Battle for the bass

[Dave W]

Battle for the bass: the story of Fender and Gibson's fight for low-end supremacy

Some of the details here are probably apocryphal, but it's still an interesting article. Fender's road to dominance definitely wasn't as fast as the article implies.

[amptech]

Quote from Gibson's head of product development:

"I personally find the Thunderbird to be one of the coolest basses of all time," enthuses Mat. "Thunderbirds – and Firebirds – were created because Ted McCarty struck up a friendship with [retired car designer] Ray Dietrich, and the decision to use custom colours was because Fender were doing the same thing. I think the custom colour examples are very cool, but that reverse design was just too hard to produce. It's much easier to create the nonreverse variety, and I believe that's mainly why Gibson moved to the non-reverse models [in 1965]. Gibson was able to price the non-reverse models lower and I think they sold much better because of that throughout the late 60s. There was a lot of interesting stuff happening in this industry at Fender and Gibson during that time, and I think some of it was just a direct response to the other."

I'm no T-bird knowitall, but according to A.R.Duchossoir, Ted McCarty explained the change to nonreverse bodies like this:
'They (Fender) knew they wouldn't get anywhere with a lawsuit (they suggested Gibson's non reverse bodies looked like mirrored jazzmasters or jaguars). But more or less like a friendly gesture, as far as we were concerned, we said : if it bothers you we'll change it.'

And I'm not sure how many more examples of T-bird nonreverse basses they sold compared to the reverse ones, but the Gibson Electrics - the Classisc years book sums it up like this: The lower production costs enabled CMI to significantly lower the retail price, but
they did not improve the popularity.

[gearHed289]

The funniest part of the whole thing is, the non-rev looks much more Fender-ish than the original.

[amptech]

The funniest part of the whole thing is, the non-rev looks much more Fender-ish than the original.

Yes, they write about that in the book too. But Fender didn´t worry anymore, as the birds never took off sales wise.

[uwe]

"It's much easier to create the non-reverse variety, and I believe that's mainly why Gibson moved to the non-reverse models [in 1965]."

Vandals.  The purity and sheer elegance of Raymond Dietrich's original design was never matched by the Non Revs.

[uwe]

"The Precision Bass sparked a revolution," continues Terry. "It changed everything. Suddenly, a bass player could be much nimbler. It was the same thing with the Telecaster: suddenly, guitarists had easy and full access to all the notes. It wasn't like it was before where you needed to be a genius bass player to play a complicated bass line. The tools change the rules of the game.

Before the P-Bass arrived, a lot of bass players more or less played tuba lines, but that changed over time and you see a natural evolution in music from 1951, when the tool became available, to the way Paul McCartney played bass in The Beatles. And you don't have Paul without James Jamerson, right?"


Amen. So true. I had an enlightening discussion at a recent rehearsal. Our keyboarder played for years/decades in a band dedicated to reproducing early 50ies rock'n'roll and rhythm & blues (they did it well). To get the original sound, they had a double bass player for a while. I asked him: "It was probably hard to mike and get itself heard in a live setting, right?" And he said: "Naw, that wasn't the issue, the pickups got better and the amping too. But it was limited in what it could convincingly play. You really couldn't cover electric bass lines with it, it just didn't sound right, tone emission just wasn't steady enough if something needed throbbing eighths, the notes would be breathing too much and die off too soon. You could get an electric bass to approximate the sound of a double bass, but not the other way around. Cool as it looked, we gave up on it."

And I remember a Neil Diamond concert where the - skillful - bassist played double bass for the first half of the gig and then switched to electric bass. The difference was night and day. The double bass was clearly audible (you heard that there was something going on), but when he dragged out the electric bass, the musical notes popped out and were all of the sudden there.

[Dave W]

And I remember a Neil Diamond concert where the - skillful - bassist played double bass for the first half of the gig and then switched to electric bass. The difference was night and day. The double bass was clearly audible (you heard that there was something going on), but when he dragged out the electric bass, the musical notes popped out and were all of the sudden there.

That's something I always noticed every time I went to see Billy Bacon. First few numbers were on his painted upright bass, which he twirled around and made a show of, but you couldn't hear much. Then he brought out his Dano Longhorn with flats for the rest of the show and you could hear every note he wanted you to hear.

Billy passed away last fall. He hadn't been able to play for quite a while due to severe arthritis. He was a real showman.

From 2001.