Fender Jazz Bass

In 1959 Leo Fender and his design team started work on a new bass.  The Precision bass had been Fender’s only bass model since 1951. After Leo and his build team redesigned the P-Bass in 1957 the marketing department at Fender pushed Leo to introduce a new model to augment to the bass line.

The original prototype Jazz bass was conceived as a “deluxe model” to appeal to guitar players who wanted or needed to double on bass. The neck was markedly thinner than a Precision bass, only 1 ½” at the nut compared to the 1 ¾” of the Precision. The body featured an offset asymmetric design borrowed from the recently introduced Jazzmaster guitar (hence the name Jazz Bass).

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Fender Bassman Amp

After Leo Fender introduced his revolutionary new Precision electric bass in 1951 he had to come up with an amplifier that could handle the new instrument’s low end power.

The first Fender Bassman was released in 1952, it featured a 15″ speaker and 26 watts of all tube power. It basically was a guitar amp with a little more low end response, but it set the stage for all bass amps to come that would literally change music forever.

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