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The 1st ever made Precision Bass
- Thread starter no_pops
- Start date
I seen in a video of John Entwhistle collection.
That he had #5 or #6.
It was the lowest # Precision left.
The others were destroyed.
You'd think Leo would've at least had an inkling that his electric bass was going to take off. I mean, he created it to solve the problem of the upright bass being large, hard to transport, expensive, and not loud enough, and his bass was the only one around that solved the problem. So it was a pretty safe bet that it would work out as long as the bass actually worked
Jailhouse Rock was the first recorded song with an electric bass.
That's because Leo Fender started out as a radio repairman.
Actually Fender started in 1946, making lap steels, same year L.C. Keisel started, doing the same thing. Keisel actually made a better product, in my opinion, but Fender had better marketing. Keisel tried to mail order, but whether because he wanted to save money and pass the savings on or because he wanted to keep more, I am not sure. Fender wound up making more, on the Walmart sell-a-lot, make less per unit. Keisel eventually changed the name of his company to Carvin, and except for a short period in the 80's, still markets by mail order. The experiment in the 80's failed because the music store made more directing the customers to higher profit products, like Fender or Gibson (with their high volume requirements to maintain a franchise), so Carvin reverted to mail order. Fender was notoriously slow to improve his product, where-as Carvin was first with adjustable pole pick-ups, ahead of Fender with truss rods, and made a consistently better product.
I seen in a video of John Entwhistle collection.
That he had #5 or #6.
It was the lowest # Precision left.
The others were destroyed.
seen?
I met a guy outside of Dayton, OH who claimed to have the first lefty P, and presumably first lefty bass in general. At the time (2 or 3 years ago) he was planning on selling it to pay for his kids' college tuition!
I believe that jailhouse rock was played on the 54-56 version of the P-bass. Bill Black is seen with Elvis and later with his own combo playing a sunburst contoured bass with the single-coil pickup.
I have a feeling the first ever was made a year or two before 1951. I mean, if Herbie Flowers has a Jazz Bass he purchased in 1959, then it's possible that there were Precision Bass prototypes out there in 1950 or 1949 even...
Elvis appeared on Ed Sullivan on Oct 28 1956 so his his player was 5 years late for the first one.
I believe if it was given to any body, it probably went to the bassist for one of the western swing bands.
Leo was involved with Bo Wills and a few others.
Even though the genre was beginning to die out I believe there were still quite a few around the LA area up until the early 50s. Some made the transition into country (old Hank Williams style), others Rock-a-Billy.
MM
You've reminded me to get out my Eddie Cochran & Gene Vincent records and give 'em a spin.
Thanks!
Outside the dispute .. What a story so incredible .. a man who probably didn't imagine the immense and tremendous that his invention would become, owning the history of an instrument that would be the foundation of the music in general, and would bring joy to millions of bassists worldwide... really big deal.. Thanks Leo! (How many bass there are in all arround the world today? 
)
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I seen in a video of John Entwhistle collection.
That he had #5 or #6.
It was the lowest # Precision left.
The others were destroyed.
There's a book on Entwistle's collection (Bass Culture: The John Entwistle Guitar Collection). I think I remember it said he had one of the first few. It may have also said that the really early ones had issues with finish longevity and crackled quite badly after a little while, just like Entwistle's. If most were destroyed, that could be why.
Also, early ones were given to Shifte (or Shifty) Henry and Bill Black.
Attachments
More likely, the first recorded rock song with electric bass. And that was in 1958, long after the split-coil had replaced the original single-coil. That's not an early adoption, by my standards.
The fact is, Leo didn't care about documentation (read Forrest White's book on Fender, about his astonishment as a trained production manager with a background in aircraft and armored vehicles) at the slipshod record keeping and parts procurement and everything else -- and that was 4 years after Precision production began. In Bill Carson's book, My Years with Fender, he notes that prototypes were stored in the overhead air ducts. When he went to retrieve them, somebody had already taken them. They showed up on eBay years later. He also says that many prototypes "went over the fence" and ended up in employees' homes.
Still later, some CBS whiz came through and marked a bunch of prototypes and early production samples with green tape toward his goal of getting rid of all that "old junk."
When Fender decided to go with the first reissues (1982) they had to buy "vintage" instruments on the open market because there were none left at the Fullerton factory.
That should put to rest the rumors about "real 1957 bodies and necks that were put in storage" because that didn't happen. Fender got rid of everything that wasn't current. Remember that, until the late '80s, there was no "vintage" market (I bought a primo Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman in 1982 for $425, with the original case, and the seller was grateful that I took it off his hands!) and no reason to hold onto outmoded, dated old inventory.
But people would rather talk about what-might-have-beens and pixie dust than facts, so these threads surface from time to time.
Great post, but I can't entirely agree with the above statement. I remember seeing what I thought at the time were sky-high prices for older Fenders & Gibsons in flyers from Guitar Trader (Red Bank New Jersey) by the late 70's. I paid a pretty penny for my '60 P bass in 1980; people were already well aware of the cachet of Pre-CBS by then.
"Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, Carvin manufactured guitars and bass guitars, largely from bodies and necks made by Höfner. During this period, they also manufactured amplifiers and steel guitars, and were authorized resellers of other gear, including Fender and Martin guitars." - Wikipedia
Yeah, they were way ahead of Fender........
