Vintage Bass Guitar – Welcome
Posted By admin on
When talking about a Vintage Bass Guitar let us first understand what vintage means. Here’s one definition I found in the dictionary, “characterized by excellence, maturity and enduring appeal: classic”, that pretty much says it all.
In The Beginning
The electric bass guitar was first invented in the 1930s by Paul Tutmarc. But the bass guitar did not achieve any market success until 1951 when Leo Fender introduced his Precision Bass (P-Bass) which became the industry standard.
In 1953 Gibson jumped on the bandwagon and produced their first electric bass which was named the EB-1. In 1958 they introduced the EB-2 which was a hollow-body electric bass. The EB-0 followed in 1959 which was a redesign of the original EB-1 vintage bass guitar which went out of production in 1958.
In 1956 the Hofner 500/1 Violin Bass made its appearance. This instrument is also referred to as the “Beatle Bass” as it became the signature instrument for Paul McCartney.
Danelectro produced the UB2 in 1956, which was a low octave six-string. This prompted both Gibson, in 1959, and Fender, in 1961, to come out with their own versions.
Rickenbacker came out with their 4000 series in 1957, which was the first electric bass built with neck-through-body construction.
Then came the rock music explosion in the 1960s and many more guitar makers began producing electric bass guitars. The next two decades saw the debut of the Fender Jazz Bass (J-Bass), Gibson Thunderbird, Musicman Stingray, just to name a few.
Sometimes I feel it’s disrespectful to call any of these a vintage bass guitar because it just makes them sound like they’re old. These instruments truly deserve to be called legendary.
Comments