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is more neccesarily worse??


ali-stare
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recently jut put the pups back in my plywood frankenbass only to find that the sound is not so far off from my 2 piece bubinga v940. is this a result of the electrickery or just that some plywood isnt that bad????

Edited by ali-stare
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Often the only difference is a better quality bass feels nicer, (I'd rather hold the neck of my stingray than anything else one might consider wrapping their left hand round, for instance), stays in tune better and should last longer. I've got some cheap as chips basses that sound gorgeous, it's what you're happy with.

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There are good and bad sounding plywoods as much as there are good and bad sounding solid woods, so it doesn't automatically follow that a solid wood bodied guitar will sound better. If you compare in the same price range, you'd probably be hard pushed to tell one from another just by the sound.

Which of course is why there are always so many owners of Squires from the early nineties trying to figure out if their guitar is ply or wood on Fender forums.

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those are some weird basses.

"A large percentage of the sound of an electric bass is down to it's electronics & pickups. More so than that of the type of wood used."

so are you saying if i put some EMGs into my ply bass itll sound brilliant????

Edited by ali-stare
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[quote name='dood' post='2320' date='May 19 2007, 05:47 PM']A large percentage of the sound of an electric bass is down to it's electronics & pickups. More so than that of the type of wood used.[/quote]
You know what? If you're referring to simply upgrading the pickups, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree there :)

I've played around with sticking pickups in basses enough to understand the kind of difference that swapping pickups can make and the closest analogy I can think of is changing the microphone in front of a singer.

However when you factor in the position of the pickups and their design, that can make some difference. For example my Celinder and my Stingray sound very similar to one another when played unamplified because they both have maple necks and ash bodies. However I don't need to mention that there are HUGE differences when you plug them in.

However I'd suggest that switching from a bubinga neck to a graphite neck or something like that would have a greater impact on the instrument than changing the pickups. Ultimately its all about how the different elements are combined, but if you've got good wood start with - stuff that is seasoned, stable and stiff then you'll have an instrument that is responsive, reliable and ready to growl.

The other thing about making comparisons is that they depend on the viewers previous experience. I couldn't probably tell the difference between an ash and an alder body because I know the wood is sufficiently variable in its character that frequently they're interchangable. However there are some on Talkbass who would probably swear blind they can.

My first two basses had plywood bodies and I couldn't wait to get onto a solid wood bodied instrument. I found plywood doesn't really vibrate all that well and it sounded a little dead at certain frequencies (the ones I liked to listen to for slap). So I saved up hard for an instrument which didn't have those problems.

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[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='2740' date='May 20 2007, 10:10 AM']My first two basses had plywood bodies and I couldn't wait to get onto a solid wood bodied instrument. I found plywood doesn't really vibrate all that well and it sounded a little dead at certain frequencies (the ones I liked to listen to for slap). So I saved up hard for an instrument which didn't have those problems.[/quote]

The materials engineer in me keeps saying that something exotic, say a Wal Pro-something with expensive top and back wood facings is just 'expensive' ply-wood?
The reactive stiffness of the piece would be related to the orientation of the grain, relative modulus of the materials, the difference (if any) between the thermal expansions of the different woods etc.... A tricky finite element analysis calculation I think :)

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