| The bass guitar is a bass stringed instrument played | | | | bass guitars, because of early popularity of Fender in |
| with the fingers either by plucking, slapping, popping, or | | | | the market for mass produced bass guitars. |
| tapping or using a pick. The bass is similar in | | | | Different components of the bass guitar |
| appearance and construction like an electric guitar, but | | | | Thi skind of guitar uses various components to |
| with a larger body, a longer neck and scale length, and | | | | produce music. Some of these components are |
| usually four strings tuned, one octave lower in pitch | | | | strings and its tuning, fret or fretless bass, pickups, |
| than the four lower strings of a guitar. | | | | amplification and effects. |
| Materials used for making a bass guitar | | | | Frets and fretless bass |
| The bodies of these special instruments are typically | | | | Frets are a raised metal strips inserted into the |
| made of wood although other materials such as | | | | fingerboard that extend across the full width of the |
| graphite have also been used. The most common | | | | neck. On a fretted bass, the frets divide the |
| type of wood used for the body is alder, for the neck | | | | fingerboard into semitone divisions. The original Fender |
| is maple, and for the fret board is rosewood, though a | | | | basses had 20 frets. Fretless basses have a distinct |
| wide variety of woods may be used to make the | | | | sound, because the absence of frets means that the |
| body. | | | | strings must be pressed down directly onto the wood |
| Other regularly used woods include mahogany, maple, | | | | of the fingerboard. |
| ash, and poplar for bodies, mahogany for necks, and | | | | Strings and tuning |
| ebony for fret boards. The choice of body material | | | | The standard design for the bass guitar has four |
| and shape of these guitars can have a significant | | | | strings, tuned E, A, D and G, with the original frequency |
| impact on the timbre of the completed instrument as | | | | of the E string set at about 41 Hz, making the tuning of |
| well as on aesthetic considerations. Other design | | | | all four strings the same as that of the double bass. |
| options include finishes, such as lacquer, wax and oil | | | | This tuning is also the same as the standard tuning on |
| along with flat and carved designs. Bass guitar necks, | | | | the lower four strings on a 6 string guitar, only an |
| which are longer than regular electric guitar necks, are | | | | octave lower. |
| generally made of maple. | | | | Pickups |
| A brief history | | | | Most electric basses use magnetic pickups. The |
| In the 1930s, inventor Paul Tutmarc from Seattle, | | | | vibrations of the instrument metal strings within the |
| Washington, developed a guitar style electric bass | | | | magnetic field of the permanent magnets in magnetic |
| instrument that was fretted and designed to be held | | | | pickups produce small variations in the magnetic flux |
| and played horizontally. Unfortunately, Tutmarc | | | | threading the coils of the pickups. |
| inventions never caught the public imagination, and little | | | | Amplification and effects |
| further development of the instrument took place until | | | | The electric bass is always connected to an amplifier |
| the 1950s. | | | | for live performances. Electric bass guitarists use either |
| In the 1950s, Leo Fender developed the first mass | | | | a combo amplifier, which combines an amplifier and a |
| produced electric bass. In the 1950s and 1960s, the | | | | speaker in a single cabinet, or an amplifier and a |
| term Fender bass was widely used to describe the | | | | separate speaker cabinet. |