Basswood vs Alder vs Swamp ash Strat?

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veji
veji
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Been thinking about getting a strat. For strats, what body wood do you prefer with a nice raw quartersawn maple neck and maple fingerboard? w/SSH pickup config.
Something that can cover SRV/John Mayer/Eric Johnson/ Mateus Asato and some 80's shred (lynch, Bratta, Norum, Joe Holmes etc. Thank you.
 
Maple body maple neck, maple fb...
And no it will not be bright...
 
I hate the soft laid back nature of basswood. I like the mids of alder and I also like the snappy vintage top end of ash. Between ash or alder, if you want something leaning more modern then go alder, if you want something more VH1 go ash.
 
Basswood is the least strat like in tone. If you’re looking for a super strat with a tone a little closer to a Les Paul, then basswood with a maple top is the best choice.

Alder is a little bigger and meaner sounding than ash. Ash is softer and sweeter sounding with a lot of harmonic overtones.

From the description of what you’re looking for it’s a coin flip between alder and ash.
 
Basswood with a maple top was what peavey standard guitars have and to my ears it actually suppresses the top end making the mids more pronounced with a darker sound overall, it doesn’t do what you think with an LP and make the top end balance out with the mids like an LP. I’ve grown to hate basswood over the years - you either love it or hate it.

I recommend ash. All alder guitars with maple necks like ESPs can be hard to find pickups that play well. I didn’t like what that wood combo sounded like with a 5150. These days I prefer alder/maple top, mahogany/maple top, or straight ash for vintage top end bite.
 
Alder all the way for me if you want great strat tone! Pine can actually be great too like on my Novo strat, but if you want that quintessential strat tone with all the greasiness, glassy, delicate qualities and other stereotypical tonal nuances of the great strat tones we’re used to you can only get it with alder imo. I’ve tried them all for body woods with strats. Alder just really works with those kinda pickups. Basswood imo is awful for reasons others mentioned (sounds weak, soft, flat, lacking frequencies). Ash can be good too, but I’ve personally only really cared for ash on Tele’s. Ash always to me had this weird, kinda bloated quality to the midrange that I never liked. Not nasal or honky, but maybe hollow, I don’t know, I just don’t like it, but for whatever reason it just works great for Tele’s. Maple body strats can be pretty good too like mentioned before, but while I agree brightness isn’t too much with it, I just feel that wood lacks too much tonal complexity to really highlight the 3D nuanced nature of strat pickups at their best
 
In order of preference: swamp ash, alder, basswood

Would never buy again: maple, rosewood, mahogany

To echo braintheory, pine is cool but I don't like it with a whammy.
Great on teles though!
 
Donnie B. said:
In order of preference: swamp ash, alder, basswood

Would never buy again: maple, rosewood, mahogany

To echo braintheory, pine is cool but I don't like it with a whammy.
Great on teles though!
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Yeah my Novo Tele in pine is also great, but not as twangy as the ash Tele’s I have. I didn’t like rosewood or mahongay either for strats. I was fantasizing about how great a mahogany strat would be for years, thinking it would be like the alder, but fatter, warmer and juicier, but just was never the case and I’ve tried so many. For whatever reason the mahogany strats tend to sound drier, maybe thinner actually and just kinda bland, basically like a guitar that wants to have humbuckers, but instead has something weaker in it
 
LP Freak said:
Lol, I was going to say the exact thing
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Pffft. Maple's nothing. :sneaky:
Try a solid rosewood one some time. George's tele was like that.
rose.jpg


Had a Melacon super strat with it and it was a boat anchor.

Just checked: Maple is 40-45 lbs. per cu-ft. Rosewood is 50-55.
 
Another vote against Basswood. Ive had several Basswood guitars and they all have that soft blah tone to them . No character , zero aggression. I would go Alder or Alder with a maple top. Ash is nice but it has a lot of attack, its laid back in the mids and is a bit thin on the high strings. It can sound awesome for rhythm but dont like it much for leads. Thats not to say there aren't exceptions to this and any wood for that matter. I actually had one basswood guitar that sound very good but I wouldn't suggest it because that was one out of 10 , lol. The other 9 were all blah
 
braintheory said:
Alder all the way for me if you want great strat tone! Pine can actually be great too like on my Novo strat, but if you want that quintessential strat tone with all the greasiness, glassy, delicate qualities and other stereotypical tonal nuances of the great strat tones we’re used to you can only get it with alder imo. I’ve tried them all for body woods with strats. Alder just really works with those kinda pickups. Basswood imo is awful for reasons others mentioned (sounds weak, soft, flat, lacking frequencies). Ash can be good too, but I’ve personally only really cared for ash on Tele’s. Ash always to me had this weird, kinda bloated quality to the midrange that I never liked. Not nasal or honky, but maybe hollow, I don’t know, I just don’t like it, but for whatever reason it just works great for Tele’s. Maple body strats can be pretty good too like mentioned before, but while I agree brightness isn’t too much with it, I just feel that wood lacks too much tonal complexity to really highlight the 3D nuanced nature of strat pickups at their best
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^This pretty much across the board for me. Alder for Strat bodies. I've tried to like Ash and Basswood and it just never works for me. I recently built a Pine-bodied Tele and I love that guitar.
 
LP Freak said:
Lol, I was going to say the exact thing
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It’s usually fairly heavy, but these things can vary. I tried once a killer sounding ‘50’s Les Paul Jr that was all maple body and neck, rosewood board and it weighed until 7 lbs
 
SpiderWars said:
^This pretty much across the board for me. Alder for Strat bodies. I've tried to like Ash and Basswood and it just never works for me. I recently built a Pine-bodied Tele and I love that guitar.
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Pine can be great! I’ve got 3 Novo’s, all roasted pine bodies: a tele (w/ p90 neck), strat and humbucker guitars by Novo and they all sound killer. Some of the best sounding non-vintage guitars I’ve tried imo. The only thing is because they’re so light, the notes sound airy and will never have the punch/density to the notes or chugs of guitars that use denser woods, but always trade offs with these things for the other great things pine can offer as a tonewood. I find the pine guitars to always be very well balanced tonally, nothing harsh and nothing overdone in the lows and a vintage type sound
 
the4thlast1 said:
Another vote against Basswood. Ive had several Basswood guitars and they all have that soft blah tone to them . No character , zero aggression. I would go Alder or Alder with a maple top. Ash is nice but it has a lot of attack, its laid back in the mids and is a bit thin on the high strings. It can sound awesome for rhythm but dont like it much for leads. Thats not to say there aren't exceptions to this and any wood for that matter. I actually had one basswood guitar that sound very good but I wouldn't suggest it because that was one out of 10 , lol. The other 9 were all blah
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Agreed. I’ve hated every basswood guitar I’ve tried thus far. Still gotta find one that prove me otherwise haha. I also never liked Ash for leads or single note stuff and I generally felt it lacks growl on chords, but for whatever reason a great tele just sounds right with it
 
God, this is SO ‘lumber dependent’ - an unusually good sounding piece of basswood can outshine a dud chunk of alder or swamp ash. Having owned and played all of your current options, basswood is my least favorite. I’ve lucked out a couple of times - but I find it to be ‘too’ warm / soft to the point of lacking clarity and attack. A hard, gloss paint finish on a basswood body can help with this. My first choice would be Alder. Very even, very balanced across the tonal spectrum of lows, mids and highs. I’ve got a roasted swamp ash strat and it’s got its own thing going on. I don’t ‘dislike’ it, but I’ve got an identically built strat in alder (Warmoth necks and bodies) and the alder build is just a touch firmer sounding with more clarity using identical Jalen Franky pickups and 2-post Hipshot non locking trems.
 

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PDC said:
God, this is SO ‘lumber dependent’ - an unusually good sounding piece of basswood can outshine a dud chunk of alder or swamp ash. Having owned and played all of your current options, basswood is my least favorite. I’ve lucked out a couple of times - but I find it to be ‘too’ warm / soft to the point of lacking clarity and attack. A hard, gloss paint finish on a basswood body can help with this. My first choice would be Alder. Very even, very balanced across the tonal spectrum of lows, mids and highs. I’ve got a roasted swamp ash strat and it’s got its own thing going on. I don’t ‘dislike’ it, but I’ve got an identically built strat in alder (Warmoth necks and bodies) and the alder build is just a touch firmer sounding with more clarity using identical Jalen Franky pickups and 2-post Hipshot non locking trems.
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That’s a good point, the quality of the piece of wood itself can be much more important than the wood type itself. Plenty of bad sounding alder and mahogany out there for sure, despite them being my usual go to’s
 
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