How to Select Woods for Bass Guitars
Building your own bass guitar can be an immensely rewarding experience. Your handmade instrument can be customized to fulfill your specific needs in terms of sound, appearance and the way the bass guitar feels in your hands. All of these factors are important to the passionate bass player, and all are heavily dependent on the type of wood used for the body of the bass. Selecting the proper type of wood for your bass involves a number of factors.
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Instructions
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Look, listen to and feel the different types of wood available for bass guitars.
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Weigh your options. Literally. Go to a wood shop and identify varieties of wood that may be appropriate for your instrument. Different varieties of wood vary in their density, even within the same family of tree. Swamp ash, for example, is very light, while green ash may be heavier. Pick up some actual pieces of wood you're considering to access the weight and decide whether they feel comfortable in your hands.
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A visual appraisal of the various types of wood should be performed so that you can decide which type of wood best characterizes the visual attributes of your ideal guitar. The color and grain patterns vary for different types of wood. A visit to a lumbar yard, or a consultation with a carpenter can avail you of the visual qualities of the various kinds of wood. Special types of wood such as burled maple offer a rustic earthy appeal, while some woods have a tight grain that lends itself well to lacquered surfaces.
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Listen to other bass guitars. The type of wood used to build your bass will affect the way the instrument sounds, and an auditory assessment of the acoustic qualities of various wood bass bodies will aid you in your decision as to what type of wood to use for your ideal instrument. The website Frudua.com explains that wood resonates, and its vibrations are transmitted to the strings that will carry your tone. Hardwoods are described as sounding brighter, while softer woods are warmer. Of course, these assessments are subjective, and only by listening for yourself will you be able to determine which type of wood creates the sound that you prefer.
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References
- Photo Credit guitar guitarist music musical instrument image by david hughes from Fotolia.com
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Comments
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edgewyze
Sep 20, 2010
Sometimes I get to write about cool stuff. I'm in the process of re-finishing a bass guitar of mine, so I'd already done a lot of research on this topic. The article practically wrote itself.
