basswood

Opinions om basswood. I quite like it personally and have never had a problem with the tone I get from it and its very low weight. Only reason I ask is to see what people think as some people swear by ut and others claim its crap mainly cos its on cheaper guitars

sounds close to mahogany, very light, dents and cracks easily, takes finish poorly, weak grain looks unattractive in translucent finishes like sunburst

strat bodies clock in at the low end of the scale for alder

Jeff Beck favors basswood strats but if he dents one the fender custom shop just gives him a couple new ones

it was also very popular in the 80s for shred guitars but the basswood shred guitars of the era have not survived as well as the ones made from more durable and traditional woods

Very fat, and lower mid heavy, but somehow not honky, and with good clarity, and smooth, not so much tight lows. A little dull, not much grain, but aesthetics aren't the whole thing. Overall quite rich, warm, and with a decent sustain I'd say, probably not that good for too heavy metal. Petrucci likes it, but he doesn't really chug, or riff too much.

Pick ups and amp will decide how heavy your tone is gunna be. I've seen people in death metal bands with basswood bodied Ibanezs' and people playing rock etc with them, like the dude from the offspring. I personally don't think wood affects how heavy a sound you can get, maybe the tone of the guitar unplugged but plugged in, to my ears there's not a huge difference when you have the same hardware, wiring and pickups

Not totally, but you can use woods that lean a little more towards it, like woods with tighter lows, and potentially less brightness, and/or mids. It doesn't dictate it much, but its just another bit of the cocktail.

Pick ups and amp will decide how heavy your tone is gunna be. I've seen people in death metal bands with basswood bodied Ibanezs' and people playing rock etc with them, like the dude from the offspring. I personally don't think wood affects how heavy a sound you can get, maybe the tone of the guitar unplugged but plugged in, to my ears there's not a huge difference when you have the same hardware, wiring and pickups

well, there are frequency dependent dynamics unique to each wood, but using hot pickups, particularly overwound humbuckers, will tend to homogenize these characteristics even playing clean due to midrange-focus and compression character or a more powerful inductor... basswood does not have a snappy attack, while other woods do (the main difference I hear between basswood and mahogany is the attack in similar designs)... I think basswood is popular with some for bolt-ons because the bolt neck tends to produce a snappier attack than a set neck (for reasons I can outline if you insist) not to mention the fact that bolts tend to be fender scale which is snappier and richer in high order harmonics with a fast decay by its very nature. Basswood evens this out to an extent

this is all subtle stuff in the realm of heavy music with silly, hot pickups and you will notice more than your audience and that's only if you have the ears for it

put some classic strat pickups ina basswood axe, an alder one and a swamp ash one and be amazed when you plug into a grown up amp without any effects in line... there will be more than just a difference in frequency response... switch to hot humbuckers and a gain-bangin' modern amp and then? as I said, who cares? the difference will be so subtle on hose of us with excellent ears will ehar it and then it will be apples and apples, maybe a slight change in punchiness and articulation from guitar to guitar

everything you add electronically from more winds of wire or a different magnet powering your transducer to effects, gain in voltage, RC filtering, loudspeakers voiced for a lot of extra presence or to provide a little of their own distortion? it homogenizes the acoustic properties of solid guitars... I have a great love of minimalist stuff from pickups to speakers because I can really hear 'the wood' when I plug into a single fat gainstage with a little filtering right into an open-band cathode biased power amp, its minimal coloration of what my guitar is kicking out acoustically... there is something to be said for the matchless ef86 channel driving a super flat speaker like an EV 12L or E series JBL, you are really going to HEAR things with the input set to 2 and the bass caps set wide open for a really flat response... heavy guys don't play like this, its not heavy. Their sound relies on a large peak to peak from the guitar which introduces a lot of artifacts right from the jack and from there you are looking at tone of gain and RC filtering to get THAT sound. Really look at some pedal and amp schematics, even something basic like a tubescreamer and fender twin rig and pick out all the spots where the bass, treble and mids are being attenuated at specific frequencies, I could go on and on. You chain up all these RC stages between gain and clipping stages and the wood stops being a major factor.

but in general, Liam, I think you are confusing 'can't hear it' with 'doesn't matter from the back of the theater'

if you like a guitar then buy it and play it, my only qualm with basswood is the poor durability... if you've seen my alder strat you can see what over a decade of heavy gigging, much of it in crappy dive venues w/o road crew, has done to it... if it were made of basswood I woulda needed a new body by now. But if you can keep the guitar safe and you enjoy playing it then it WILL sound good because lets face it, a guitar that you feel comfortable with and have fun playing always sounds better than a guitar that's uncomfortable and not fun to play because your PLAYING is better and that's really what its all about. Your tone is secondary to how well you play as long as you don't sound like a blizzard of nails! Just remember to baby basswood guitars, they are NOT durable. If I had a nickel for every older basswood superstrat I've seen with chnks broken out of it and heel cracks stopped up with superglue.... well, I would buy myself some more cool guitars.

While we're on this subject, what is pine like as a tonewood? I'm considering this http://intl.fender.com/en-GB/series/special-edition/modern-player-telecaster-plus-maple-fingerboard-charcoal-transparent/

unless its old, reclaimed pine it is very porous and takes finish poorly, though there are different species of pine suitable for building things like furniture and guitars and they are all a little different... new pine is also very soft and prone to denting with the slightest tap, though it is not prone to cracking like basswood... hardware should be attached with oversized wood screws as small screws with fine thread have a tendency to rip themselves free over time. Though Leo's prototype solid body was made from sugar pine he went with a more durable wood once production went into full swing around 1950 which was pretty good idea given his method of attaching necks. Even the tele I had that was made from really dense and heavy pine reclaimed from a 200 year old barn ahd the neck attacked with a more modern bolting system: using threaded inserts and heavy duty bolts so nothing was biting into the malleable pine.

Pine has a cool sound though, tough to describe as the sound varies a bit from species to species and with drying method (kiln versus a really old chunk of pine that's been left to dry out naturally for years)... the drying method seems to make more of a difference with pine than with more traditional tone woods.

If you aren't worried about durability try the Fender pinecaster, just baby it. Also, expect a thick finish that will deaden the guitar a bit. Gloppy, self-levelling modern finishes are easiest to apply quickly to pine so I would expect that's what you will get on a factory guitar at this price range.

Yeah I'm slightly skeptical, but it sounds cool. Cool, but with issues. Somewhat like Kurt Cobain...

if I were going to purchase a new fender tele I would go with one of these and upgrade the saddles to hipshot compensated brass and later on get a new set of pickups for it:

http://intl.fender.com/en-GB/series/classic/classic-series-50s-telecaster-lacquer-maple-fingerboard-white-blonde/

if I didn't want to spring the extra 200-queen-bucks for the old school finish I would go 60s as many 60s fenders were coated with fullerplast prior to being shot with acrylic rather than nitro anyway, so its not a historical solecism)... I would probably get some steel compensated saddles right away and again purchase some bespoke 60s style tele pickups down the road:

http://intl.fender.com/en-GB/series/classic/classic-series-50s-telecaster-lacquer-maple-fingerboard-white-blonde/

but really the fender classic pickups, though not remotely period correct (ask me, I know more about tele pickups than any other pickup), sound pretty good and the classic series usually get decent CTS dish pots and carling switches, or at elast that's what fender put in my esquire, but tis a really early classic series, older than you I think