Basswood Strats

[bbl4ck]

So, I went to see David Lindley last night at the Musical Instrument Museum [MIM] here in Phoenix.  An amazing musician in a really special venue.  I highly recommend paying a visit to MIM if you are anywhere near Phoenix.  The place is two floors of musical instruments of all shapes and sizes from all over the world.  They have one huge room on the ground floor full of all kinds of instruments that anybody can mess around with.  I think it's supposed to be for kids, but nobody has ever kicked me out.

Anyway, David had a small tribute to the recent death Allen Holdsworth at the beginning of the show.  David mentioned he saw him one time live out in L.A. many years ago.  Said most every famous guitar player around was in the audience and asking, how'd he do that...  David had a chance to see him after the show and asked him the question, what is the best wood to use for making a Stratocaster?  Allen told him [I am paraphrasing] there is only one wood to make a Strat; Basswood.

I decided to look in the showcase to see what it held along the line of strats.
Alder = 310
Ash = 333
Basswood = 17

Are we missing something here?  Thoughts...
:rock-on:

 

[DangerousR6]

The EBMM EVH sig guitars are all basswood, and I'd have to say one of the best sounding guitars I've owned..Not to mention, very light... :headbang1:

 

[bbl4ck]

The EBMM EVH sig guitars are all basswood, and I'd have to say one of the best sounding guitars I've owned..Not to mention, very light... :headbang1:

I honestly don't think I have ever knowingly played a basswood guitar.  Gonna have to check one out if I come across the opportunity!

 

[DangerousR6]

Got to be careful, very soft wood...

 

[JD0x0]

Guthrie Govan is also fond of Basswood (baked) (maybe because of Holdsworth-I know he looked up to him)

I find it to be quite soft and prone to denting. I believe it has properties that give it weaker treble and bass response, gives a little of a mid hump sound, which probably works well with mid scooped vintage spec single coils. It also tends to be light weight.

 

[Tonar8352]

I honestly don't think I have ever knowingly played a basswood guitar.

Wait a minute, what kind of wood is the Raven? I thought that was Basswood. Now I'm all cornfused.

 

[bbl4ck]

I honestly don't think I have ever knowingly played a basswood guitar.

Wait a minute, what kind of wood is the Raven? I thought that was Basswood. Now I'm all cornfused.

Only the top of The Raven is basswood, the body is Alder.  That was selected to get a nice clear top for Great Ape's fine work  :headbang:

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

My TFS6 is Basswood, so is my Ibanez 7 string.

Very consistent tonally, very reasonable weight.

 

[Cagey]

I honestly don't think I have ever knowingly played a basswood guitar.  Gonna have to check one out if I come across the opportunity!

You'd likely have noticed. They're typically freakishly lightweight. Also very soft and easy to damage, although that's not obvious until you inadvertently damage one.

 

[zebra]

My first thoughts are that they (basswood guitars) have a bad rad because they're considered "cheap."  It's a softer wood, so it's probably less expensive for guitar builders to work with - because it can be worked more quickly and dull edges less quickly.  Of course, if a thing is expensive, it must be more valuable.  :icon_scratch:  So the lower the cost probably also contributes to the perception of "cheapness."

Also, they're "non-vintage," meaning that they're not ash, alder, maple or mahogany. 

Lastly, they're soft, so they dent easily, and that adds to the "cheapness" thing.  I don't know how most people's guitars get banged up, but I don't find myself bumping into walls and such while playing guitar.  If it's part of someone's "stage-craft," well that I could see - but those sorts of folks like having guitars that look banged-up anyway, so a guitar that seems to resist wear-and-tear would seem undesirable to that crowd anyway.  My guitars only get beaten-up when a cat knocks them over.  :dontknow: 

I have a bad back, so lightweight guitars appeal to me.  Lightweight is a plus there.

My second last thought is that they don't look nice with transparent finishes. 

Everything written above probably applies to poplar as well.  I stripped the finish off of a cheap poplar guitar, and the wood I found beneath was surprising beautiful.  Not is a highly-figured AAAAA maple sort of way, but..you know.  Poplar is usually just used for solid finishes, because it often gets those green mineral-deposit stain - but some really nice pieces are out there.  It's just not practical for transparent finishes for larger-scale production. 

Long story told short:  You're just going to have to build a beautiful one for us to see, record some clips for us, and let us all find out for ourselves!

 

[stratamania]

The Ibanez Jem I used to have had a basswood body as do most of the Jems. That guitar had a great tone.

 

[Ace Flibble]

Simply saying 'basswood' doesn't mean much. There is almost as much variety in basswood as there is in mahogany. You can get nice, slightly tougher basswood which will sing for days, and you can get crappy super-soft basswood which resonates about as well as a water-logged corpse.

When you see basswood listed as the body wood of high-end shreddy guitars, it's going to be the good stuff. Fender has, very occasionally, used good basswood, too. That does not mean that every guitar you pick up with a basswood body is going to sound nice. There's plenty of cheap basswood out there. In fact the crappy basswood far outweighs (though definitely not literally) the good basswood.

Good basswood sounds a little like chambered (or simply heavily-routed) alder, when comparing otherwise-similar guitars. Treble dies off quicker and bass gets a little muted and muddled, but the mids remain the same so the overall effect is that it seems to punch through more. Kind of like the direct opposite to ash. Solid bodies sound a little chambered, chambered bodies sound a fair bit toward being semi-hollow. I've not made or used a true semi-hollow or hollowbody made of basswood, but I imagine by that point you'll have no treble at all and bass would become incredibly muddied.

For Stratocasters I don't think it makes too much of a difference from alder to spend much time thinking about. A standard Strat is so hacked-up, between the thin double cut, the bolt-on construction, the vibrato, and having half the front routed out and suspending everything from a sheet of plastic, that the difference between alder and basswood will be minimal, always.

FWIW, I've had a few basswood bodies from Warmoth (one Tele, two Jazzmasters) and they've both been kind of in the middle. Not the lightest or heaviest basswood, not the softest or hardest, and neither the most resonant nor the most dead. I think considering they charge less for it, Warmoth's basswood is fair and the baseline, minimum quality you should use. But you can definitely do better.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I've had a couple of Basswood Strats, and they were reasonably comparable to Alder strats, with just a tad less weight.

 

[aarontunes]

I decided to look in the showcase to see what it held along the line of strats.
Alder = 310
Ash = 333
Basswood = 17

Are we missing something here?  Thoughts...
:rock-on:

The showcase is pretty representative of Warmoth sales. What you see there is probably about right.


Plus all the other stuff everyone else has already said.


I've heard several accounts over the years of people having to drill/plug the holes for Floyd Rose studs in Basswood because over time the softness of the wood became an issue. That's said, I do think it sounds great...especially on shredders.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I decided to look in the showcase to see what it held along the line of strats.
Alder = 310
Ash = 333
Basswood = 17

Are we missing something here?  Thoughts...
:rock-on:

The showcase is pretty representative of Warmoth sales. What you see there is probably about right.


Plus all the other stuff everyone else has already said.


I've heard several accounts over the years of people having to drill/plug the holes for Floyd Rose studs in Basswood because over time the softness of the wood became an issue. That's said, I do think it sounds great...especially on shredders.

I've not had to do that to any of mine, and both of my Basswood bodies are 20+ years old with lots of activity on the wiggle stick.

 

[bagman67]

I had a Fender Aerodyne Tele for a few years that remains one of my "I never should have let it go" guitars.  It was basswood, but it had all the snap and snarl one hopes to encounter in a Telecaster, and light as a feather. And I am not hard on my guitars, for the most part, so it never got dinged up.  It was in brand new condition when I bought it from a young cop who had just started a family, and four years later it was unmarred - and I played it a fair amount.  I actually sold it so I could rationalize building partscasters.  THANKS OBAMA WARMOTH.


Curiously, every stock Aerodyne Strat from that same line (no pickguard, rear-routed) that I have encountered - and I'd say I have played 8-10 of them - has sounded like crap.

 

[aarontunes]

I actually sold it so I could rationalize building partscasters. 

Solid decision.


Logic checks out.

 

[Strat Avenger]

I have a basswood Ibanez guitar, and it's every bit as heavy as my alder Strats (and super-Strats).
In fact, the lightest guitar I own is my Alder Warmoth Soloist. So yeah, basswood varies just as much as any other species.

 

[Cagey]

Talking about smaller bodies with bigger necks in another thread, I got to thinking about a basswood Mustang modified to take a 25.5" neck. Regular Alder or Swamp Ash bodies in that style typically already only weigh between 3 and 4 pounds. Basswood would improve on that. So, I'd wager a roasted Maple neck on a basswood Mustang hardtail might come in around 5.5-6.5 pounds. Wouldn't that be fun?

 

[musicispeace]

People rave about pine telecasters but which wood is softer, pine or basswood? I think I have posted previously that Guthrie Govan's Charvel has a basswood body (with maple top) if I remember correctly. (I am aware that pine teles are not made with Home Depot-oatmeal-soft-pine but usually with aged, dry pine)