[7StringofAblicK]

my next carvin build will most likely be alder or swamp ash . However, I'm partial to strats

[soldierkahn]

Basswood is the IDEAL production guitar wood for damn near everything! Heres my reasoning.....

You have a lot of folks who swear by Mahogany, and those that swear by Alder ( whcih in case you didnt know, most Fenders are made of Alder and most Gibsons are made of Mahogany..... see the relationship of popularity? ). So here you have Ibanez....wanting to be a successful market for guitars, they choose basswood. A very cheap (not quality cheap, price cheap) tonewood because of it lying tonally BETWEEN Mahogany and Alder. A lot of the mahogany warm, with some residual bite from Alder.

Now while I do love my IBZ's (I have 4 basswoods, 2 7s, 2 6's), i am wanting to lean toward a mahogany 6er (im lookin at either RGT42DXFM Trans Lavender, or the RGT HR Giger model, both being mahogany). And when i can finally splurge the money, ill get a mahogany 7 (K7BG, or have a replica of my 1077 made and just have the body made out of Mahogany instead of Basswood)

My 2 cents

[Xtremevillan]

Why not get a Schecter, then...they're almost always mahogany bodies.

[Stitch]

Because Schecters suck.

[djpharoah]

Basswood is a good wood - and for most its great. However some of us like mahogany, swamp ash or alder. Its basically what you like. Its definitely not a bad quality wood.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by Xtremevillan

Why not get a Schecter, then...they're almost always mahogany bodies.

Do you read?

[Jongpil Yun]

Originally Posted by Pablo

Well, whilst I find basswood pretty bland, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it as a tone wood. My "bland" is other people's "even" - personally I prefer alder or even swamp ash (for that added "pop").

Cheers

Eske

Alder kicks ass.

[guitarplayerone]

Originally Posted by ZeroSignal

John "The Overlord" Petrucci

hahahaha.... a psycho lessons reference?

Btw Vai uses Alder on his Jems, which are just about all he plays nowadays.

Personally, while the frequence response range is very flat, I dont like that about basswood, for leads included.
Ive always been a mahogany guy, but its a real pain in the ass to get the levels balanced with mahogany guitars. i dig their sound though, its just something about it.

however, the maple on my jc really helps out the mahogany. in retrospect, all of the straight-mahogany bodied guitars ive ever played are really really muddy, and the maple really helps with the top end bite and cleans stuff up a bit

With that said, the next guitar I buy I want made of basswood. Next guitar on my list is the UV777

the best thing about basswood is how light it is. for all its virtues, carrying my mahogany bodied jc around is like carrying around a case full of bricks- yours too ruarc?

[Benzesp]

The thing that sucks IMO is RG bodies are almost always made out of 3 or more pieces of Basswood glued togeather. Without getting into a physics discussion 1 piece bodies, for the most part, are more resonant because of the uninterrupted grain pattern. I'm not saying that a 3 piece body cant sound good but I'd rather have a solid board any day. THe fact is almost all mass produced guitars are made of multi piece bodies so unless you are getting a really high end production model or a custom shop model you will be playing on chunks of wood glued togeather.

[newfinator]

I think some people confuse weight with the density of the wood grain and then extrapolate tone. Despite being very light basswood has a pretty tight grain which makes it resonant.

On a side note, my UV and RG550 are both basswood and couldn't sound anymore different if one were made of foam rubber.