Best wood combination?

[OddFutureWolfGang]

Hi, I'm planning on ordering a suhr modern custom guitar with maple neck and fretboard and either a swamp ash or mahogany body with a quilted maple top and I was wondering to have good low end punch as well as clarity and definition for modern metal rhythm and lead playing would I be better off clearing up a darker sounding guitar with bright pickups or beefing up a bright guitar with big sounding pickups?

[Twinfan]

I would go for the brighter guitar every time...

[Madsakre]

i like swamp ash

[MDV]

Given the choice, more treble from the guitar every time. Compensating for poor treble response with bright pickups and increasing treble never works nearly as well as taming something that has more than you need to begin with. Becomes especially relevent under high gain and digging clarity out of low tunings and fast riffs.

[dave_mc]

i agree with dave and mark- go brighter with the guitar and then tame it later elsewhere.

[Frank]

I'm a huge fan of ash bodied guitars, my two favourite strats are ash.

Not exactly sure how "swamp" ash is defined, I suspect it's become just a buzz word manufacturers use.

[Madsakre]

Ash according to warmoth:

Ash
Northern Hard Ash is very hard, heavy and dense. A Strat® body will normally weigh 5 lbs. and up. Its density contributes to a bright tone and a long sustain which makes it very popular. Its color is creamy, but it also tends to have heartwood featuring pink to brown tints. The grain pores are open and it takes a lot of finish to fill them up.

Swamp Ash
Swamp Ash is a prized wood for many reasons. It is a fairly light weight wood which makes it easily distinguishable from Hard Ash. A Strat® body will normally weigh under 5 lbs. Many of the 50's Fenders were made of Swamp Ash. The grain is open and the color is creamy. This wood is a very nice choice for clear finishes. Swamp Ash is our second most popular wood. It is a very musical wood offering a very nice balance of brightness and warmth with a lot of "pop".

[OddFutureWolfGang]

Wow everybody definitely seems to be in agreement here haha. That said which listed combination would give me the most
Balanced tone if I threw a basswood body in the mix?

[Frank]

I can't be 100% certain but I suspect my 1983 strat has a basswood body. It's nowhere near as heavy as alder but the tone still has some of the bright percussive attack of ash.

Video of it here

I also had a 1986 Japanese E Series Squier with a basswood body and that had the same clarity and attack.

[OddFutureWolfGang]

^ Wow that's a really thick, juicy lead tone!
I'm a bit torn now because I have an ash Schecter Loomis with maple neck and fretboard that I love but I had a lower end basswood maple/maple RG that sounded really dull and lifeless but the tone of that basswood maple/maple guitar is pretty amazing.  :?

[Frank]

For that cold, hard funky rythm sound I've never found another strat that sounds like it - and that's with the original Fender pickups. Not sure if it would suit modern metal though!

[OddFutureWolfGang]

Not sure if it would suit modern metal though!

Lol I was afraid you might say that. But say I slapped a C-Pig in the bridge of it?  :band1:

[Frank]

Lol I was afraid you might say that. But say I slapped a C-Pig in the bridge of it?  

Sorry, not my area of expertise! I'm all about single coil pickups, just strats and teles really. Humbuckers don't do it for me.

[Telerocker]

Ash according to warmoth:

Ash
Northern Hard Ash is very hard, heavy and dense. A Strat® body will normally weigh 5 lbs. and up. Its density contributes to a bright tone and a long sustain which makes it very popular. Its color is creamy, but it also tends to have heartwood featuring pink to brown tints. The grain pores are open and it takes a lot of finish to fill them up.

Swamp Ash
Swamp Ash is a prized wood for many reasons. It is a fairly light weight wood which makes it easily distinguishable from Hard Ash. A Strat® body will normally weigh under 5 lbs. Many of the 50's Fenders were made of Swamp Ash. The grain is open and the color is creamy. This wood is a very nice choice for clear finishes. Swamp Ash is our second most popular wood. It is a very musical wood offering a very nice balance of brightness and warmth with a lot of "pop".

This

I have an ash and swampash HSS-strat and the swampash is lighter, but bigger sounding. Punch, warmth, clarity all in there. The fretboard is ebony so it has a lot of pop, which I like. It's loaded with a Crawler and IT's. The midrangy Crawler balances everything. For your style I would pick swampash for the extra punch and noteclarity and choose pickups with enough mids. Something like ceramic Nailbombs or Aftermaths.

[OddFutureWolfGang]

Hmmm interesting. I'm surprised you recommended two ceramic bridge hums for swamp ash. Maybe the ash in my Loomis has a different tonality than "swamp ash" but I would expect most to recommend an alnico pickup for that body wood. I'm definitely curious though.