It has three single-coil pickups with smooth chrome mounting rings, with controls resembling that of the subsequent Jaguar guitar: a single volume and single tone control on the chrome input jack plate, and three pickup on/off slider switches on a hexagonal chrome plate on the stubby lower horn (one for each pickup). It has a sleek and unmistakably Fender-y offset body, with a narrow 21-fret neck that made for tight string spacing that appealed more to guitarists than bassists. It is perhaps best described as an elaborate cross between a Jazz Bass and a Jaguar guitar (which debuted in 1962, a year after the Bass VI), with a guitarist-friendly 30” scale (the standard length for short-scale bass guitars) and a Jazzmaster/Jaguar-like tremolo bridge/tailpiece assembly. The Bass VI has a bit of a split personality. Smith especially put the Bass VI through its paces and his intriguing work with the curious instrument figures prominently on classics like 1989's Disintegration. The Bass VI found a new voice in the 1980s thanks to Robert Smith of the Cure and Steve Kilbey of the Church. Joe Perry of Aerosmith using a Bass VI to lay down the swaggering riff that powers “Back in the Saddle” in 1976, but the rumble of the Bass VI was quit for most of the 1970s. Jack Bruce regularly used one during Cream's early years and John Lennon and George Harrison both used one on multiple Beatles songs. The first master of the instrument was Jet Harris, former bassist with surf group the Shadows, who went on to record two hits in 1962 using the Bass VI-“Besame Mucho” and the “Main Title Theme” from The Man with the Golden Arm. The Bass VI was introduced in 1961 as a six-string bass (the 1961 Fender catalog referred to it simply as the “New six-string Bass Guitar”) and it occupies its own special ground somewhere between a guitar and a bass.īut, unlike a baritone guitar, which is often tuned a perfect fifth (ADGCEA), a diminished fifth (B♭E♭A♭D♭FB♭) or a perfect fourth (BEADF♯B) lower than a guitar, the Bass VI was emphatically offered as a bass and was tuned EADGBE like a guitar, but an octave lower and strung with heavy-gauge wound strings. If the Bass VI is new to you, the sound isn’t.
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