I thought Basswood was for cheap guitars?

Gilly

CaseOfAce said:

I bought the JV modified 50s version custom tele earlier this year - I wanted a tele again but didn't want to pay silly Custom Shop prices - this was the pick of the bunch in the shop for me and so I took this home and couldn't stop playing it.

I only learnt after it was basswood (I'd already assumed poly coated) - and was about to pick up the cork (ain't a real tele is it?) - and then came to my senses.

Gigged it thru a hot rod deluxe and few pedals Friday night and to my ears I don't think I've ever sounded better thru my rig. It sounded gorgeous....

There was a time when I wouldn't even consider something unless it was period correct with a nitro finish...  

Haven’t played the Tele but I tried the 60s JV modified Strat in a shop and it was a really great guitar. The V shape neck is amazing. I preferred it to some of the more expensive Strats they had in. I’m seriously tempted to get one. 

WezV

Stuckfast said:

I want my guitars to be made of guitarwood. Basswood is for basses obvs.

Sorry to be pedantic, but its pronounced like the fish, or the beer.   

hollywoodrox

It’s good enough for vai & satch 

ICBM

WezV said:

Stuckfast said:

I want my guitars to be made of guitarwood. Basswood is for basses obvs.

Sorry to be pedantic, but its pronounced like the fish, or the beer.   

Base guitar, innit?

Funkfingers

Basso profundo!

Creed_Clicks

I know that anything but basswood makes me play way better.

Whitecat

TrentGuitars said:

Body wood doesn’t really affect cost for solid bodies unless you’re talking figured woods. These days most are selected for lightness and to a degree the sound.

For a boutique builder probably not, but to a volume producer selling guitars in the tens of thousands at rock bottom prices, even a dollar or two a blank will get noticed by the bean counters.

DefaultM

I've lost count of the amount of times I've come off stage and heard comments about how it was okay but would have been improved if my guitar was made from a different wood. 

Oh wait no actually its zero. Zero times.

Dominic

I have Basswood Brad Paisley tele and MM Albert Lee and BOTH  are fantastic

roberty

DefaultM said:

I've lost count of the amount of times I've come off stage and heard comments about how it was okay but would have been improved if my guitar was made from a different wood. 

Oh wait no actually its zero. Zero times.

According to a brass player I shared several festival stages with, "all electric guitars sound the same"

Greatape

roberty said:

DefaultM said:

I've lost count of the amount of times I've come off stage and heard comments about how it was okay but would have been improved if my guitar was made from a different wood. 

Oh wait no actually its zero. Zero times.

According to a brass player I shared several festival stages with, "all electric guitars sound the same"

To which you reply, 'all brass players sound the same amount out of tune to me. But in varying directions.' 

PLOP

Tone wood on electric guitars is a myth 









 
(Brace for impact)

WezV

PLOP said:

Tone wood on electric guitars is a myth 









 
(Brace for impact)

I agree.   

It's not like acoustics where a "tonewood" is everything to do with the grade of the wood, not the species.  I.e.  not all sitka spruce is a tonewood, it needs to be straight grained and sawn right to meet that grade. 

There are materials that you can build electric guitars with, and materials you can't.  Some work better than others, but as long as that material can hold a neck, bridge  and some way to sense the string vibration it will work to some degree, and you can probably make music with it.

None of the woods commonly used in electric guitars have a tonewood grading system.   Take mahogany sold for guitar bodies, it can be light, heavy, flatsawn, quartersawn, stiff, flexible, knotty, etc.... just needs to be the right size.   Any expectations anyone has of a mahogany body sound will depend as much on individual piece as any species generalisation, it varies massively.

 It's important to seperate out the term "tonewood" from the  "does body material make a difference to the final amplified tone of the electric guitar?" discussion.

Funkfingers

Every electric guitar is an assemblage of disparate parts. Some permutations gel nicely. Others, for whatever reason, do not.

If a given assemblage satisfies your requirements, buy it. Don't by the one, in a cooler colour, displayed next to it. Buy the one that suits you.

As soon as I first tried a friend's LP P90 Goldtop, I knew that it was the one for me. Took me five or six years to get him to part with it. In that time, I chanced upon a pre-owned LP Junior Special that proved to be great fun once the stock P100 pickups were surgically removed.

Win, win.

andy_k

I really don't get the obsession from people who claim that 'tonewood' isn't a thing.
We all play guitar here, so I assume we all understand everything has a consequence?
I have now built enough versions of the same basic guitar, to appreciate that there are tonal effects from the type of wood used for a body, neck or fretboard, so the people that claim it doesn't matter, just sound ignorant to me.
I play electric guitar, but at least 90 per cent of the time, I am playing it un amplified, so it is also behaving as an acoustic instrument.
I have teles built from light ash, walnut and mahogany, they all sound very different acoustically, and they all have different pickup specs, so they obviously sound different at 85-90 db.
A factory building solid colour painted guitars will have very different criteria to a home builder using stains and oil finishes, for obvious reasons related to profit and cost benefits, so 'tone' comes quite far down the list of importance.
We don't yet have genetically modified, cloned trees to be able to do accurate comparisons, but I guess we will get there one day.
I'm sure the guy that made a body out of pencils is one of the people that claim it is just as good 'tonally'.
Some arguments just seem to go round and round, tonewood has been done to death, and still nothing has been 'proven'.

ICBM

There are two diametrically opposite things that are true at the same time. (Kind of "Schrödinger's tonewood", or something .)

1. All electric guitars sound the same, especially to non-guitarists, to a very close degree. Even experienced guitarists can't always identify them or tell very different ones apart in a recording.

2. All electric guitars sound different, to a sometimes microscopically subtle degree which depends on almost every aspect of the construction, *to the person actually playing them*.

This is because the player is inside the 'feedback loop' from ear to brain to hands to guitar to whatever is being used to amplify it, and tiny differences that are inaudible to anyone else, change how what reaches your ears varies according to what your hands do. Body wood is one of these things - although not always dependent on the wood species, individual pieces can vary at least as much, but when you've played hundreds of them you start to notice patterns.

Strat54

It was Tom Andersons own personal body wood of choice in the 90's. I had one. great guitar...and not cheap. Its not poplar.

andy_k

ICBM said:

There are two diametrically opposite things that are true at the same time. (Kind of "Schrödinger's tonewood", or something .)

1. All electric guitars sound the same, especially to non-guitarists, to a very close degree. Even experienced guitarists can't always identify them or tell very different ones apart in a recording.

2. All electric guitars sound different, to a sometimes microscopically subtle degree which depends on almost every aspect of the construction, *to the person actually playing them*.

This is because the player is inside the 'feedback loop' from ear to brain to hands to guitar to whatever is being used to amplify it, and tiny differences that are inaudible to anyone else, change how what reaches your ears varies according to what your hands do. Body wood is one of these things - although not always dependent on the wood species, individual pieces can vary at least as much, but when you've played hundreds of them you start to notice patterns.

The 'feedback loop' is something I have tried to explain to non musician friends, they just don't get it.
Same as I don't get the 'thrill' of losing £100 at the horses.

WezV

Strat54 said:

It was Tom Andersons own personal body wood of choice in the 90's. I had one. great guitar...and not cheap. Its not poplar.

No, its basswood, lime, linden etc.  But Poplar makes fine guitars too, and they are quite similar in many ways

Rich210

My doheny v12 is a basswood body. Made a very light resonant instrument so I'm happy.