History Of The Bass Guitar 1970-1980s
By 1970 the old double bass had been phased out of most popular music genres and the electric bass had taken control. This era also saw the biggest advancement in bass guitar design as several companies were using more “active” electronics and a broader range of body styles. The formation of Music Man Instruments, by Forrest White, the Vice-President of the Fender Corporation, Tom Walker a design engineer working for Fender, and Leo Fender himself, led to the release of the StingRay bass guitar. The StingRay was the first mass-production bass to utilize active electronics. This allowed for a better sound quality providing less distortion and a lower impedance of the frequency response. This was largely due to an on-board pre-amplifier.
The progression of the internal electronics did not stop there. In 1969, Alembic Inc., was formed by Ron and Sue Wickersham. Together with Rick Turner, who was widely-known for his engineering designs and his help in pioneering the unique sound of The Grateful Dead, they started one of the first popular “boutique” shops. These shops catered to expensive, high-end custom bass guitar designing. It was this type of customization which led to such features as the graphite neck, low-impedance pickups, and the 5- and 6-string bass guitars.
The first Alembic bass was designed for Jack Casady who, at the time, was playing with Jefferson Airplane. The bass had extreme filtering capabilities and pickups which were mounted in brass tubing. This allowed for pickup adjustment. It didn’t take long for the design capabilities of Rick Turner to be noticed as he was soon making basses for Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead, Lamar Williams of The Allman Brothers, and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. Other boutique shops, such as Tobias and Ken Smith, quickly followed suit and began production of 4- and 5-string custom basses.
It was Carl Thompson, however, who designed the first 6-string bass. Thompson was a luthier from Brooklyn, New York, who worked mostly in instrument repair before making his first instrument in 1975. It was one year later that jazz and Motown bassist Anthony Jackson commissioned Thompson for the first-ever 6-string. Unlike its 5-string cousin, which added a low “B” string to the normal E, A, D, G scale, the 6-string added the low “B” as well as a high-end “C” string for a total scale of B, E, A, D, G, C. This provided a broader playing range for bassists who required a versatile playing spectrum, particularly in the genres which were rhythm-dominated such as jazz, funk, and R&B.
By the 1980’s the design of the bass had reached new levels. With advances in modern technology and the innovation of designers everywhere, bass guitars were incorporating several new materials and functions in their fabrication. Some of these new incorporations included more graphite, silicon-rubber strings, and new pickup designs, such as the piezo which was the first non-magnetic pickup. The piezo utilized a transducer crystal to convert string vibrations into electrical signals which were then sent to the amplifier. In late 1979, Ned Steinberger introduced the first headless bass and later designed the Trans-Trem tremolo bar, or as it’s known by its more common name, the Whammy Bar.
This was also a popular time period for the design and use of the fretless bass guitar. The original Fender electric was equipped with a 20-position fret board while most newer basses are 24 or more. While a fretted bass guitar allows the player to more accurately and distinctly find notes and finger positions, a fretless bass produces a more distinct sound. A fretless bass has more of a muted tone since the player’s fingers are always in contact with the strings, unlike a fretted bass which allows the string to reverberate between the bridge and the raised section of the fret. It also allows the bassist to more fluidly utilize techniques such as glissando and vibrato. Popular fretless bass players include Pino Palladino, currently of The Who, Jaco Pastorius, and Bill Wyman who created the first fretless bass by removing the fret board from an old Japanese bass which he owned.
