Basses that changed history

Reply from: JoeSpareBedroom

Date: 11 May 2008, 02:36

Re: Basses that changed history

You just agreed with me. Have a beer. Or two.

"Derek Tearne" <derek@url.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1igrupu.1ljb2we10ytlp8N%derek@url.co.nz...
> JoeSpareBedroom <dishborealis@yahoo,com > wrote:
>
>> "Derek Tearne" <derek@url.co.nz> wrote in message
>> news:1igqg8y.12fxbyq1ms5qwtN%derek@url.co.nz...
>>
>> >
>> > 1970's: Active Electronics - several companies including Alembic and
>> > Wal
>> > started making active basses in the early 1970's
>>
>> I think it makes sense to insert people in this timeline along with
>> instruments.
>
> I don't think so, for several reasons. Instrument technology is clearly
> defined and usually has a well stated or discoverable start date. When
> individuals and bespoke innovations are involved this is often far less
> clear. For example, no one knows when Bill Wyman took the frets out of
> his cheap japanese bass and made the first fretless. It's sometime
> between 1959 and 1963 but Bill can't remember and no one else was paying
> attention. Either way, sometime between 1960 and 1966 enough people
> must have been pulling frets out of their basses that both Rickenbacker
> and Ampeg were making production models.
>
> Also, whenever individual players come into the mix people start
> assigning more importance to their favourite player than is necessarily
> justified - or worse a legend has built up about such and such a player
> being responsible for 'X' where they really weren't.
>
> Take active electronics - you've already invoked the grateful dead as
> being pivotal - and yet alembics own history states that the first
> alembic electronics and pickups went into David Crosby's 12 string
> guitar. Even at that, there were plenty of guitars with on board
> electronics, usually effects, from the 1960's - so
>
> Even where an individual player or person was responsible for a given
> innovation the answer to 'how much longer would we have had to wait
> for...' is often 'not long'.
>
> It's interesting to note how many of the innovations above were being
> nutted out by several people at the same time. Anthony Jackson and
> Jimmy Johnson both had instruments built with B strings within a year of
> each other - Anthony Jackson had a 6 string with wide string spacings
> built and Jimmy Johnson a 5 string. So that was going to happen in the
> mid 70's regardless.
>
> Similarly, steinberger and status were working on headless designs at
> roughly the same time - so we'd have seen those appear in the 80's
> regardless.
>
> In the early 70's several companies and electronics genii were putting
> active electronics in their basses - whether this was independent
> evolution from the 60's guitars with on-board electronics or from
> hearing about the alembic basses is probably impossible to discover.
>
> Even the invention of the bass guitar itself happened at least twice
> independantly - I feel fairly sure it would have happened again if Leo
> Fender hadn't come up with his design - although that would have been a
> radically different version of history...
>
> Really, the only bass that radically changed history was the 1951 Fender
> Precision. Everything else pretty much follows on from that. If Paul
> Tutmarc's bass had had the same success everything would have followed
> on from that in much the same way - although probably not at the same
> relative rate as some innovations required other technology.
>
> Amplification is important also. The early electric bass instruments
> failed partly, I think, because they would not have sounded that great
> through the amplifiers of the day. On the hendrix experience project
> website they have recordings of some of these early basses - and the
> tutmarc bass sounds fine - recorded through a modern amp. In fact, if
> you click on the tutmarc bass followed by the precision the tutmarc bass
> sounds more 'modern'.
>
> http :// www .empsfm.org/exhibitions/index.asp?categoryID=129&ccID=132
> Click on the 'launch timeline' link - requires flash.
>
> The 12 string bass though, is probably down to Tom Peterson from Cheap
> Trick - it's different enough that it wouldn't just occur through
> logical progression.
>
> --- Derek
>
> --
> Derek Tearne - derek@url.co.nz
> Many Hands - Trans Cultural Music from Aotearoa/New Zealand
> http :// www .manyhands.co.nz/
>