Baswood VS Alder Body for Metal ...
Watching the Warmoth video (and the one on neck wood), I was actually surprised at how little difference there was. Sure I heard differences (sorta), but man, they were a lot closer than I thought they'd be.
I have a problem with the way they do those videos. It’s the way the guy plays. He strums some chords and stuff, but he’s not in the area on the neck where you might hear a difference, like playing single notes around the 14th fret.
He’s kind of playing in a way to make them sound the same.
But recently he said in an interview on YouTube how he was surprised how much of a difference something like fretboard wood makes.
I’m a luthier. I don’t pick the type of wood I’m using just based on how it will sound, but I’m aware of it based on my experience, both building and playing guitars.
Here’s a good example. These two basses were built around the same time. Both have cherry bodies from the same board. The necks are 7 piece maple/purpleheart, also from the same boards. One bass has some additional figured maple in the neck. The fretboards are black paper phenolic (ebonol). They have dual truss rods and carbon fiber reinforcement.
Between the back and top is a 1/4” layer of purpleheart.
The bass on the left has a zebrawood and the bass on the right is birdseye maple.
At one point they had identical EMG pickups and Gotoh bridges.
The zebrawood top bass is very mellow sounding, while the maple top bass is brighter and louder acoustically.
So that leaves the top wood as the only differentiator.
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