The Best Bass Guitars and Styles

The Bass Guitar was invented by Leo Fender in the 1950′s with the Precision Bass. As opposed to the large, fragile, and fretless upright violin bass, the Precision Bass had frets, like a guitar, so that a player could accurately intonate notes “with precision”. Tuned similarly to an upright bass, it also required an amplifier. This new instrument revolutionized the music industry, and irrevocably changed pop culture by ushering in rock and pop music with the new sound.

The Precision Bass has been heard on countless recordings, from the Motown lines of James Jamerson, through rock music with the Beach Boys, Byrds and the British Invasion, country music, and other genres to the present. With a single split pickup, its design has been relatively unchanged since 1954. However, the bass guitar has evolved over the last 60 years, and various types have carved their own tonal niches in that time. Here is a listing of landmark models and some of the artists whose works are inextricably linked to those instruments:

Fender Jazz Bass – possessing a thinner neck than the Precision Bass and two pickups for greater tonal range, the Jazz Bass has been a staple for rock (Led Zeppelin, Rush), RnB (Larry Graham, Sly & the Family Stone), jazz (Jaco Pastorius) and it probably rivals the Precision bass for its ubiquity. To this day, custom luthiers like Alleva-Coppola and Lakland still make models based on the Jazz Bass design.

Rickenbacker 4001/3 – with an unusual shape, a lightweight body and stereo outputs, the Rickenbacker’s twang and piano like resonance stood markedly apart from the Fender sound. Paul McCartney was one of the first to use one, and its sound became synonymous with prog-rock in the hands of Chris Squire of Yes and others.

Gibson’s Thunderbird and EB basses are known for fat, girthy sounds favored by heavy rock and heavy metal players, from Jack Bruce of Cream to Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue.

Of course, there are plenty of other boutique brands that have made custom instruments out of exotic hardwoods and sophisticated electronics. However, most mass marketed brands from Ibanez, Yamaha, etc. are still offshoots of the sounds created by these pioneering four types of “old school” basses.