The bass guitar is a stringed instrument which has either four, five or six strings of which the four stringed bass is the most common. Bass guitars have pick ups, volume knobs and a neck and look similar to an electric guitar. These guitars can be played with fingers or thumb and also with a plectrum. Bass guitars have thicker necks than other guitars and the strings are thicker thus producing a deeper sound.
Bass guitars can be plugged into amplifiers and speakers. Most bass guitars have magnetic pickups while some of them use non-magnetic pickups like piezoelectric and optic pickups. Most of the basses have bodies made of wood, although some designs like Steinberger designs use other materials like graphite for the bodies. The use of graphite composition helps in making light weight parts thereby making them much easier to carry.
The most commonly used wood for making the body of the bass guitar is alder, for the neck it is maple and for the fretboard it is rosewood. Some of the other types of wood used in the construction of the basses are mahogany, poplar, ash and maple used in making bodies, ebony and maple for the fretboards and mahogany for making necks.
The Shape
Bass guitars come in different shapes. Some have flat designs, while some have curved designs. Modern bass guitars are also available in complex shapes produced due to the modern production techniques such as die casting. Productions of such complex shaped guitars require use of artificial materials such as Basslab. Most of the bass guitars have solid bodies, but some of them are made of hollow bodies for increased resonance, change in tone and lighter weight.
Custom made basses made by Luthier are becoming increasingly popular and are used by many players. Such basses are available in variety of designs made of different materials to suit the needs of the user. Basses are also made headless with the tuning machines located in the bridge of the instrument. Bass guitars are also available with different neck lengths i.e. short scale basses with scale length of 30”, long scale basses with scale length of 34” and extra long scale basses with scale length of 35”, 35.5” and 36”. The higher, the scale length, the better is the string tension and hence the quality of tone is more defined.
Frets Or No Frets
Bass guitars come as fretted as well as frettless instruments. Frets are raised portions placed on the necks of basses and divide the fingerboards of the basses into semitone partitions. Fretted and fretless basses are used for different types of performances. Bass guitar is mainly a rhythm instrument and is used in various styles of music like jazz, rock, metal, ska, dub, pop, blues, country and punk. Basses have also been commonly used in many solos.
Learn To Play
The only guitar course PureFret recommends is Jamorama. This course covers everything from beginner to advance and from buying a guitar to tuning it. This 250+ pages step-by-step guitar course contains, 216 chord shapes, 148 high quality video lessons, covering rock, jazz, reggae, blue, funk, hip hop, country, and metal.