Leo Fender as a visionary surely altered the course of popular music in the early Fifties in several ways, but not least by his development of an electric bass. Of course his inception of the solid guitar as a production instrument had already changed the course of musical direction, but the electric bass was to have the most dramatic impact.

By 1950, Fender's electric solid-body guitar was already a success, and the continual requests by bass players for suitable amplification and pickups for their string basses caused Fender to investigate the problems. Bass players were finding it increasingly difficult to be heard in bands which were electrifying and generally moving into a more up-beat environment. Whether the electric bass was a logical outcome of the roots of rock'n'roll or the very cause of its happening is a moot point, but without it the age of the juke box is barely conceivable.

Fender's answer to the bass player's problems was to take the successful formula of his guitar and make a solid-bodied guitar-styled instrument with the same tuning as a double bass, but with the convenience and portability of the guitar. He mused that there was no reason why this should not be a fretted instrument so that the bass player could hit notes precisely. So in 1951, the Fender Precision bass was launched.

Not surprisingly, the new instrument looked very similar to the Telecaster guitar, having the same headstock pattern, although somewhat enlarged to accommodate the huge Kluson bass viol machine heads, and with a maple neck. The slab sided ash solid-body was fitted with a single four pole pickup. A black celluloid pick guard was fitted to the limed (cream) grained finished body, and the simple chrome control panel carried a tone and volume control with the raised domed knobs. Four individual brass saddles were individually adjustable for height and intonation at the bridge — a successful pattern which has served well to this very day. The instrument was an overnight rave. Not only did bass players take to its unique portability and unlimited power (amplifier permitting!), but guitar players began influencing bass lines since the new instrument was fretted, and the 34in scale was not too excessive to cope with. It quickly found its way to all types of band and by the end of the decade the bass viol was rarely seen outside the jazz ensemble and classical orchestra. So important was this development that not only did other manufacturers soon bring out rival models, but a whole new amplification industry was set in motion. In the early days, of course, Fender himself cashed in on this with a well known and now highly collectable range of amplifiers. The most well known of these is of course the Bassman.

In 1954 Fender restyled the Precision to utilise the new comfort contour styling of their then new Stratocaster guitar. A white celluloid pick guard was fitted, and the old brown and yellow sunburst finish was offered as an option.

In 1957 the Precision enjoyed a radical redesign which survives to this very day. The body design was retained, with the contour carving, but a new headstock was fitted to the neck, in the same style as the Stratocaster. A redesigned pick guard was fitted which carried the controls, jack socket and new pickup. This new pickup was the subject of a patent (the drawings for which are depicted on this month's front cover), and was designed in two halves. These halves were staggered, one of which was for the amplification of the two bass strings, and the other for the top strings. Each half of the pickup had four polepieces, each string passing through the centre of each pair. The idea of this arrangement was to reduce the decay of the note when the strings' vibrations left the influence of a single pole. With Fender's new design the strings' vibrations were always in the magnetic field of the twin poles.

Whatever the pros and cons of this arrangement, the sound of the new Precision was unique. Its driving, forceful and responsive sound made it universally accepted as the bassist's yardstick, and to this day has remained perhaps the most popular bass. Apart from the introduction of the laminated scratch plate and rosewood fingerboard, the Precision is unchanged to this day.

Because of the Precision's success, competitors entered the market with a variety of basses offering greater tonal and physical ranges, and Fender responded in the Sixties with the emergence of a complete range of basses.

First of these was the Jazz bass, launched in 1960 as a twin pickup instrument. The scale length of the new instrument was the same as the Precision, but if the Precision could be said to be the Strat's sister, then the Jazz bass was a sister model to the Jazzmaster and the imminent Jaguar. It featured the same offset body style which gave the impression that someone had sat on one corner, but practically made it a very comfortable guitar to play on a strap. The standard rosewood neck was originally dot inlaid, and these first few versions thus styled are now very rare and desirable. They are distinguished by the two concentric controls. A double potentiometer was used for each pickup, the outer knob controlling volume, and the inner knob the tone. This version was swiftly followed by the pattern known to this day, with a bound and block-inlaid fingerboard and three separate controls (two volume knobs and one smaller tone control lining up to the small chrome control escutcheon).

The Jazz bass pickups differed from those of the Precision in that they were housed in one case, but retained the eight polepieces. They were consequently quite wide, accommodating four pairs of poles, and the strings were therefore spaced quite widely over the pickups. This was accentuated by the fact that the Jazz neck was much narrower (1½in) at the nut than the Precision, but the steeply tapering string design was suited well to fingerstyle playing. An enlarged bridge cover was fitted over the treble pickup and bridge together, while a similar hand rest to the Precision's was screwed over the bass pickup.

The Jazz bass was offered originally in sunburst, with colour options to special order. Many of the original instruments were finished in the well known Fender red, a kind of coral pink hue. In common with the Precision bass, the Jazz was fitted with a finger rest to aid thumb style playing which was popular at the time.

The next bass to come from the Fender stable was to appear a couple of years later, yet it is one that has not survived to the present day. A fashion was created in the early Sixties for six-string basses, and the Fender Bass VI appeared and was made popular by artists such as Jet Harris. A 30in scale length offered a guitar-style instrument tuned an octave lower than a regular guitar. Based on the offset body style of the Jaguar, the Bass VI had a bound block-inlaid neck, like the Jazz. But three Jaguar-style pickups were fitted, wired to a bank of four slide switches mounted on the scratch plate plus a master tone and volume control. The four slide switches gave on/off for each pickup along with a preset tone switch. The floating vibrato unit of the Jaguar was incorporated into this model, together with a tremolo locking device and a bridge damper.

Jet Harris' version of Besame Mucho will be remembered as an example of the application of this type of bass, together with much of his duo work with Tony Meehan. However, the popularity of these playing styles waned, and with it the popularity of the six-string bass. The Danelectro company have been credited with the manufacture of the first six-string bass; another interesting version was Gibson's EB6, a rare SG-based instrument with a headstock carrying six Kluson bass machines!

Another limited appeal, specialist bass instrument was introduced two years after the six-stringer. Known as the Fender Bass V, this model was a five-string full scale bass. The top string was tuned to C as in similarly rare five-string orchestral double basses. The Bass V carried only 15 frets on a 34in scale neck joined to an elongated body. The idea was to enable the player to play with greater speed in the lower fret positions without widely spaced finger positioning around the fretboard, and to provide extra notes in the upper registers. The headstock was of great length to accommodate the extra Kluson bass head and the rosewood fingerboard was block inlaid. The pickup was of the split staggered style, with one half picking up the bottom three strings, the other half the top two strings. Not very many of this model were manufactured, and they are now quite rare.

In 1965 and 1966, Fender made a few hybrid Precisions in an attempt to satisfy the desire for old-style instruments. This was the start of the period where early Fifties models were gaining popularity, both as player's and collector's items. The revival of the Les Paul, leading to its reintroduction in 1967, provoked interest in other models such as single cutaway Gretsch White Falcons, Broadcasters, pre-war Martins and so on. Among these sought-after prizes was the original Precision bass, and the company's limited run in the mid-Sixties only partially satisfied this demand. The instrument was to all intents and purposes a regular current-style Precision with a maple neck and slab-sided body. The author owned one of these finished in the old limed cream finish, for a time, and it was one of the best basses one could play. In 1968, the company went nearer to the original by introducing the Telecaster bass. The new bass had a solid white scratchplate, whereas the original was black, and the new model had a finger rest which was not fitted to the original. In most other respects the Telecaster faithfully reproduced the originator. It had the same angular handrest and bridge cover, and the single coil four pole pickup. But the neck was considerably thicker than the original and its popularity was depressed by the ever popular Precision. In 1972 the Telecaster bass was offered with a humbucking pickup (also on the cover) which did little to aid its popularity and made it sound very similar to early Gibson basses whose sound was very outmoded.

Although there were many makers producing electric basses in the wake of Fender's success, the most popular succeeded by offering shorter scale models more suited to the guitarist-turned-bass-player, rather than the string bassist. A 30in scale, or even less, was easily mastered by regular guitarists, although the sound and response of a long scale bass can be argued to provide a more resonant and driving bass line. By 1966, the new CBS ownership of the Fender company brought several short scale basses to the marketplace to compete with the other manufacturers. First of these was the Mustang, and it appeared with a sister model six-string guitar. The instrument was built on the same lines as the established basses with four-on-one-side machines, bolt-on neck, etc. The body was contoured, and the scratch plate carried a split pickup with single poles under a plastic cover. A chrome control plate carried single tone and volume controls.

Designed as a student model, it proved almost as expensive to make the Mustang bass with its professional features as it did to produce the other models, and so it was that in 1970 a new Musicmaster bass was produced to appeal to the lower price market. Offered in the same red, white or blue finishes of the Mustang, the Musicmaster series had a rounded but non-contoured body carrying a dot inlaid neck with rosewood fingerboard and cheaper sanded and matt finish. The machine heads were of a cheaper design to the regular Klusons. A single four pole pickup was mounted on the white scratch plate along with the tone and volume controls. Like the Mustang, the Musicmaster had 19 frets and a 30in scale length.

During the middle Sixties, Fender offered a semi-acoustic bass within the Coronado line of double cutaway models. At first a single pickup version was produced, this being changed to a double pickup version later. The Coronado bass utilised the bolt-on 34in scale solid body neck, and the rosewood fingerboard was bound and block inlaid. DeArmond type pickups were used on these guitars and, while various finishes were optional, during the last couple of years of their production in the very early Seventies they were known as the Antigua range with an Antigua antique shaded white/brown colouring.

It is interesting to note that Fender have remained leaders in the electric bass market for the last 28 years. It is also interesting to note that the range has hung on one model over 20 years old in its present design. That it has not changed is tribute indeed to Leo Fender, its creator, whose foresight and designs have so ably withstood the march of progress. It is further interesting to observe that the Precision and Jazz basses were both creations of the pre-CBS ownership, and that no major bass design has emerged for more than a decade despite a strong competitive market. As for Leo Fender, a grand gentleman I have had the pleasure of meeting on a number of occasions, he is still daily to be found in his workshop developing new ideas and manufacturing guitars and basses for the Music Man company.

In the light of developments in the market place during the Seventies, it will be interesting to observe whether Fender can continue to dominate the bass market. Already strong forces are finding favour with the bass playing fraternity. Travis Bean's aluminium neck formula exploited so well by exponents of the Stanley Clarke school of players; the steady popularity of the Rickenbacker stereo model; the ingenuity of the Ovations; the value-for-money of the Peavey T40; the prestige of the Alembics; the continuing appearance of Leo Fender patents at Music Man; and so on. All these factors add up to a healthy competitive environment when one is choosing a bass, and Fender domination can by no means now be a future certainty.