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Let’s add some Bass to the Music. The bass guitar, electric bass, or simply bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses.
In the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, Washington, developed the first electric bass guitar in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be played horizontally. The 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc’s company Audiovox featured his “Model 736 Bass Fiddle”, a solid-bodied electric bass guitar with four strings, a 30 1⁄2-inch (775-millimetre) scale length, and a single pickup.[8] Around 100 were made during this period.[9] Audiovox also sold their “Model 236” bass amplifier.[10]
In the 1950s, Leo Fender and George Fullerton developed the first mass-produced electric bass guitar.[11] The Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company began producing the Precision Bass, or P-Bass, in October 1951. The design featured a simple uncontoured “slab” body design and a single coil pickup similar to that of a Telecaster. By 1957 the Precision more closely resembled the Fender Stratocaster with the body edges beveled for comfort, and the pickup was changed to a split coil design.[12]
