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History Of The Bass Guitar 1970 - 1980s
In 1970 the old double bass has been removed from the genre's most popular music and the electric bass have been taken over. This era also saw the greatest advances in the design of the bass guitar as a few companies that use more "active" electronics and wider body styles. Human Musical Instrument formation, by Forrest White, Vice President of Fender Corporation, Tom Walker, the design engineer to work for Fender, and Leo Fender himself, causing the release Stingray bass guitar. Stingray is the first mass-produced bass to utilize active electronics. This allows for the sound quality better provide less distortion and lower impedance than the frequency response. This is mainly due to the on-board pre-amplifier.
The development of the internal electronics do not stop there. In 1969, Alembic Inc., was formed by Ron and Sue Wickersham. Along with Rick Turner, who is widely known for its engineering design and assist in pioneering the unique sound of The Grateful Dead, they began one of the popular "boutique" shops. This store serves expensive, high-end custom design a bass guitar. That is the kind of adjustment that causes these features as a graphite neck, low impedance pickups, and 5 - and 6-string bass guitar.
First Alembic bass was designed for the Jack Casady, at the time, was playing with Jefferson Airplane. Bass have extreme filtering capabilities and pickups mounted on a brass pipe. This allows for adjustment of the pickup. It did not take long for Rick Turner's design capabilities to address because it immediately makes Basses for Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead, Lamar Williams of The Allman Brothers, and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. Another boutique shops, such as Tobias and Ken Smith, quickly followed and began production of 4 - and 5-string Basses custom.
This is Carl Thompson, however, designed the first 6-string bass. Thompson was a luthier from Brooklyn, New York, who worked mostly in repair instruments before making the first instrument in 1975. It was one year later, jazz and Motown bassist Anthony Jackson Thompson was assigned to the first-ever 6-string. Unlike the 5-string cousin, who added a low "B" string to the normal E, A, D, G scale, plus 6-string low "B" and also high-end "C" string for the total scale of B, E, A , D, G, C. This provides a wider range for bassists who play need to play versatile spectrum, especially in the rhythm-dominated genre such as jazz, funk, and R & B.
In the 1980s bass design has reached a new level. With the advances of modern technology and innovative designers everywhere, bass guitar combines several new materials and functions in the fabrication. Some of these new incorporations involving more graphite, silicon rubber strap, and a new pickup design, such as the first PIEZO non-magnetic pickup. The PIEZO use a transducer crystal to convert the string vibrations into electrical signals are then sent to the amplifier. At the end of 1979, Ned Steinberger introduced a headless bass first and then designed the Trans-Trem tremolo bar, or as is more commonly known as, the Whammy Bar.
This is also a popular time period for the design and use of the fretless bass guitar. Original Fender electric equipped with 20 positions Basses fret board while most of the newer is 24 or more. While complaining bass guitar allows the player to more accurately and clearly found the notes and finger positions, a fretless bass sound more different. A fretless bass has more than a muffled voice from the player's fingers are always in contact with the strings, not as worried that allows the string bass reverberate between the bridge and the raised fret. This also allows for a smoother bass using techniques such as glissando and vibrato. Fretless bassist Pino Palladino, including the popular, now of The Who, Jaco Pastorius, and Bill Wyman who created the first fretless bass by removing the fret board of an old Japanese guitar he had.
