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Old 04-23-2007, 11:27 PM
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Ken Smith Ken Smith is offline
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Lightbulb Ebony?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tamás Száva View Post
What sound does cherry exactly produce? One of the leading musical instrument builders of this country told me that cherry was an exellent wood choice for a bass body center, due to its light weight and sound, but in fact I've never heard of any cherry bass.
It's interesting for me because -although my next bass will be a Smith for sure now- originally I've been thinking of having one built here. The problem was that I wanted swamp ash then, which doesn't grow in Europe. So we started thinkink of domestic wood choices and it turned out that there weren't so many. Hungarian ash for example (used earlier by German company Esh - used to own their bass-) has even more aggressive mids compared to swamp, and is usually extremely heavy, etc. (This lack of wood choice would explain why most European classical string instruments used to be built of maple, pinewood and ebony...)
Same sound as maple, or goes deeper?
Ebony is not from Europe. It is imported from Africa and India mainly. Many countries but wood form others for centuries including the USA. How about the Bow woods? Those are from Tropical America usually.

On the Cherry, it is almost as hard as Maple and Walnut so I don't see the light weight part about it. Many fine Hungarian Basses, Cellos and Violins have been made with domestic Carpathian Maple which is not so hard or heavy. Try some of that and I am sure you will like it. As for the Bass itself, I don't know what your Luthier can do but I would easily make good Basses with the same Maple as used there for Violins.

Tonight as a matter of fact I did a Symphony Rehearsal with a bass believed to have been made in Hungary. It has an Italian Label but is a counterfeit. It's my Bisiach labeled Bass. It sounds great and is one of my lightest Basses but not small at all. Must be the wood used.
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