From: till@acid-rain.lucid.com (Don Tillman)
Subject: Re: Types of bass
Reply-To: till@lucid.com
Organization: Lucid, Inc.
	<TILL.93Jan22003258@acid-rain.lucid.com>
	<1993Jan26.181459@cs.man.ac.uk>
	<1993Jan27.024059.5150@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 26 Jan 93 22:42:51

Just a couple corrections or clarifications, mostly nits and date fixes.

   From: whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt)
   Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
   Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 02:40:59 GMT

   Anyway, in 1951 Leo Fender invents the Precision Bass and for a couple
   years it is the only bass in the world. Some years later (I think
   1956) Fender gets creative and invents the Jazz Bass, which is the
   third or fourth bass in the world.

The Jazz Bass was intruduced in 1960.
Before that was:
  1956: the Hofner 500/1.
  1956: the Gibson EB-1
  1957: the Rickenbacker 4000.
  1958: the Gibson EB-2.
  1959: the Gibson EB-0.
and probably a bunch of others I can't think of right now.

   The other basses on the market died pretty hideously (the Gibson EB-1
   in particular) 

Certainly the Gibson EB-1 was a flop (except with Felix Papalardi) but
other basses have done very well, especially the Rickenbacker 4000 (or
it's immediate successor, the 4001).
		  
		  and for a long time no professional bass player used
   anything other than a Fender bass. In fact, in some jazz circles
   people ask you what kind of bass you play, acoustic or Fender. In the
   mid-60's Alembic got in, and Gibson got in with the EB-0, and Paul
   McCartney showed up with a Hohner violin-shaped bass which I hope
   you've all seen in pictures.  

The Alembic bass was introduced roughly around 1971 (I think).
The Gibson EB-0 was introduced in 1959.
McCartney showed up with his first Hofner (Not Hohner, yuck!) in 1960.
				 
				 So, for about 10 or 12 years the only
   question a professional bassist asked himself was whether he wanted a
   P-bass or a J-bass. 

Sorry, this isn't true, though these two instruments were certainly
very popular.
		       The P-bass comes with one pickup which is a
   split-coil humbucker, while the J-bass comes with two bar-shaped
   single-coil pickups . The P-bass has simple controls: one tone knob
   and one volume. The J-bass has two stacked knobs, volume and tone for
   each pickup, until 1962 when they switch to a three-knob system, two
   volume and a master tone control. A lot of people rewire this scheme
   to master volume, master tone, and a pickup blend (I believe Jaco did,
   not sure.)  As other basses came onto the market, almost all of them
   either went with a single split-coil humbucker or two single-coil
   pickups, and they were classified as being P-like or J-like depending
   on which arrangement they had. The term stuck, and generally today any
   single split-coal pickup bass is called a P-bass and any two bar
   pickup bass is called a J-bass. 

Gross, but it does seem true.
				   
					      The last difference between
   the Precision and Jazz basses was that the Precision neck is wide and
   flat whereas the Jazz neck is narrower and deeper. 

The bodies are also shaped differently, and for a while the Jazz Bass
had deluxe appointments (block inlays and neck binding).
						      
  -- Don