The bass guitar as an instrument, an industry and a recorded sound.
About
The bass guitar as an instrument, an industry and a recorded sound.
Virtual Bass Player covers the electric bass as three things at once: an object that gets made, a trade that sells and resells it, and a sound that ended up on records.
The site is organised around a single argument, which is that the instrument's history is a history of corrections. The 1951 Precision was the invention; the 1957 revision is the drawing everybody copied. Roundwound strings were a request from one player to one factory. Direct injection was a studio shortcut before it was an industry. Each section follows one of those revisions from the workshop to the recording.
Everything here is written from documented sources — patents, factory records, museum collections, trade filings and the recordings themselves. Where a piece names a player, an instrument or a date, it is because the record supports it.
Six sections, listed in the header and in full on the archive. Instruments covers the designs themselves; Players covers the people and the records; Amplification follows the signal from the amplifier to the desk; Strings & Parts is the trade in wire, wood and hardware; The Market is prices, tariffs and paperwork; Before 1951 is what the bass guitar replaced.