wanted to give myself a challenge for this project:)

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5 minutes ago, K_J said:

Sorry this might seem a stupid question but what exactly is IHMO? Bass guitar world is all new to me! I have actually never played one and I wanted to give myself a challenge for this project:)

IMHO = In My Honest Opinion

Si

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On 09/10/2018 at 15:03, skankdelvar said:

@K_J First thing I'd suggest is having a look at the BassChat Build Diaries Sub-forum - loads of useful info here

Woods? Mahogany, alder and ash are all popular choices. One could also use limba or korina or even pine though this can be heavy. 

Couple of other things:

* There's a sizeable cost difference between certain tone woods (£50 vs £150 and upwards) so it might be best to choose the cheapest and most common tone wood you can find, simply because (i) you may be on a tight budget (ii) it's more widely available and easily sourced and (iii) the more expensive wood isn't going to sound three times better than the cheapest though it may look considerably prettier.

* Most tone wood suppliers sell their one-piece blanks to a set size suitable for electric guitars (strats, teles, Les Pauls) rather than basses so check the dimensions as offered by the supplier. If the finished bass body is going to be larger than a conventional electric guitar you'll probably need to buy three smaller pieces and glue them together to make a single, larger three piece body. This is perfectly normal practice. If you don't like the look of a 3-piece body or the grain mismatch is too jarring you could always lay a thin veneer of nicer wood over the top and back to disguise the joins. Best thing here is to explain your project to the supplier and see what they can offer.

Here are a couple of tonewood suppliers:

http://www.luthierssupplies.co.uk/
https://www.touchstonetonewoods.co.uk/

... and here's are an outfit that offers a wider range of more 'exotic' tonewoods such as bubinga, wenge, padauk and zebrano

http://www.exotichardwoodsukltd.com/Wood-Shop/Tone-Woods/Body-Blanks/

Good luck with the project :)
 

This is brilliant help! Thank you:)

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On 10/10/2018 at 11:04, BigRedX said:

It looks as though we have scared the OP off...

So just in case they come back here is a sensible answer they their question:

"Tone Woods" make a lot of sense when it comes to acoustic instruments. They are all about the transfer of the vibration of the strings through the top of the instrument to the air inside the body and projecting those vibrations out. Everything about the design and construction of an acoustic instrument is about getting a good tone at a usable volume. The shape and volume of the body, the thinness of the top the way the bracing is just sufficient to stop the instrument collapsing under the tension of the strings and the top sides and back are joined together with the minimum of contact to allow the maximum resonance.

No compare that with a typical solid bodied electric instrument. The body is a big solid 1.5" thick lump of wood, and more often than not on mass-produced instruments 2 or 3 separate pieces glued together in an ad-hoc manner to produce a blank big enough to be cut to the desired shape. Its main purpose is to provide a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing platform for attaching all the other component parts - neck, bridge, pickups etc. None of the tone wood properties that are so important in an acoustic instrument matter very much in a solid body. Here the overall construction is far more important.

I'm not saying that the choice of wood is totally irrelevant to the sound of a solid-bodied instrument, it's just IMO the least important factor and one that is impossible to quantify. Every single piece of wood is different and two bodies cut from blanks that came from the same tree can produce two different feeling and sounding instruments.

So after all that what are the important factors when picking a piece of wood for a solid bodied instrument?

1. Strength. It must be capable of holding together under the tension of the strings and being hung from a strap. TBH pretty much any hardwood will fit the bill and even some softwoods. It might be worth considering long-term wear. Have a look at any solid-bodied instrument made 40 or more years ago, and you'll see the actual wood has worn away in several places due to contact while playing. 

2. Weight. Overall the average weight for a bass should be somewhere between 4kg and 4.5kg, the closer you can get it to 4kg the better.

3. Appearance. If the wood is going to visible on the finished instrument then it should be something that you find aesthetically pleasing. 

And that's it. Good luck with you build!

This is remarkable!!!! Thank you! This is helping my brain finally come to a decision XD There's a lot more material you can use than I thought! Thank you :)

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