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ASH/Maple VS ALDER/Rosewood - FENDER JAZZ BASS


Bart Funk Bass
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I'll be stoned for this, but I can't hear any difference at all. If you hadn't put the graphic up and hadn't told us this was a comparison, I'd have assumed this was one bass playing the entire time.

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I might be cloth-eared & hearing-damaged from years of high-dB ear abuse, but with these comparisons and with my own basses I can never hear a difference that's not more likely to be attributable to pickups, electronics, pickup positioning or even hardware.

I love the look & feel of a lacquered maple fretboard so for me it's an aesthetic & tactile choice.

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The differences are extremely minuscule, for sure there would be no possible way to tell the difference in a mix with those two basses. 

Though the maple neck one does sound ever so slightly brighter and more lively to me and the rosewood neck one ever so slightly darker and duller, but honestly that could just be the strings, and I actually kind of suspects it very likely might be just exactly that in this case. 

Also some playing styles, amps and eventual microphones and other gear used for recording do lend them self more to bring out the differences in different basses than others, and some styles of playing paired with some gear/recording gear would make more or less everything sound more or less the same, without any doubt, for instance I couldn't tell any tonal difference whatsoever in the slapping parts of your video.  

And of course the audio quality of the video, once it's been through the converter to YouTube format, doesn't make it any easier to tell tonal differences when they are so subtle as happens to be the case between the sound samples you recorded of those two basses.

Edited by Baloney Balderdash
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17 hours ago, Bart Funk Bass said:

Finally, I compared both of my Jazz Basses.

Which one do you like more? 

Red / rosewood, looks better. 

Well done anyone picking out the different woods without looking, wish I’d started wearing earplugs when you did.    

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Were both strung with strings from the same batch, fitted at the same time, and played roughly the same amount since?  Are they set up identically for nut height, string height, intonation?  Just too many variables to start attributing these slight differences to types of wood.

Two very nice bases, by the way.

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I agree there is very little difference between the two. I'd lean towards the MIJ as my preference but I reckon that's mostly in the pickups rather than the woods.

Wood wise I usually lean towards a maple neck but that's more of an aesthetic preference rather than anything to do with tone.

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On 06/08/2020 at 11:06, Bart Funk Bass said:

It's been always a debate that the maple neck is much brighter :P

For me maple fingerboard is snappy and crisp, rosewood is warmer but can be soggy... that's a consensus over at least 30 instruments 🙄

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