what body wood with maple board?

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rob

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Hi,
i am thinking about ordering a SSI 6string. I am sure that the fingerboard will be birdseye maple. The top should be of a bright colour too.
Now comes my question : What type of neck wood and body wood will suit best the maple board (to get the sound i want)?
The music i want to play with the bass will be some kind of jazz-funk-soul thing...
 
Hey Rob,I reckon a standard stage 1 with a maple board would suffice.
 
rob said:
Hi,
i am thinking about ordering a SSI 6string. I am sure that the fingerboard will be birdseye maple. The top should be of a bright colour too.
Now comes my question : What type of neck wood and body wood will suit best the maple board (to get the sound i want)?
The music i want to play with the bass will be some kind of jazz-funk-soul thing...
Click to expand...
`

I've always liked swamp ash with maple, Fl or frets, mag or piezo. If thaz too hot for your taste, maple looooove mahogany !!

`
 
i was about to say ash. it would be kinda like a 70's jazz bass...
 
If you're not looking for a really hi-fi growly, classic Warwick tone, then don't go with a Wenge or Ovangkol neck. Stay with a maple neck, and a swamp ash or other darker toned body wood. A all maple bass will be very bright.
 
My idea was the following :
Swamp ash body
olive top
maple neck
birdseye maple fretboard...
what do you think?
 
I like the sound of that.It'd be good to see an olive Warwick.
 
that sounds great! I hear olive is a excellent tone wood....but as a top, it won't have much effect on tone.
 
CaryTheLabelGuy said:
that sounds great! I hear olive is a excellent
tone wood....but as a top, it won't have much effect on tone.
Click to expand...
`

I tried three fretted basses with mahogany bodies, but two of them had
tops. The ovangcal top did not have a matching back, but the maple top
did. The basses were new, and otherwise identical. The ovangcal top
was mellow compared to the maple top and back. The third bass was
straight hog, with no top or back, and it was brighter/hotter than the
one with the ovangcal top, but less hot than the maple/hog 'sandwich'.

This kinda stunned me, as I had been believing that there would be just
a barely noticeable shift in tonal coloration ... but they were three very
different basses. Ovangcal is known as an oily wood. If olive is also oily
[I'm thinking olive oil here, but that comes from the fruit .... ] it may
have the same mellowing effect as the ovangcal. I spoze if you did get
an olive wood top, instead of waxing it, you'd use .... well, you know ....
I don't hafta say it, right ? I'm thinking sorta "Basso Pesto" :-)

Choosing wood is always such a crapshoot unless you have the finished
products at hand to play. BTW, I chose the ovangcal topped bass for the
fretted and then later I found an FL version of the maple 'sandwich'; and
they are are great pair of [nonwarwick] 35" 5-strings. They have 19mm
spacing, so there's a lotta lumber in that 35" neck, which makes it all
the more amazing that just a partial change in the body wood can have
so much effect on the tone.
 
golem said:
CaryTheLabelGuy said:
that sounds great! I hear olive is a excellent
tone wood....but as a top, it won't have much effect on tone.
Click to expand...
`

I tried three fretted basses with mahogany bodies, but two of them had
tops. The ovangcal top did not have a matching back, but the maple top
did. The basses were new, and otherwise identical. The ovangcal top
was mellow compared to the maple top and back. The third bass was
straight hog, with no top or back, and it was brighter/hotter than the
one with the ovangcal top, but less hot than the maple/hog 'sandwich'.

This kinda stunned me, as I had been believing that there would be just
a barely noticeable shift in tonal coloration ... but they were three very
different basses. Ovangcal is known as an oily wood. If olive is also oily
[I'm thinking olive oil here, but that comes from the fruit .... ] it may
have the same mellowing effect as the ovangcal. I spoze if you did get
an olive wood top, instead of waxing it, you'd use .... well, you know ....
I don't hafta say it, right ? I'm thinking sorta "Basso Pesto" :-)

Choosing wood is always such a crapshoot unless you have the finished
products at hand to play. BTW, I chose the ovangcal topped bass for the
fretted and then later I found an FL version of the maple 'sandwich'; and
they are are great pair of [nonwarwick] 35" 5-strings. They have 19mm
spacing, so there's a lotta lumber in that 35" neck, which makes it all
the more amazing that just a partial change in the body wood can have
so much effect on the tone.
Click to expand...

Interesting indeed! In my experience, it always seemed like the top species didn't have much effect on tone. I know my FNA Jazzman LTD 04 sounds great with the ash body and koa top, but it sounds very similar to a regular corvette with a ash body, minus the brightness from the ebony fretboard that is on my LTD. Of course, the powerful J/TJ pup set-up is a big factor as to why i still think it is one of the most versatile basses i own, the swamp ash back seems to really shine on this bass. Maybe it is the koa top effecting the overall tonal qualities? All i know is, a swamp ash body, koa top and ebony fretboard really sings! Especially when you couple that with the J/TJ configuration.

I would be very interested in hearing a A/B comparison of a swamp ash body with ebony fretboard, no top and my FNA LTD.

Regarding wood choices from the CS, it is a crapshot if you don't have a bass to play that features the same woods. When i'm spec'ing out a CS bass, i just rely on my experience with the woods i'm interested in and lot of research to find out what the combinations are going to sound like. I did this with my streamer stage 1 CS and it worked perfectly. I got exactly what i had in mind. There are so many factors that go into making a bass sound a certain way and wood specie combinations if one of the biggest!

You were right on the olive wood. The CS shop says to use olive oil instead of wax on the Olive wood. Since ovangkol and wenge are so simliar tonally, is wenge considered a oily wood as well? They are both very special wood species. I don't think i could live without either. Every bass i own has one or the other in it.
 
`

I spoze there's more variables than we know, or even imagine !

Of course, gotta be talkin real tops here, no veneers.

OK, letting my brain spin outa control: Suppose, when used as the main
body wood, some species are nearly immune to the effect of a top, and
others are very easily influenced by a top. So I'm wondering about my
mahogany FL-and-Fretted pair, mentioned earlier. Maybe 'hog is really
easily influenced by tops and backs.

I approached the whole thing as a doubter, a serious nonbeliever, so I
was certainly not hearing something cuz I "wanted" to hear it. AAMOF,
the versions I chose cost seriously more greenbacks than the plain 'hog
version, so I would have been happy to find little or no effect :-/

OTOH, on a mainly swamp ash body, the fairly common use of a maple
cap impresses me as mostly cosmetic. This kinda makes a lotta sense.
Structurally, swamp ash is already a multiple laminate, by nature, of
soft and hard layers .... so maybe thaz why adding one more layer, by
gluing on some maple, is just a drop in the bucket tone-wise.

Golem will now rein in his outa control brain and try to keep this short.

The rein
on brain
stays mainly
off the train
[ Oy think oy've gawwwdtitttt ! ]

`
 
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