Ongoing History Daily: The olden days of bass, part 2

When it comes to someone playing bass in a band, the only option was the big double bass, a stringed instrument that was often bigger and taller than the person playing it. It had to be that big because of the physics required to produce such low notes. There had to be a better way, right?

The most common story is that Leo Fender invented the electric bass with his Precision model in 1951. Not so. The first bass guitar was created by Paul Tutmarc, a musician and inventor from Seattle. He developed a guitar-like instrument with a fretted neck designed to be played horizontally and not vertically like the double bass.

In 1936, Audiovox, his company, started selling the Model 736 Bass Fiddle, a solid-body electric bass guitar with four strings and a single pick-up. It was mated to their Model 236 bass amplifier. Both were radical ideas in the mid-30s and only about 100 sold.

It would be up to Leo Fender to turn the electric bass into a mass-market thing 15 years later.