Maple/Ash body combo

[Metalmoore]

I am getting a thunderbird body made for me and the centre portion of the body will be ash and the wings will be maple. I think this will probably fix most of or elimanate the neck dive.
Does anyone know how this will effect the tone or anything else you can think of for this bass?
As you can guess i dont really know much about wood for the body and the neck is a 1 peice P bass mighty mite maple neck.

Thanks in advance.

[neepheid]

Use Hipshot Ultralite tuners to make the headstock as light as possible?

Choose your strap button position carefully - [url="http://www.lysator.liu.se/~wizkid/music/thunderbird_mod/"]http://www.lysator.liu.se/~wizkid/music/thunderbird_mod/[/url]

[Metalmoore]

Yeah i got the ultralites. My main concern is how the wood choices will make the bass sound since the wood descriptions on the warmoth website say maple gives a very very bright sound and that ash also gives a bright sound and i would like to get that thunderbird bassy tone.

[RhysP]

Maple & ash would be pretty toppy, especially with a bolt-on neck.
You'd be better off going with mahogany for the sound you want IMO.

[Dubs]

[quote name='Metalmoore' post='640217' date='Oct 29 2009, 04:38 PM']Yeah i got the ultralites. My main concern is how the wood choices will make the bass sound since the wood descriptions on the warmoth website say maple gives a very very bright sound and that ash also gives a bright sound and i would like to get that thunderbird bassy tone.[/quote]

In all honesty, the electronics and amp will probably make more difference than the wood.

[7string]

Make sure that the ash that's being used is "southern" or "swamp" ash.

The "northern" stuff is heavy and is used for making baseball bats. The "southern" stuff is lighter in weight.

One of my basses has "northern" and the other "southern". There's about 5lbs in weight between the two of them

[henry norton]

Mahogany for the body if you want it to be close to a real TBird. I assume you're thinking of maple & ash because they're heavy and will go some way to counterbalancing the neck but bear in mind if you make it too heavy the weight could cause you more grief than the neck dive will. The Hipshots should help allot though.

What pickups are you thinking of using???

[Metalmoore]

I will be using a pair of Wizard "Gems" from Andy and it says on his site that when i order them i am to call or email and discuss what sound i would like out of them and I am unsure on the exact sound at the moment but will be using a Audere preamp with it.
It was suggested for it to be maple/ash/maple but i would prefer full ash as i prefer the lightness of a ash body and the finish will be a stain or dye or translucent blueburst and will look its best with an ash grain and in the end i want it to be ash unless someone can give me a good enough reason otherwise.
I have looked around here and talkbass and cant seem to find a solid answer to what wood would be best as i will be playing all genres of music but plenty of metal too as thats when a low B comes real handy.

[alexclaber]

[quote name='Dubs' post='640369' date='Oct 29 2009, 06:41 PM']In all honesty, the electronics and amp will probably make more difference than the wood.[/quote]

Depends on how clean and transparent they are. Honest pickups and amps will show up differences in wood easily.

If I wanted a Thunderbird tone I'd wouldn't consider anything other than a mahogany body - and tonally maple is pretty much the opposite of mahogany (and ash isn't all that far from maple tonally).

Alex