Whew, that thread developed nicely, thanks for everyone's input! I just have two questions:
1. Why did no one of you guys dig this up before?
2. Anybody got Dusty Hill's home number? I wanna buy a bass off him.
And balsa ain't no bad tone wood at all: My Yamaha RBX4 A2 A.I.R. (Alternative Internal Resonance) is made of balsa laminated by some harder wood. The sound? Warm and blurry, yet retaining a certain airiness. Great sound for an unplugged session where most piezo equipped acoustic basses would sound harsher. What it doesn't have is ball-shaking sublows like you would have from a, say, maple solid body , I always notice that when playing the Yamaha in a rehearsal space with a loud drummer, it then doesn't have quite the authority of other basses. Yamaha should offer a fretless version of it, that would sound perfect.
Uwe