A constant argument (one that produces many flame wars on forums and arguments between friends) is weather or not different types of woods make any notable difference to the sound of electric guitars and basses. Musicians recognize Mahogany for example as a darker/deeper sounding wood when it comes to acoustic guitars, Alder being sort of in the middle, and woods like Maple or Bubinga being bright and bringing out the high notes.

One side of the myth is that since electric guitars and basses get their sound via pickups which are magnetic coils that respond to the vibration of the strings negating any noticeable difference in tone the body, neck, and fretboard woods would produce.

The other argument is that based on newtons law "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" that when the string is hit the sound produced will differ from one wood type to another because the vibration of the strings is interacting with the wood causing the wood to resonate. You can often hear a bass more clearly holding your ear against the body then through an amplifier. This adds some merit to this side of the argument.

The variables in this myth with off the shelf guitars could be a PAIN. Guitar fanatics will suggest that not only wood type, but fret bars, wear on the guitar, the nut, the bridge, fretboard, neck length, age of strings, material of strings, brand of strings, string gauge, tuning hardware, pots/pre-amps (hardware used in the volume and tone knobs on the bass) will all color the tone. (I may have missed a few

I suggest building custom instruments - basses and guitars to be thorough (in case there's more of a difference with one) and Warmoth dot com is a relatively inexpensive option to do so. In order to appease the guitar fanatics who watch your show you'll need to have a good luthier make sure the instruments are set up identically in terms of their truss rods through the neck, the string action, and string intonation.

You could of course bring in some famous rockers to help out

I'd be very interested to see what kind of waveform analysis you could do to settle this repeated world wide argument!

Thanks Mythbusters!