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A fretless bass is an electric bass guitar whose neck is smooth like traditional string instruments, and like the acoustic upright double bass. As a guitar-like amplified alternative to this instrument, the Fender Precision Bass was introduced in 1951, with frets to help guitarists who are used to them, to provide precision, and to offer a ...
Jan 8, 2020 · A few years passed before the fretless bass gained much commercial currency, but the profile of the instrument received a boost in 1965 when Ampeg, the company known nowadays for amps rather than instruments, began to produce a production-line fretless, the AUB1.
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According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, an "Electric bass guitar, usually with four heavy strings tuned E1'–A1'–D2–G2." It also defines bass as "Bass (iv). A contraction of Double bass or Electric bass guitar." According to some authors the proper term is "electric bass". Common names for the instrument are "bass guitar", "ele...
1930s
In the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington, developed the first electric bass guitar in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be played horizontally. The 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc's company Audiovox featured his "Model 736 Bass Fiddle", a solid-bodied electric bass guitar with four strings, a 30+1⁄2-inch (775-millimetre) scale length, and a single pickup. Around 100 were made during this period.Audiovox also sold their "Model 236" bass amplifier.
1950s
In the 1950s, Leo Fender and George Fullerton developed the first mass-produced electric bass guitar. The Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company began producing the Precision Bass, or P-Bass, in October 1951. The design featured a simple uncontoured "slab" body design and a single coil pickup similar to that of a Telecaster. By 1957 the Precision more closely resembled the Fender Stratocaster with the body edges beveled for comfort, and the pickup was changed to a split coildesign....
1960s
With the explosion in popularity of rock music in the 1960s, many more manufacturers began making electric basses, including Yamaha, Teisco and Guyatone. Introduced in 1960, the Fender Jazz Bass, initially known as the "Deluxe Bass", used a body design known as an offset waist which was first seen on the Jazzmaster guitar in an effort to improve comfort while playing seated.The Jazz bass, or J-Bass, features two single-coil pickups. Providing a more "Gibson-scale" instrument, rather than the...
Bacon, Tony (2010). 60 Years of Fender: Six Decades of the Greatest Electric Guitars. Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-0879309664.Bacon, Tony; Moorhouse, Barry (2016). The Bass Book: A Complete Illustrated History of Bass Guitars. Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-1-4950-0150-5.Black, J. W. (2001). The Fender Bass: An Illustrated History. Hal Leonard. ISBN 0-634-02640-2.Boyer, Paul (2013). The Rickenbacker Electric Bass: 50 Years As Rock's Bottom. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-1-4768-8680-0.Jul 6, 2023 · When it comes to bass guitars, players often face the decision between fretted and fretless instruments. Both options offer distinct advantages and considerations, and both have influencing factors such as sound, functionality, price, convenience and maintenance.
- Chris Corfield
Sep 30, 2022 · The fretless bass is one of the most iconic and easily identifiable sounds in all of music. The second you hear that woody, melodic sound, you instantly know it’s a fretless bass. Countless records feature the sweet sounds of fretless bass, and music today wouldn’t be the same without it.
Aug 10, 2020 · The first commercially available fretless bass was Ampeg’s AUB-1 which arrived in 1966, and Fender followed suit with their fretless Precision bass in 1970, but neither sold in huge quantities. It took a virtuoso to make the bass community consider the fretless bass as an instrument that was not just a novelty.
