Favorite Top woods and why?

[Carlis Hsu]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

Lightest in color maybe but not lightest in weight.

For weights of our woods, please take a little time and study the charts that I personally made from weighing several individual samples of woods in MY stock here in the building, dried and ready to use.

Do you remember any Ken Smith bass that was particularly light in weight?

I wonder how important the weight as a factor would be for a good tone, and if a light weight would compromise that tone.

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Carlis Hsu

Do you remember any Ken Smith bass that was particularly light in weight?

I wonder how important the weight as a factor would be for a good tone, and if a light weight would compromise that tone.

Light in weight? Given that the Necks and everything else would all be the same, only the body wings would be different. I think from medium woods, you can go up a pound for the heavier woods and down a pound for the lightest possible woods.

If we use a 3-pc neck, it will be lighter than the 5pc. The laminated heel with just maple, is also lighter. Morado fingerboard is again lighter.

The lightest core wood we ever used was Palownia. It looks like swamp ash but feels half the weight. But, it's soft and doesn't sand easily against the other woods so we only tried it once that I can recall. Plain un-figured walnut is about the lightest top wood we have used.

If the body is too light and the neck is normal, the bass could be neck heavy. Balance is the key, not light on one end of the instrument.

[Scott Pope]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

Balance is the key, not light on one end of the instrument.

Absolutely! Over the past 36 years of playing electric bass, I've always had more fatigue with instruments that were either body or neck heavy instead of balanced, even if the balanced instrument weighed a pound or two more overall.

[Jason Mendelson]

What first turned me on to Smiths in the 90's was seeing the beautiful Flamed and Quilted Maple tops.

I still say a 5A Quilted Maple / Flamed Maple top would take the cake...

For me, walnut. Always seemed like a total package choice for a top wood. Beautiful in presentation (even the grades that aren't super figured), dense enough to provide a good amount of sustain yet not too terribly heavy. When I think of the classic smith sound I think of walnut tops.

[Michael McNally]

Plain dark ebony, with no figure. It just looks like pure class to me, especially with a gloss finish. Second choice would be morado, straight grain..cathedral cut I believe, just so natural and beautiful looking!

[Rainer Bastian]

+1 for Ebony tops, but for me they could be highly figured. These basses not only look wonderful, they have THE sound to me. I played 3 with these tops and they all were killin'.

Second choice would be dark Cocobolo or figured Koa.