I know and of course you're right. But funnily enough among my wood-wise best sounding basses is an Epi Explorer with a horrible anodyne-looking, dent-prone and suspiciously light (both in weight and color) "wonderwood" that sounds just impeccably responsive (plus you can leave marks in it with your fingernail!). Even my luthier was surprised by it (knowing Epi, they would probably never again be able to source it!).
I remember back in the 70ies when we lived in Zaire, "mahogany" wood (I use the term loosely, ain't no carpenter) was nothing special, it was the ubiquitous run of the mill-wood there, with a plain jane look and regularly painted or tainted over to make it look blacj rather than reddish. I still think of it as a non-descript looking wood, but I like its sonic characteristics. And those are shared by my Epi EB-3 Elitist which was advertised as "African mahogany" - and it does look quite a bit nicer than "genuine mahogany".
And then you have zebra(no) wood, which looks great in kitchens and on guitars, but sounds like (dead) crap.