Fender basses are, without a doubt, some of the most popular basses in the music industry. Period.
But why? There are a lot of basses out there, and Fender isn’t new, and there are cheaper quality options out there. So how has Fender maintained that spot at the top of the bass pecking order?
In order to answer that question we need to go back to the beginning and look at how the modern electric bass came to be, and what role Fender played in the industry.
So, let’s go on a journey!
Let’s dive in!
Pre-Fender Innovations
It all began with the P-bass… or at least that’s what we’ve always been told. But the journey to the P-bass actually started long before Leo even founded Fender.
As far back as the early 1930s, instrument makers were trying to design a lighter, more portable bass.
The upright bass is a notoriously, and kind of laughably, large instrument. It’s really difficult to tour with one even today, imagine touring with it in the 1920s or 30s… .
In the mid-30s, companies like Rickenbacker (yes, Rickenbacker is that old) were making electric upright basses. Rickenbacker, Regal, Vega, and others tried to push various designs at upright bass players to make basses lighter and smaller.
But they largely went nowhere.
What they were all working toward, and what they needed, was a solid body electric bass, but the technology didn’t exist at the time; it hadn’t been invented yet.
Enter the P-bass, right?! Wrong!
It may surprise you (like it did me, and many others) that Fender did not invent the solid body electric bass.
That’s right, you heard me! I know many of you don’t believe me, which is why we’re going down History Lane.
In 1936 (10 years before Fender was even founded), Paul Tutmarc released the Audiovox 736 in Seattle, Washington, which was a solid body electric bass with a roughly 30-inch scale length, horseshoe magnet pickup, and an accompanying amplifier.
It was the very first solid-body electric bass, ever.
So, why is Fender and not Tutmarc credited with inventing the electric bass?
Because Tutmarc was so far ahead of his time that almost no one bought them. The Audiovox was lost to history until fairly recently.
You see, the pickup and amp technology of the day was just not good enough to gig with. Plus, it was really difficult to get someone to invest that kind of money during the Great Depression to tour with an untested and underpowered piece of gear.
It just couldn’t compete with the upright bass at the time. So, the world forgot about the Audiovox. And yeah, I’m serious, it wasn’t until the 80s or 90s before someone finally uncovered press clippings and old Audiovoxes stored in attics in Seattle. There are only 5 or 6 still in existence today.
The Audiovox was so far ahead of its time that it just didn’t take off; it couldn’t.
But the bass world was moving in that direction. Bassists wanted something smaller and lighter, the technology and market just needed time to mature.
P-bass (1951)
Fast forward to the late 1940s, and Leo Fender had been building guitars and getting more guitarists to go amplified. He was also working on marketing and manufacturing processes to get his products out there faster and better.
He had some great success with his Telecaster and Jazzmaster guitars, but he saw what many had seen before him: that the bass market was ripe for innovation. And for the first time since 1936, someone decided to approach this problem not from the lens of trying to take the upright and make it smaller, but to take the electric guitar and make it… bass.
He looked at the success of the Telecaster guitar design and decided to make a bass version of a Tele. In 1951, after some innovative design hurdles to convert a guitar to work for bass, Fender finally unveiled their first solid-body electric bass, the Precision Bass.
That first edition was, yes, in many ways just a Telecaster bass, but it was a huge step forward in bass design.
It had a unique sound that was very different from an upright bass. The pickup design sounded great and powerful. He also, after much experimentation, decided on a 34-inch scale, whereas Tutmarc before him had gone with a shorter scale. It gave it a punchier sound that didn’t sound much like an upright at all. Amp design had also come a long way, so the P-bass could actually compete with an upright bass in bigger gigs.
The Precision Bass had a lot going for it and was a huge design feat that was revolutionary.
But it didn’t sell well.
Despite all it had going for it, the reception for the Precision Bass was cool at first. There were some early adopters, but it was not an immediate commercial success by any stretch of the imagination.
Leo didn’t give up, though. He took feedback, refined the design, and tweaked things. There were small changes at first, a few tweaks here, some finessing there.
Finally, after 6 years, in 1957, Fender unveiled a significant redesign of the Precision Bass, and while it may seem like a small thing, it probably was the biggest thing holding it back from commercial success.
They swapped out the single-coil Telecaster-style pickup for a unique split-coil pickup.
This seemingly small update and the timing of the redesign changed everything.
You see, it wasn’t just the pickup design, it was also that Rock ‘n Roll was catching on. Popular music forms were starting to form with the electric guitar as the centerpiece. Also World War II and the depression were far enough in the past for the economy to have recovered.
The time was right.
Fender managed to get the P-bass into the hands of major studio musicians like Carol Kaye, James Jamerson, and Monk Montgomery. And with the signature P-bass tone featured on major albums, suddenly everyone wanted a P-bass! It became the tone of so many records throughout the late ’50s, ’60s, and beyond.
Jazz Bass (1960)
And that’s it! Everyone bought a P-bass and lived happily ever after!
Like and subscribe, bye!
Just kidding! As if.
By the 1960s, the Precision Bass was starting to do well, it was catching on. But even before it started to really succeed, other instrument makers saw the potential and wanted in on that game too!
In 1952, Kay Musical put out their K-162 Electronic Bass, 1953 Gibson released the EB-1, Danelectro and Hofner entered the fray in ‘56, Rickenbacker (who had designed some of the first electric uprights that Leo worked on and studied) released the Rickenbacker 4000 in 1957. By 1958, the UK wanted in too, and Supersound made an electric bass.
And it just cascaded from there.
The P-bass was doing well with up-and-coming rock ‘n roll acts, but it was facing fierce competition. It wasn’t the only bass in town for very long, and rock ‘n roll was still young at the time. Leo needed another competitive edge.
Don Randall, Fender’s head of marketing at the time said: “After establishing that bass guitars would sell and that people wanted them, then the next thing was to make a prettier one, a more elaborate one … the Jazz Bass wasn’t Leo’s idea particularly, it was more of a marketing idea.”
Rock ‘n roll was great and growing fast, but jazz, on the other hand, was already a massive market with some of the biggest and most established artists of the time. If Leo wanted to really solidify his market hold in the world of bass, he needed something that jazz players would want. He needed another innovation.
So, he did just that.
In 1960, Fender unveiled the Deluxe Model Bass. It was glitzy, flashy, sexy. It had two pickups, more tonal control, and ironically, a more “precise” tone than the Precision Bass.
It was meant to be the refined, professional musician’s bass. A true replacement for the upright bass in the jazz world.
I mean, it didn’t ever replace the upright bass for traditional jazz, but it was immediately recognized as a huge step forward in the world of electric bass, and it sold well from the get-go.
The Deluxe Bass, later renamed to the Jazz Bass, started out in much the same way the P-bass had. Leo looked at the Jazzmaster guitar and redesigned it to be a bass. The original Jazz Bass had Jazzmaster-style pickups, a more slender neck, a pickup cover, and a bridge cover with individually controllable mute pads built in. With the 1962 edition, they swapped the Jazzmaster pickups for two single-coil pickups with dual rods for each string, and that remains the standard to today.
The Jazz Bass gave bassists something that they couldn’t get with a Precision Bass: more tonal control. It’s something that Precisions and even uprights couldn’t do, and it was a huge success.
CBS Sale
Even though others were making basses and seeing success, Fender became the top dog in the world of solid body guitars and basses.
They were successful to the point where the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) bought Fender in 1965 to the tune of $13 million. And with that sale, Leo signed a 10-year non-compete where he was no longer allowed to make instruments that could compete with Fender.
Leo was out of the game… for a while anyway. Pretty much as soon as his non-compete ended, he started the company Music Man and launched with… You guessed it, another innovative design: the Stingray. But that’s a topic for another video.
CBS owned Fender from 1965 to 1985, and mostly focused on streamlining manufacturing and logistics processes with some occasional small changes in bass designs and diversifying of their product offerings.
Some call the CBS years the dark years of Fender.
Some collectors won’t buy Fenders from the CBS years because they don’t think the quality was as high, or at least not as consistent, as when Leo was at the helm.
There are plenty of examples of great years where quality was high and some basses from those years are still sought after (like some 1970s jazz basses), but generally speaking during this time Fender solidified their brand as a household name because of the marketing and manufacturing money CBS had, but their reputation during these years wasn’t always stellar, but they still did well despite that.
They introduced very few new products during this time, at least not in the guitar and bass world. So, whereas Fender under Leo was seen as an innovator and inventor, the CBS years were mostly dedicated to making reissues of Leo’s original designs and getting them into every bassist’s hands.
Modern Fender
In 1985, CBS sold Fender to Bill Schultz and a group of then-Fender Employees who have run it since.
So, that was a lot of history to answer the question of why Fender basses are so popular, but I think the history helps us understand why people still buy Fenders, even after the CBS years, where their reputation might not have always been what it used to be.
Today, Fender continues to build the same designs that Leo made from the 40s to the 60s, and many of them are relatively unchanged.
The standard Fender P-bass of today is still mostly the 1957 design, and the Jazz Bass is still (for the most part) the 1962 design.
They’ve created a few new things since Leo’s departure. They’ve got the American Performer, which is a combination of the P and J bass. And then they’ve got the Mustang, which is kind of like a modern take on the original 1951 P-bass.
So, since Leo sold the company, very little innovation in the bass world has come from them, but they continue to sell very well, and have diversified their other product offerings. They always sold amps, but they’ve added more models, they’ve done pedals, studio and live sound gear, and they are getting into the education game now as well.
But their guitars and basses are more or less the same as they always have been. The classics reissued year over year.
Also, during this time, literally every bass maker out there has copied those designs. You can look at virtually any bass maker out there, and they’ll have some version of a P-bass, and a Jazz Bass copy. They are such ubiquitous designs and have such an iconic and recognizable tone that everyone feels obligated to make something like it.
Keys to Success
So, if everyone makes P- and J-basses, why are Fenders still so popular? Why do people buy Fender instead of Ibanez, Sadowsky, Spector, Lakland, or a budget bass with the pickups in the right spot?
Really, the success of Fender (in my opinion) comes down to three things:
- Timing
Tutmarc’s Audiovox largely failed because pickup and amplifier design weren’t ready yet, and it was more difficult to get basses into bassists’ hands and reach a mass market.
Also, in 1936, Tutmarc only really had jazz players to market to. He had to convince hard-core upright jazz players to switch to an untested bass design with an underpowered amp that couldn’t compete with the upright in any meaningful way in jazz. But in the 1950s, rock was taking off, a whole new generation of bassists was coming into their own, and unlike the 30s, they were on the other side of the great depression and had some funds to blow on experimental bass technology.
Manufacturing post-WWII was at an all-time high, and it was easier to advertise nationwide with radio and television.
Leo had more to work with to be able to get his basses into the hands of influential musicians.
But also, and probably most importantly, rock ‘n roll and Motown pushed their basses to the forefront as part of a cultural movement. He pretty much hit the zeitgeist lottery.
And, of course, he was the first to market in the 50s instead of the 30s.
- Solid design
Sure, it took quite a few years for the p-bass to catch on, but it was a solid design right off the bat. It sounded great, it sounded different, it had something that you couldn’t get from an upright bass, but then they refined and perfected that design, and they continued to innovate. Well, at least until CBS bought them …
That’s why no one has changed the design since 1957. It just works, and it’s what bassists want, and demand. Which is also possibly why Fender stopped innovating, traditionalists won’t let them. Many believe the P- and J-basses are perfect, so Fender better not touch them!
- Marketing
Marketing was more than just building it and putting it in some catalogs. They pushed the bass at professionals to get it into their hands and onto recordings. Getting brand ambassadors was a huge thing. And this was a monumental task.
This wasn’t the same as trying to get acoustic guitarists to switch to amplified, this wasn’t the same as (if we can use a modern example) trying to get an Ibanez or Rickenbacker artist to switch brands, they had to convince upright bass players to learn what was essentially a brand new instrument in order to fulfill the dream of having a lighter, more portable bass.
Fender had access to marketing tools that didn’t exist 10-15 years before he put out the P-bass.
So, did Leo Fender invent the solid body bass? No, not even close. Was he first to market? Technically no, but by the time he built the P-bass, everyone had forgotten about Audiovox, so I guess he kind of was?
But he did invent something that was perfectly situated to take over the market of the day and become the de facto bass instrument for modern music making, and then continued to innovate with designs to provide what bassists needed in their instruments.
And that’s how Fender won the market. That’s how they dominated… initially.
Staying on Top
But Fender only had about a year or two before other instrument makers made basses of their own, so what has kept Fender so popular despite having so many options available?
We’ve got Ibanez, Rickenbacker, Gibson, Dingwall, Music Man (a Leo Fender company), G&L (another Leo company), Warwick, Spector, Lakland, Schecter, Fodera, Yamaha, and a plethora of other companies making basses. So why do people still choose Fender if the other companies make basses just as good with the same designs and sometimes significantly cheaper?
Well, I’m going to again impose my own opinion here, but I think it really comes down to one thing: how the brand makes people feel. Fender has the vibe that bassists want, and bassists feel important playing them.
Their Precision and Jazz Bass designs are copied by every maker out there. They are the quintessential designs. So, many people still think, “Why would I buy a copy of a Fender Jazz when I could buy an actual Fender Jazz?”.
It’s the OG Jazz Bass, or P-Bass. It’s the same kind of Jazz Bass that Jaco played on, or P-bass that Jamerson used, which is significant and not something to be ignored.
Are Fender’s basses really that much better than, say, Ibanez or Lakland? Some would argue yes, I would say no, they’re not. But the Fender name has all that history. It has all those famous artists who toured and recorded with them. Bassists feel like they’re part of “the club” playing a Fender.
Even non-musicians know who Fender is. They may not know Sadowsky or Danelectro. It gives some credibility just by association.
Many love that tradition and knowing that they’re playing on an instrument that comes from the pedigree that started it all (if you ignore the Audiovox, as most people do).
Another small but important detail is resale value. Fenders retain their value well, which can be important if you’re going to be in the music game for a long time.
But, if we’re being completely fair, Fender as a company isn’t really innovating anymore in the guitar world. So if you’re looking for innovative new designs: fanned frets, new pickup and preamp designs, interesting build materials (like carbon fiber or semi-hollow bodies), or headless and lightweight designs, then Fender doesn’t have anything for you.
But, if you want to buy something that is consistently good, designed exactly like Daddy Leo intended, then Fender is what you need … well, unless you include the Stingray and Bongo which were also designed by Leo … but like I said, that is a topic for another video.
And I know that there is a lot more nuance and context that could be given here, but I think that history, sentimentality, brand recognition, and consistent quality keep Fender basses on the shelves. Because, if you can get a quality jazz bass for significantly cheaper from a different company, why would you buy Fender? Because the name Fender means something, it carries a weight and history with it that has undeniably changed the music industry forever.