1930s–1940s
In the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc from Seattle, Washington, developed the first electric string bass in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be held and played horizontally. The 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc's electronic musical instrument company, Audiovox, featured his "Model 736 Bass Fiddle," a four-stringed, solid-bodied, fretted electric bass instrument with a 30½-inch scale length. The change to a "guitar" form made the instrument easier to hold and transport, and the addition of frets enabled bassists to play in tune more easily. Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period.
Around 1947, Tutmarc's son, Bud, began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, prominently advertised in the nationally distributed L.D. Heater Co. wholesale jobber catalogue of '48. However, the Tutmarc family inventions did not achieve market success.
1950s–1960s
In the 1950s, Leo Fender developed the first mass-produced electric bass.His Fender Precision Bass, introduced in 1951, became a widely copied industry standard. The Precision Bass (or "P-bass") evolved from a simple, uncontoured "slab" body design similar to that of a Telecaster with a single coil pickup, to a contoured body design with beveled edges for comfort and a single four-pole "single coil pickup." This "split pickup", introduced in 1957, appears to have been two mandolin pickups (Fender was marketing a four string solid body electric mandolin at the time). Because the pole pieces of the coils were reversed with respect to each other, and the leads were also reversed with respect to each other, the two coils, wired in series, produced a humbucking effect (the same effect is achieved if the coils are wired in parallel).
The "Fender Bass was a revolutionary new instrument, one that could easily be played by an electric guitarist, could be easily transported to a gig, and could be amplified to just about any volume without feeding back" Monk Montgomery was the first bass player to tour with the Fender bass guitar, with Lionel Hampton's postwar big band.Roy Johnson, who replaced Montgomery in Hampton's band, and Shifty Henry withLouis Jordan & His Tympany Five, were other early Fender Bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, adopted the Fender Precision Bass around 1957.
Following Fender's lead, Gibson released the violin-shaped Electric Bass with extendable end pin in 1953, allowing it to be played upright or horizontally. Gibson renamed the Electric Bass in 1958 as the EB-1 (The EB-1 was reissued around 1970, but this time without the end pin.) Also in 1958 Gibson released the maple arched top EB-2 described in the Gibson catalogue as A hollow-body electric bass that features a Bass/Baritone pushbutton for two different tonal characteristics. In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass. The EB-0 was very similar to a Gibson SG in appearance (although the earliest examples have a slab-sided body shape closer to that of the double-cutaway Les Paul Special).
Whereas Fender basses had pickups mounted in positions in between the base of the neck and the top of the bridge, many of Gibson's early basses featured one humbucking pickup mounted directly against the neck pocket. The EB-3, introduced in 1961, also had a "mini-humbucker" at the bridge position. Gibson basses also tended to be smaller, sleeker instruments; Gibson did not produce a 34" scale bass until 1963 with the release of theThunderbird, which was also the first Gibson bass to use dual-humbucking pickups in a more traditional position, about halfway between the neck and bridge. A small number of other companies also began manufacturing bass guitars during the 1950s: Kay in 1952, and Danelectro in 1956;
1956 saw the appearance at the German trade fair "Musikmesse Frankfurt" of the distinctive Hofner 500/1 violin bass made using violin construction techniques by Walter Hofner, a second generation violin luthier. The instrument is often known as the "Beatle Bass", due to its endorsement by Paul McCartney.
In 1957 Rickenbacker introduced the model 4000 bass, the first bass to feature a neck-through-body design; the Fender and Gibson versions used bolt-on and glued-on necks.
With the explosion of the popularity of rock music in the 1960s many more manufacturers began making electric basses.
First introduced in 1960, the Fender Jazz Bass was known as the Deluxe Bass and was meant to accompany the Jazzmaster guitar. The Jazz Bass (often referred to as a "J-bass") featured two single-coil pickups, one close to the bridge and one in the Precision bass' split coil pickup position. The earliest production basses had a 'stacked' volume and tone control for each pickup. This was soon changed to the familiar configuration of a volume control for each pickup, and a single, passive tone control. The Jazz Bass' neck was narrower at the nut than the Precision bass (1½" versus 1¾").
Another visual difference that set the Jazz Bass apart from the Precision is its "offset-waist" body. Pickup shapes on electric basses are often referred to as "P" or "J" pickups in reference to the visual and electrical differences between the Precision Bass and Jazz Bass pickups. Significantly, Fender chose to label the headstock of this model with a decal noting Jazz Bass Electric Bass.
Fender also began production of the Mustang Bass; a 30" scale length instrument used by bassists such as Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones ("P" and "J" basses have a scale length of 34", a design echoed on most current production electric basses of all makes).
In the 1950s and 1960s, the instrument was often called "Fender bass", due to Fender's early dominance in the market.
1970s
The 1970s saw the founding of Music Man Instruments by Tom Walker, Forrest White and Leo Fender, which produced the StingRay, the first widely produced bass with active (powered) electronics. This amounts to an impedance buffering pre-amplifier on-board the instrument to lower the output impedance of the bass's pickup circuit, increasing low-end output, and overall frequency response (more lows and highs). Specific models became identified with particular styles of music, such as the Rickenbacker 4001 series, which became identified with progressive rock bassists like Chris Squire of Yes, while the StingRay was used by Louis Johnson of the funk band The Brothers Johnson.
In 1971, Alembic established the template for what became known as "boutique" or "high end" electric bass guitars. These expensive, custom-tailored instruments, as used by Stanley Clarke, featured unique designs, premium hand-finished wood bodies, onboard electronics for preamplification and equalization, and innovative construction techniques such as multi-laminate neck-through-body construction and graphite necks. In the mid-1970s, Alembic and other boutique bass manufacturers, such as Tobias, produced four-string and five-string basses with a low "B" string. In 1975, bassist Anthony Jackson commissioned luthier Carl Thompson to a six-string bass tuned (low to high) B0, E1, A1, D2, G2, C3.
1980s–2000s
In the 1980s, bass designers continued to explore new approaches. Ned Steinberger introduced a headless bass in 1979 and continued his innovations in the 1980s, using graphite and other new materials and (in 1984) introducing the Trans-Trem tremolo bar. In 1987, the Guild Guitar Corporation launched the fretless Ashbory bass, which used silicone rubber strings and a piezoelectric pickup to achieve a "double bass" sound with a short 18" scale length. In the late 1980s, MTV's "Unplugged" show, which featured bands performing with acoustic instruments, helped to popularize hollow-bodied acoustic bass guitarsamplified with pickups.
During the 1990s, as five-string basses became more widely available and more affordable, an increasing number of bassists in genres ranging from metal to gospel began using five-string instruments for added lower range—a low "B" below the standard "E" string. Some bass players who performed a lot in a solo setting used five-string basses to get a higher range by adding a high "C" string as the fifth string. As well, the onboard battery-powered electronics such as preamplifiers and equalizer circuits, which were previously only available on expensive "boutique" instruments, became increasingly available on modestly priced basses.
In the first decade of the 21st century, some bass manufacturers included digital modelling circuits inside the instrument to recreate tones and sounds from many models of basses (e.g., Line 6's Variax bass). Traditional bass designs such as the Fender Precision Bass and Fender Jazz Bass remained popular in the first decade of the 21st century; in 2006, a 60th Anniversary P-bass was introduced by Fender, along with the introduction of the Fender Jaguar Bass.
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