Weight Of The Bass

[Nicko]

IMHO the sound of a bass comes from many things, but chiefly the reverberation of the string acting on the pickup.  A heavy bass may transfer more vibration to the string but its unlikely to be as big a factor as the nut, the neck joint, the bridge and to a certain extent the pickup.  Although when the wood reverberates it will produce a sound acousticlly I'm not convinced this is ever transferred through the pickup to the amplified sound on a solid body, but it will impact the way the pickup registers the reative movement of the string.

6 string players are a litte precious about what wood is used to make the guitar, but I don't see that as much with bassplayers, hence the relative success of Steinberger and Status composite basses.

Percieved wisdom is

Basswood - warmth from light wood

Alder - full bodied tone from medium light wood

Swamp ash - bright sound with longer sustain from heavier wood

Mahogany - warm and mellow with good sustain from a relatively heavy wood.

I also recalll seeing an article on Wasburn tonewood series guitars (mid 90s) where the range included several woods, and the review basically said the differences were minimal, but those that could be detected flew in the face of this wisdom.  The big question is whether its weight or grain structure that produces the differences.

Or I could be talking complete tosh.

[Happy Jack]

Yup, absolutely agree. Which is why the "woodiest" sounding bass I own is ... erm ... a Status Streamline, comprising 100% fibreglass / carbon fibre / plasticky stuff / whatever.

Pickups? It has a set of Status P/J in it rather than soapbars.

 

[BigRedX]

20 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

Yup, absolutely agree. Which is why the "woodiest" sounding bass I own is ... erm ... a Status Streamline, comprising 100% fibreglass / carbon fibre / plasticky stuff / whatever.

Pickups? It has a set of Status P/J in it rather than soapbars.

The "woodiest" sounding bass I've owned was a Born To Rock F4B, made mostly out of aluminium tubing.

[B.Flat]

On 12/12/2018 at 17:52, BigRedX said:

But how many differences are there between these two basses other than their weight?

This is why the question IMO is mostly meaningless.

The heaviest bass I have owned (Yamaha) sounded good, but I own lighter basses that I think sound better. The lightest bass I have owned (Lightwave) sounded great but I suspect that was down almost entirely to the pickup and electronics than anything to do with the weight. Also there is very little point in comparing the two as about the only things they had in common was that they were mostly made out of wood.

 

On 11/12/2018 at 18:36, SubsonicSimpleton said:

Do both basses have identical neck construction?

Given that the neck is much less stiff than the body, it has a much bigger potential influence over the sound.

Yes , You are both correct, the two basses have nothing in common, apart from being dead trees.

I  go with the consensus, weight is not a requirement for good tone, whatever that tone may subjectively be deemed to be by anyone.

I can let the boat anchor go and drift into the the sea of light ( as in "NOT HEAVY')

Thank you all for your observations