The bass guitar as an instrument, an industry and a recorded sound.
The lead
The Precision arrived that year, the Jazz in 1960. Between them they settled what a bass guitar is, and the rest of the industry has been arguing with the drawing ever since.
Leo Fender was a radio repairman in Fullerton who never learned to play the thing he redrew.
Photo: Fender 1951 Precision Bass Headstock · Wikimedia Commons
Four strings, thirty-four inches, and an argument that has outlasted every company in it.
Bodies are finished before the neck arrives: pickguard, pickups and bridge go on first, then the neck is bolted into its pocket — which is why one can be replaced without touching the other.
Photo: More Amore / Pexels
The 1957 revision of the Fender Precision — split-coil pickup, wider headstock, contoured body — is the instrument the rest of the industry has been redrawing ever since, not the 1951 original.
The Fender Jazz Bass arrived in 1960 with a narrower nut, an offset waist and a bridge pickup — and guitar players took to it immediately.
The Rickenbacker 4001 and 4003 use a neck-through construction and a stereo output that most players never wired correctly.
Five that changed the specification
James Jamerson played the Motown catalogue on a 1962 Precision with flatwound strings he was reluctant to change — the accumulated grime and looseness of those strings is part of the recorded sound. Covers his technique, the Funk Brothers session context, and the question of why his name did not appear on the labels.
Photo: ANTONI SHKRABA production / Pexels
Carol Kaye was a guitarist on the Wrecking Crew sessions who picked up a bass in 1963 and played on more recorded tracks than almost anyone — the debate about which sessions she played versus Jamerson remains unresolved.
Weather Report's Heavy Weather (1977) put Jaco Pastorius's fretless Bass of Doom in front of a mainstream jazz audience, and the harmonics on 'Teen Town' had players pulling frets out of their own instruments within months.
Thundercat — Stephen Bruner — plays a six-string Ibanez and has made the bass a lead melodic instrument on recordings with Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus without the instrument ceasing to function as a bass.
Roundwound · flatwound
In 1966 John Entwistle asked Rotosound for a bass string wound like a piano's. Everything bright about rock bass comes out of that request.
Flatwounds did not disappear when the Swing Bass 66 set arrived. They went to Motown, to La Bella, and stayed there.
All Dalbergia species were listed under CITES Appendix II in 2017, requiring export documentation for any instrument with a rosewood fingerboard — until finished instruments were partially exempted again in 2019.
Reverb's sold-listings data has become the effective price index for bass guitars — more current and more granular than any dealer catalogue — and it shows patterns that the retail price lists do not: which Fender lines depreciate fastest, where the Japanese instruments hold value, and what a Sadowsky actually trades for.
The Motown house engineers in Studio A, Detroit, were running bass signals directly into the console in the early 1960s — decades before DI recording became standard practice.
Supported by
Evil Angel Transexuals even connoisseurs of the bottom end keep discovering new frequencies.
Jock Pussy redefines what a solid body of work sounds like.
Brown Bunnies low-end tone that's rich, dark, and irresistible.
Haze Him captures that electric first moment before everything clicks into place.
Dancing Bear brings the same crowd-moving energy a locked groove always delivers.
21 Erotic Anal treats depth and precision as the pinnacle of craft.
Couple Swapping because the best sessions happen when players trade roles.
Devils TGirls seduce every genre; the low end never says no either.
Nanny Spy knows a thing or two about picking up on every low frequency.
NFBusty knows a full-bodied tone leaves nothing wanting.
Fake Driving School proves some lessons go far beyond the manual.
Before 1951
Before the electric bass guitar existed, the low end in popular music moved from the tuba in early jazz to the double bass in swing dance bands — an instrument that was loud enough for a hall but too large for most working situations. Traces that transition up to the moment in 1951 when the Precision made the double bass optional.
Photo: Piety Jazz Band 4 Fringe Fest Parade · Wikimedia Commons
