Electric Bass Guitar History

A severely mistreated ’80s fretless home create. Photo courtesy basslab.de

Hot on the pumps of our recent articles on headless basses and their particular technology, here’s another “less” topic for your needs: the fretless electric bass. The instrument has had its good and the bad since the middle ’70s, when Jaco Pastorius managed to get well-known. Unlike the ’80s, these days we don’t look at fretless bass too often in pop music bands, however it’s however very contained in jazz and modern stone.

There’s no information on product sales figures for fretless devices among total bass product sales, but my personal guess usually fretless basses represent around three % of total marketplace. Some individuals say it’s in fact not as much as one %. One uncertainty here is the wide range of home builds, including in picture 1. That’s as this mod of pulling-out the frets and refinishing the fretboard is relatively easy.

That share of the market is pretty low considering the large number of notable bass masters just who function a fretless tool within their music. It seems as though the bigger the skills, the more likely a musician is to pick up a fretless. For most bassists who’ve dropped deeply in love with the fretless, it offers a more expressive means of playing. Definitely, when it comes to beginner it also offers more chances to fail, but players likely to get another (or third) bass should consider incorporating a fretless for their toolbox.

What makes it therefore special? Essentially, it comes down to the enhanced probabilities of the left-hand. A fretless allows you to slip into notes, add singing vibrato, or vary pressure you utilize to hit a string from the fingerboard—and all this using personal feel associated with the vibrating sequence right under your hands.

It appears like the higher the abilities, the much more likely a musician is always to collect a fretless.

Perhaps the angle where your finger presses contrary to the fretboard tends to make a tonal difference. To put it simply: It seems more like a fretted bass by using the nail region of the fingertip and more like an upright once you fool around with the gentler middle for the pad. The fretless sounds less perfect than a fretted bass— notes tend to be less sinusoidal and now have a stronger tonal difference over the whole sustain period, and chords sound specially lively and organic.

Everything has its own disadvantage, additionally the fretless may not fit every playing style. Slapping concerns mind—it works, although tone frequently lacks that razor-sharp, metallic attack for the frets.

Jaco covered their fingerboard with tough epoxy, which provided their sound a less dirty, much more articulate upper midrange. The Le Fay bass in picture 2 takes this even more using a stainless steel fretboard. However, despite the improved treble selection of a slapped string wobbling against a-flat, steel fretboard, the fretless sound is significantly diffent from that of a fretted bass, although “different” does not also have becoming bad.

Whom created the fretless bass? Urban legend has it that Jaco was the inventor of fretless bass. At some point around 1970 he removed the frets from their 1962 Fender Precision, filled the spaces with wood strips, and epoxied the fingerboard. The hard fingerboard produced a singing and vibrant tone that shortly became his trademark. Ultimately this mod as well as its resulting timbres became very popular. More than once, Jaco included with the legend by crediting himself in interviews the innovation.