Yeah, this guy knows nuthin.
Not.
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You clearly didn’t watch the video 
spoiler: the tip was to turn up the volume and play lighter. Good technique tip from Mark as usual, but it had nothing to do with instrument selection or other characteristics of the instrument itself, as discussed above.
Still waiting to hear an example of an actual instrument with a sustain problem.
For bass I like sustain when I play around with ambient and soundscapes type of music. Practical? No. Fun? Yes! Maybe something more practical is the stoner/doom genre which usually holds notes longer, still depends on the song tho. 
The discussion about finding an instrument with no sustain is a bit weird. I do know that the sustain should be a bit better with neck trough basses/guitars. There are so many options to get more sustain and good technique does the trick. A compressor helps with sustain too.
Ah the OP was on about weight not sustain lol
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Yeah, the flip to sustain started from a simple aside by me, wondering about it as a bass selection criteria that I have seen come up a few times as arguments against lighter tonewoods. More or less a side conversation that took off.
No one ever said sustain was bad
It turned into an interesting conversation/discussion though so by all means, continue 
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Pretty sure that a heavy bass for more sustain is a bit of bullshit argument these days lol (maybe this was a thing before I was born). I tried Sandberg basses which were lighter than most of my other basses and pretty sure they had more sustain. Think it has more something to do with the build, neck connection and perhaps the type of wood that is used.
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Agree completely 
Here’s a guy talking about the forum winesnobbing that goes on around it, and did an actual test.
Results spoiler: his Ibanez Talman had the best sustain of all, lol. Even beat a 5kg Stingray. But they all did just fine.
And the money quote, “All during this test, never at any time did I think ‘I wish I had more sustain on this bass.’”
Have to admire his excellent taste in audio interfaces as well
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I think the physics involved are too complicated really to be able to confidently make any such correlation. There are many parts involved in what is going on here, but the strings and how they are set up are the central pieces.
I don’t use sustain as a gauge to distinguish good basses from bad basses (but I have secretly marveled at how long the low E is sustained on my Roks 
), but it is a good tool to check setup issues (i.e., when one string decays significantly faster than the others; and here, “significantly faster” is of course something taught by experience). You might find, for example, that a string is twisted and thus has less sustain (and less harmonics) than expected etc.
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Yeah, it can also be a good fretting technique check.
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For sure and completely agree! Way too many variables to take into account, but my point is that it doesn’t matter at all if a bass is heavy or not if you want good sustain.
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Both of my Warwicks were well under 4kg and had sustain for days. Same goes for my SBV. Both my MIJ P and my TRBX - alder bodies, nice and light, same story.
My BB734A had an alder body surrounding a maple core and was well over 4kg. Sustain was great but not noticeably better than the others.
It’s a myth
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Yes… bbbbut TONEWOOD!
Winesnobbing aside… how many of us are actually good enough to hear the difference in a mix, or even against a backing track (listening or playing)? I mean honestly, without bass snobbo-geekery?
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Q: Does sustain matter?
A: Depends
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My MDB5 has the best sustain in my house by a mile, and it’s possibly the lightest bass, certainly the lightest body (Okoume). Haven’t a clue why.
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Warning: nerd stuff below… 
A string will eventually stop to vibrate because it loses energy. The main processes where it loses energy are friction (internal in the string and especially at the end points (witness points or fretting point), but also into the bits extending from the end points) and parasitic vibrations, which we involuntarily excite especially when plucking harder and which die off quickly, but syphon off energy in that process. And, to a smaller degree, also by trying to excite sympathetic vibrations in adjacent strings.
So, if anything, the string itself, the bridge, the nut and then our fretting fingers and plucking technique determine most of the energy loss (and thus sustain), I would say. The density of the wood is important, but losing energy to the body (and neck) is far less important than the other processes, IMHO.
A similar consideration may likely apply to how higher harmonics are more affected by energy losses than the ground frequency and how this all influences/determines the overall “tone”.
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Lol, I love Mark and all his videos and courses.
I watched this one on improving sustain and his other free videos ages ago and have been a fan of his stuff ever since.
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Would the string’s friction against the surrounding air molecules also cause some energy loss as heat?
Disclaimer: Last time I did physics in school was 30+ years.
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Yep, but indeed more readily recognized as sound waves - you can hear the notes without plugging in…
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I wonder if you have better sustain when you play on Mars. Less gravity pull 
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Haha, no - gravity is not important here. But the atmosphere is much thinner on Mars; that could have an impact
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