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Fender Precision Bass

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Precision Bass
ManufacturerFender
Period1951 — present
Construction
Body typeSolid
Neck jointBolt-on
Woods
BodyAlder and ash (poplar and basswood on many Mexican and Japanese models)
NeckMaple
FretboardMaple, rosewood, ebony, and Pao Ferro
Hardware
BridgeFixed
Pickup(s)One single-coil (1951 — 1957);
One split pickup, pieces connected in humbucking mode (1957 — present);
One split "P" pickup and one eight-pole "J" pickup (2 magnets per string) connected in humbucking mode (some later models);
One split pickup and one humbucker (some later models).
Colors available
(Standard Series: as of 2009) Brown Sunburst, Black, Arctic White, Lake Placid Blue, Candy Apple Red, Midnight Wine

(American Deluxe Series): 3-Color Sunburst, Midnight Wine Transparent, Black, Olympic White Pearl, Natural

(American Standard Series): 3-Color Sunburst, Olympic White, Black, Candy Cola, Blizzard Pearl, Charcoal Frost Metallic

(American Vintage Series): 57: White Blonde, 2-Color Sunburst 62: 3-Color Sunburst, Olympic White

(Highway One Series): 3-Color Sunburst, Flat Black, Honey Blonde, Midnight Wine

(Classic Series): Butterscotch Blonde, 2-Color Sunburst, Black, Honey Blonde, Candy Apple Red

(Deluxe Series): Black, Chrome Red, Blizzard Pearl, Natural, Crimson Red Transparent, Blue Transparent

(Road Worn Series): Fiesta Red, 2-Color Sunburst

The Fender Precision Bass (often shortened to "P Bass") is an electric bass guitar.

Designed by Leo Fender and brought to market in 1951, the Precision Bass was the first bass guitar to earn widespread attention and use. A revolutionary instrument for the time, the Precision Bass has made an immeasurable impact on the sound of popular music of the last 60 years.

Background

A patent sketch for the Fender Precision Bass

Although the Precision Bass was the first mass-produced and widely-used bass guitar, it was not the first model of the instrument, as is sometimes believed. That distinction was claimed in the late 1930s by the Audiovox Manufacturing Company in Seattle, Washington.

In its stock configuration, the Precision Bass is an alder or ash-bodied solid body instrument equipped with a single split-coil humbucking pickup and a one-piece maple neck with rosewood or maple fingerboard and 20 frets. To this day, the Precision Bass is among the best-selling electric basses of all time.

The Standard P-Bass is sanded, painted and assembled in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico along with the other Standard Series guitars. As of December 5, 2008, the Standard P-Bass has been updated with CBS era-style decals, a 3-ply parchment pickguard and a tinted maple neck with rosewood or maple fingerboard. Other features include a split-coil hum-cancelling pickup and a return to the knurled chrome flat-top control knobs. Models produced before 2003 came for a period with aged white Stratocaster control knobs.

Since its introduction in 1992, the Standard Precision Bass used (like the rest of the Standard series instruments) a post-CBS era silver transitional decal. Fender changed the headstock decal to the bolder CBS-style in 2008.

The American Standard (featuring a high-mass vintage bridge and Hipshot lightweight staggered tuning machines), American Deluxe (featuring a J-style humbucking pickup in the bridge position and an active 3-band EQ with an 18V power supply), Highway One (featuring '70s styling, BadAss II bridges with grooved saddles and a Greasebucket tone circuit since 2006) and American Vintage series models are manufactured in Corona, California. American Deluxe "Ash Body" Precisions were offered from 1995 to 2006; the 2004 color chart listed Aged Cherry Sunburst, Butterscotch Blonde and Tobacco Sunburst as available finishes during that period. Fender discontinued the ash body option as of 2007. As of April 1st, 2010, all American Deluxe Precision Basses came with a N3 stacked-coil Jazz Bass pickup in the bridge position, a 21-fret tinted maple neck with compound rosewood or maple fingerboard, an active/passive toggle switch, a high-mass vintage bridge, Hipshot lightweight vintage tuners and a bold CBS-era headstock decal.

The Road Worn Series 50s P-Bass (introduced in 2009) features a distressed alder body with nitrocellulose lacquer finish, a 1-ply gold anodized pickguard, a synthetic bone nut, American Vintage hardware, a split-coil humbucking pickup and a 1-piece maple neck/fingerboard with 20 vintage frets.

Similar to The Beatles and Yes' effect on the popularity of the Rickenbacker 4001, the early adoption of the electric bass was in part due to Bill Black's ownership of the instrument. Black was beginning to use a Precision Bass during the filming of Jailhouse Rock. Fender also delivered an early Precision to LA session bassist and arranger Shifty Henry.

The double bass was considered difficult to play in tune, physically cumbersome and difficult to transport. It was becoming hard to hear in increasingly large bands or in bands that included amplified electric guitars. With electric pickups, a small body and fretted neck, the Precision Bass overcame these problems. The name "Precision" came from the use of frets (as opposed to the fretless fingerboard of the double bass); players of the electric instruments could play in tune much more easily - they could play with "precision."

The electric bass produces a timbre that differs from that of the double bass: it is a more focused, harder-edged sound, with less percussive thump and a more clearly articulated fundamental tone. By bringing the sound of the bass up in a band, the bass became more dominant in its role and transformed the beat and rhythm of pop music. The electric bass allowed driving rhythms while still outlining harmonic structures and is essential to the evolution from jump blues and swing to rhythm and blues and rock music, and today is still used regularly in any genre requiring the use of an electric bass guitar.

Design updates

The original Precision Bass of 1951 was essentially a bass counterpart to the six-string Telecaster and shared several of its design features—the main difference being its then-radical double cutaway body. In 1953 the Precision Bass received contoured edges for comfort while otherwise retaining the existing Telecaster-like styling.

In 1957 the Precision Bass received a major restyling; the headstock and pickguard were redesigned to closely resemble Fender's recently introduced, ultra-modern Stratocaster guitar, with a rounder neck heel replacing the original square shape introduced in 1951. The redesigned P-Bass pickguard was made of a single layer of gold anodized aluminum with 10 screwholes (1957-59) and then changed in 1960 to a 13-screw bakelite "multilayer" with 3 or 4 layers of black, white, mint green, aged white pearloid and brown tortoise shell. The original single-coil pickup was replaced in 1957 with a new split-coil pickup with staggered polepieces, connected in a humbucking mode; however, Fender never emphasized this, as the Seth Lover patent on the humbucking pickup had not yet expired. Two years later (1959), a rosewood fingerboard glued on a maple neck featuring "clay"-style dot position markers replaced the 1-piece maple neck. The rosewood neck became a standard feature until 1966/67, when the CBS-owned Fender companies began to offer a separate laminated maple fingerboard capped on a maple neck. Rosewood fingerboards were made of a veneered round-laminated piece of wood; pearloid dot markers replaced the "clay"-style inlays introduced in 1959. Since 1969, the 1-piece maple neck option is a standard feature on many Fender basses, with the rosewood fretboard offered as the second neck wood option.

Meanwhile, the original Telecaster-derived design, with a few updates, was reintroduced in 1968 as the Telecaster Bass. Within a few years, however, it had evolved into a distinctly different model from the contemporary Precision Bass, and continued to be manufactured alongside the P Bass until the early '80s.

Dublin musician Rob Smith's Squier P Bass backstage at the Empire Music Hall in Belfast.

Some Precision Bass guitars made in the 1970s were also available with an unlined fretless rosewood, ebony or (usually) maple fingerboard, popularized by endorsees Sting and Tony Franklin. Fender briefly offered a fretless P Bass in the mid-1990s as a part of the first-generation American Standard line, featuring a lined fretless rosewood fingerboard. The fretless American Standard P Bass left the Fender pricelist at the end of the 20th century. The American Series Precision Bass (introduced in 2000 and discontinued in 2008) sports the S-1 switching system since 2003, allowing the split-coil pickup to be wired from series to parallel, giving the bass a brighter, snappier tone similar to a Jazz Bass. This feature has been discontinued with the introduction of the second generation of American Standard Series instruments in 2008.

Many variants (sometimes with 21 or 22 frets on the fingerboard) and special-edition Precision Bass guitars have been offered in recent years. Fender made an American Deluxe 5-string model with a split-coil neck pickup, a humbucking J-style bridge pickup and a 3-band active EQ between 2001 and 2007 and currently produces a passive American Standard with a high-mass vintage bridge and a gloss-coated maple neck with satin back and vintage tint as of 2008, tuned BEADG, along with a Squier Standard version sporting two J-Bass pickups with alnico magnets. The company has also built a Korean-made Squier ProTone 5-string Precision with dual humbuckers and gold hardware in the mid-1990s and a short-scale passive 5-string tuned EADGC called the Bass V during the CBS period in the mid-1960s. The Bass V did not sell well, and after it was discontinued, Fender did not offer another 5-string bass guitar until the 1980s.

From 1980 to 1984, the Precision Bass has been redesigned with new pickups, an active onboard circuit and a high-mass brass bridge. The range included the Special (1980) featuring a split-coil pickup with white covers, gold hardware and a 2-band EQ with an active/passive toggle switch and the Elite (1983) with one (Elite I) or two (Elite II) special-design split-coil humbucking pickups, TBX tone circuit and a fine-tuner bridge made by Schaller. Some models were available with a solid walnut body and a stained ebony fretboard. Japanese models appeared in late 1984, sporting the same specifications as their American counterparts, except for the addition of a downsized body shape and a modern C-shape maple neck with 22 medium-jumbo frets. The Elite Precision's Schaller fine-tuner bridge has been later used on the Plus Series models in the early 1990s.

Fender has also produced several 'Deluxe' or 'Special' models over the years which feature active electronics and/or a Jazz Bass pickup or humbucking soapbar at the bridge position in addition to the normal split-coil pickup. Both of these measures are designed to increase the tonal options available to a fairly simple bass. Some P-Basses with J-style bridge pickups usually feature the traditional Jazz Bass control layout of 2 volumes and master tone and a side-mount jack socket; others had the front pickup volume control moved a step forward, leaving much enough room for the top-mounted output jack. Other variants include dual stacked control knobs similar to that of an early 1960s Jazz Bass or a 3-way pickup selector switch (as used on the Tony Franklin Signature and Plus Series P-Basses).

The 1990s saw the introduction of the Precision Plus and Deluxe Plus basses in 1989 and 1991, featuring Lace Sensor pickups, fine-tuner bridges, 22-fret necks and passive or active electronics on certain models. The Custom Shop 40th Anniversary model of 1991 was a luxurious version of the Precision Plus Deluxe bass with gold hardware, a quilted maple top and an ebony fretboard with side dot position markers.

Notable Players

Many famous musicians have used this instrument, including:

For a more complete listing, please see List of Precision Bass players

Literature

  • Peter Bertges: The Fender Reference; Bomots, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-939316-38-1

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fender Precision Bass.
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