1.
Bolt-on neck
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Bolt-on neck is a method of guitar construction that involves joining a guitar neck and body using screws or bolts, as opposed to glue as with set-in neck joints. The bolt-on method is used frequently on solid body electric guitars, in the typical electric guitar bolt-on neck joint, the body and neck cross in horizontal plane, the neck is inserted in a pre-routed pocket in the body, and they are joined using 3 or 4 screws. However, a metal plate is usually considered as a part of vintage style and they are a popular place to emboss manufacturers logos, stamp out serial numbers. Many electric guitars with necks, Fender in particular, writes the production date on the end of the neck. The neck must be removed to see the date, the neck date is often cross referenced with the serial number to accurately date the guitar. The typical acoustic guitar bolt-on neck as popularized by Taylor Guitars includes threaded inserts in the heel of the neck, bolts inserted through the neck block of the body from inside the instrument attach the neck to the body. The term is usually a misnomer, introduced mostly by Fender whose guitars traditionally had what is called bolt-on necks, real bolted joints exist—particularly in acoustic guitars—but are less common in electric guitars. The maker claims this permits a higher fastening torque than ordinary wood screws, some sources differentiate bolt-on and bolt-in neck construction. The difference is that a bolt-on neck involves constructing a protruding flange that fits inside a pocket in the guitar body. Then the neck is secured inside this pocket using screws that run perpendicular to the surface of the guitar. In contrast, a bolt-in neck doesnt need to have such a flange inside the guitar body, usually, in bolt-in variant, a neck pickup is mounted directly on the extended neck wood underneath it, not on the guitar body. Bolt-in neck is used in electric guitars on a basis, but on acoustic guitars it is somewhat rare. However it is considered superior by some in terms of sound, however, given a relative uncommonness of bolt-in necks in electric guitars, most luthiers call both neck joints bolt-on. Luthiers and guitar players cite both advantages and disadvantages of bolt-on neck construction, note that most of these views are highly subjective and relative. It is not easy to measure most of the claims objectively or even compare objective factors, Typically cited advantages of bolt-on neck include, Easier and cheaper to mass produce and to repair if damaged. A Stratocaster neck can also be fitted to a Telecaster body, less traditional versions exist, such as 3-screw plate or even 6-screw plate bolt-on joint, but they may differ widely in the shapes, sizes and position of screws. Which one is better is debatable, but budget guitar manufacturers often choose 3-screw joints for its minimal cost, easy to control, sometimes bolt-on neck includes some sort of adjustment screw that can control neck-to-body angle, such as the Fender Deluxe American Stratocasters Micro-Tilt adjustment. More attack and snap, slightly brighter tone, but this advantage is frequently debated, more resonance and sustain Typically cited disadvantages of bolt-on neck include, For solid body electric guitars, harder access to top frets, especially if screw plate is used and visible
2.
Alder
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Alder is the common name of a genus of flowering plants belonging to the birch family Betulaceae. The common name alder evolved from Old English alor, which in turn is derived from Proto-Germanic root aliso, the generic name Alnus is the equivalent Latin name. With a few exceptions, alders are deciduous, and the leaves are alternate, simple and these trees differ from the birches in that the female catkins are woody and do not disintegrate at maturity, opening to release the seeds in a similar manner to many conifer cones. The largest species are red alder on the west coast of North America, by contrast, the widespread Alnus viridis is rarely more than a 5-m-tall shrub. Alders are commonly found near streams, rivers, and wetlands, Alder leaves and sometimes catkins are used as food by numerous butterflies and moths. A. glutinosa and A. viridis are classed as environmental weeds in New Zealand, Alder leaves and especially the roots are important to the ecosystem because they enrich the soil with nitrogen and other nutrients. Alder is particularly noted for its important symbiotic relationship with Frankia alni and this bacterium is found in root nodules, which may be as large as a human fist, with many small lobes, and light brown in colour. The bacterium absorbs nitrogen from the air and makes it available to the tree, Alder, in turn, provides the bacterium with sugars, which it produces through photosynthesis. Because of its abundance, red alder delivers large amounts of nitrogen to enrich forest soils, red alder stands have been found to supply between 120 and 290 pounds of nitrogen per acre annually to the soil. From Alaska to Oregon, Sitka alder characteristically pioneer fresh, gravelly sites at the foot of retreating glaciers, alders are common among the first species to colonize disturbed areas from floods, windstorms, fires, landslides, etc. Alder groves themselves often serve as natural firebreaks since these trees are much less flammable than conifers. Their foliage and leaf litter does not carry a fire well, in addition, the light weight of alder seeds allows for easy dispersal by the wind. Although it outgrows coastal Douglas-fir for the first 25 years, it is shade intolerant. Red alder is the Pacific Northwests largest alder and the most plentiful, alders largely help create conditions favorable for giant conifers that replace them. Alder root nodules Alder roots are parasitized by northern groundcone, the catkins of some alder species have a degree of edibility, and may be rich in protein. Reported to have a bitter and unpleasant taste, they are useful for survival purposes. The wood of certain species is often used to smoke various food items such as coffee, salmon. Most of the pilings that form the foundation of Venice were made from alder trees, Alder bark contains the anti-inflammatory salicin, which is metabolized into salicylic acid in the body
3.
Fraxinus
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Fraxinus /ˈfræksᵻnəs/, English name ash, is a genus of flowering plants in the olive and lilac family, Oleaceae. It contains 45–65 species of medium to large trees, mostly deciduous though a few subtropical species are evergreen. The genus is widespread across much of Europe, Asia and North America, the trees common English name, ash, traces back to the Old English æsc, while the generic name originated in Latin. Both words also mean spear in their respective languages, the leaves are opposite, and mostly pinnately compound, simple in a few species. The seeds, popularly known as keys or helicopter seeds, are a type of known as a samara. Rowans or mountain ashes have leaves and buds superficially similar to those of true ashes, species are organized according to phylogenetic analysis. – California ash or two-petal ash Fraxinus anomala Torr, ex S. Watson – singleleaf ash Fraxinus quadrangulata Michx. – blue ash Fraxinus lowellii – Lowell ash Fraxinus trifoliata Section Melioides sensu lato Fraxinus chiisanensis Fraxinus cuspidata Torr. – fragrant ash Fraxinus platypoda Fraxinus spaethiana Lingelsh, – Späths ash Section Melioides sensu stricto Fraxinus uhdei Lingelsh. – Shamel ash or tropical ash Fraxinus latifolia Benth, – Oregon ash Fraxinus papillosa Lingelsh. – Chihuahua ash Fraxinus americana L. – white ash or American ash Fraxinus profunda Bush – pumpkin ash Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marshall – green ash Fraxinus velutina Torr, – velvet ash or Arizona ash Fraxinus berlandieriana DC. – Mexican ash Fraxinus caroliniana Mill, – Carolina ash Fraxinus texensis Sarg. – Texas ash Section Pauciflorae Fraxinus greggii A. ex DC, – Afghan ash Fraxinus dimorpha Section Fraxinus Fraxinus nigra Marshall – black ash Fraxinus mandschurica Rupr. – Manchurian ash Fraxinus holotricha Koehne Fraxinus angustifolia Vahl – narrow-leafed ash Fraxinus angustifolia subsp, oxycarpa – Caucasian ash Claret ash or raywood ash Fraxinus angustifolia subsp. – European ash Fraxinus pallisiae Wilmott – Pallis ash Fraxinus sogdiana Bge Section Ornus Fraxinus griffithii C. B. Clarke – Griffiths ash Fraxinus micrantha Lingelsh, – Chinese ash or Korean ash Fraxinus japonica – Japanese ash Fraxinus longicuspis Fraxinus floribunda Wall. – Himalayan manna ash Fraxinus ornus L. – manna ash or flowering ash Fraxinus bungeana DC, – Bunges ash Fraxinus paxiana Lingelsh. The emerald ash borer is a wood-boring beetle accidentally introduced to North America from eastern Asia via solid wood packing material in the late 1980s to early 1990s and it has killed tens of millions of trees in 15 states in the United States and adjacent Ontario in Canada. It threatens some seven billion ash trees in North America, the public is being cautioned not to transport unfinished wood products, such as firewood, to slow the spread of this insect pest. The disease has infected about 90% of Denmarks ash trees, in 2016, the ash tree was reported as in danger of extinction in Europe
4.
Populus
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Populus is a genus of 25–35 species of deciduous flowering plants in the family Salicaceae, native to most of the Northern Hemisphere. English names variously applied to different species include poplar /ˈpɒp. lər/, aspen, in the September 2006 issue of Science Magazine, the Joint Genome Institute announced that the western balsam poplar was the first tree whose full DNA code had been determined by DNA sequencing. The genus has a genetic diversity, and can grow from 15–50 m tall. The shoots are stout, with the terminal bud present, leaf size is very variable even on a single tree, typically with small leaves on side shoots, and very large leaves on strong-growing lead shoots. The leaves often turn bright gold to yellow before they fall during autumn, the flowers are mostly dioecious and appear in early spring before the leaves. They are borne in long, drooping, sessile or pedunculate catkins produced from buds formed in the axils of the leaves of the previous year. The flowers are each seated in a disk which is borne on the base of a scale which is itself attached to the rachis of the catkin. The scales are obovate, lobed, and fringed, membranous, hairy or smooth, the female flower also has no calyx or corolla, and comprises a single-celled ovary seated in a cup-shaped disk. The style is short, with two to four stigmata, variously lobed, and numerous ovules, pollination is by wind, with the female catkins lengthening considerably between pollination and maturity. Poplars of the section are often wetlands or riparian trees. The aspens are among the most important boreal broadleaf trees, Poplars and aspens are important food plants for the larvae of a large number of Lepidoptera species. Pleurotus populinus, the oyster mushroom, is found exclusively on dead wood of Populus trees in North America. The genus Populus has traditionally divided into six sections on the basis of leaf and flower characters. Recent genetic studies have supported this, confirming some previously suspected reticulate evolution due to past hybridisation and introgression events between the groups. Some species had differing relationships indicated by their nuclear DNA and chloroplast DNA sequences and they have the advantage of growing to a very large size at a rapid pace. Almost all poplars take root readily from cuttings or where broken branches lie on the ground, trees with fastigiate branching are particularly popular, and are widely grown across Europe and southwest Asia. Common poplar varieties are, G48 w22 The trees are grown from kalam or cuttings, harvested annually in January and February, most commonly used to make plywood, Yamuna Nagar in Haryana state has a large plywood industry reliant upon poplar. It is graded according to known as over, under
5.
Maple
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Acer /ˈeɪsər/ is a genus of trees or shrubs commonly known as maple. There are approximately 128 species, most of which are native to Asia, with a number appearing in Europe, northern Africa. Only one species, Acer laurinum, extends to the Southern Hemisphere, the type species of the genus is the sycamore maple, Acer pseudoplatanus, the most common maple species in Europe. Most maples are trees growing to 10–45 m height, others are shrubs less than 10 meters tall with a number of small trunks originating at ground level. Most species are deciduous, and many are renowned for their autumn colour, but a few in southern Asia. Most are shade-tolerant when young and are often riparian, understory, many of the root systems are typically dense and fibrous, inhibiting the growth of other vegetation underneath them. A few species, notably Acer cappadocicum, frequently produce root sprouts, maples are distinguished by opposite leaf arrangement. The leaves in most species are palmate veined and lobed, with 3 to 9 veins each leading to a lobe, a small number of species differ in having palmate compound, pinnate compound, pinnate veined or unlobed leaves. Several species, including Acer griseum, Acer mandshuricum, Acer maximowiczianum, one species, Acer negundo, has pinnately compound leaves that may be simply trifoliate or may have five, seven, or rarely nine leaflets. A few, such as Acer laevigatum and Acer carpinifolium, have pinnately veined simple leaves, the flowers are regular, pentamerous, and borne in racemes, corymbs, or umbels. They have four or five sepals, four or five petals about 1 –6 mm long, four to ten stamens about 6 –10 mm long, and two pistils or a pistil with two styles. The ovary is superior and has two carpels, whose wings elongate the flowers, making it easy to tell which flowers are female. Maples flower in winter or early spring, in most species with or just after the appearance of the leaves. Maple flowers are green, yellow, orange or red, though individually small, the effect of an entire tree in flower can be striking in several species. Some maples are a spring source of pollen and nectar for bees. The distinctive fruits are called samaras, maple keys, helicopters and these seeds occur in distinctive pairs each containing one seed enclosed in a nutlet attached to a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue. They are shaped to spin as they fall and to carry the seeds a considerable distance on the wind, people often call them helicopters due to the way that they spin as they fall. During World War II, the US Army developed an air drop supply carrier that could carry up to 65 pounds of supplies and was based on the Maple seed
6.
Rosewood
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Rosewood refers to any of a number of richly hued timbers, often brownish with darker veining but found in many different hues. All genuine rosewoods belong to the genus Dalbergia and it is best known as Brazilian Rosewood, but also as Bahia rosewood. This wood has a sweet smell, which persists for many years. Another classic rosewood comes from Dalbergia latifolia known as Indian rosewood or sonokeling and it is native to India and is also grown in plantations elsewhere in Pakistan. Madagascar rosewood, known as bois de rose, is prized for its red color. It is overexploited in the wild, despite a 2010 moratorium on trade and illegal logging, throughout southeast Asia Dalbergia oliveri is harvested for use in woodworking. It has a fragrant and dense grain near the core, however the outer sapwood is soft. Dalbergia cultrata that has variegated burgundy to light color, a blackwood timber is sold as Burmese Rosewood. Products built with rosewood based engineered woods are sold as Malaysian Rosewood or as Dalbergia oliveri, some rosewood comes from Dalbergia retusa, also known as the Nicaraguan rosewood or as palisander is controlled by CITES under Appendix 2 which allows some commercial activity. Several species are known as Guatemalan rosewood or Panama rosewood, D. tucerencis, D. tucarensis, stevensonii, also on CITES Appendix 2, is used for marimba keys, guitar parts, clarinets and other musical and ornamental applications. Not all species in the large genus Dalbergia yield rosewoods, only about a species do. The woods of some species in the genus Dalbergia are notable—even famous—woods in their own right, African blackwood, cocobolo, kingwood. The woods of some species are usable for tool handles at best. The timber trade will sell many timbers under the name due to some similarities. A fair number of these come from other legume genera. Another that may be found in market from Southeast Asia is Pterocarpus indicus, Dalbergia sissoo is timber from rosewood species from India and Bangladesh, usually known as Sheesham or North-Indian Rosewood. It is extremely dense and has mild rot resistance, but it is porous and its exterior is soft and it is used for making cabinets, flooring and carving. It is exported as quality veneers, due to its after work quality when sealed and dyed, it is often sold as genuine rosewood or as teak
7.
Libidibia ferrea
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Libidibia ferrea, formerly Caesalpinia ferrea, and commonly known as pau ferro, Brazilian ironwood, or leopard tree, is a tree found in Brazil and Bolivia. Most species of Caesalpinia s. l. have poorly defined growth rings, pitting between vessels is alternate and covered, and fibres are generally not divided by a septum. The axial parenchyma varies from a shape to confluent, and is irregularly storied, while the rays are of variable height. Libidibia in particular has layered longitudinal parenchyma and narrow homocellular rays without crystals in the ray cells and its wood is often used for making fingerboards for electric basses and guitars. It has a feel and similar tonal attributes to rosewood. The wood may also be used for flooring, fancy furniture and it is also known by the names morado, palo santo, caviuna, Brazilian ironwood, and Bolivian rosewood, though it is not actually rosewood. In guitar making, pau ferro is not only used for fingerboards or bridges but also can be used for the back, the Brazilian guitar maker Giannini uses the wood in many of its classical guitars. Although similar in ways to rosewood, pau ferro has slightly different tonal qualities, with coloration from coffee brown to yellow brown. The Stevie Ray Vaughan model Signature Fender Stratocaster comes with a pau ferro fingerboard, pau ferro, used as a rosewood substitute, is a strong sensitizer capable of causing acute outbreaks of allergic and irritant dermatitis in workers not previously exposed to it. This, however, has not prevented furniture factories from using the product, apparently, most workers develop tolerance to the wood. The allergen is -3, 4-dimethoxydalbergion, a skin sensitizer
8.
Pickup (music technology)
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The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly, using a DI box or broadcast on the radio or television. Most electric guitars and electric basses use magnetic pickups, acoustic guitars, upright basses and fiddles often use a piezoelectric pickup. A magnetic pickup consists of a permanent magnet with a core of such as alnico or ferrite. The pickup is most often mounted on the body of the instrument, Magnetic pickups used with string basses can be attached to the bridge. The permanent magnet creates a field, the motion of the vibrating steel strings disturbs the field, changing magnetic flux. The pickup is then connected with a cable to an amplifier which amplifies the signal to a sufficient magnitude of power to drive a loudspeaker. A pickup can also be connected to recording equipment via a patch cable, there may also be an internal preamplifier device mounted in an acoustic guitar or in an external box. When a preamp is used in way, it is between the pickup and cable and can significantly reduce the equivalent impedance of the pickup coil. The output voltage of magnetic pickups varies between 100 mV rms to over 1 V rms for some of the higher output types, some high-output pickups achieve this by employing very strong magnets, thus creating more flux and thereby more output. This can be detrimental to the sound because the magnets pull on the strings can cause problems with intonation as well as damp the strings. Other high-output pickups have more turns of wire to increase the voltage generated by the strings movement, however, this also increases the pickups output resistance/impedance, which can affect high frequencies if the pickup is not isolated by a buffer amplifier or a DI unit. The turns of wire in proximity to each other have an equivalent self-capacitance that and this resonance can accentuate certain frequencies, giving the pickup a characteristic tonal quality. The more turns of wire in the winding, the higher the output voltage, the inductive source impedance inherent in this type of transducer makes it less linear than other forms of pickups, such as piezo-electric or optical. The tonal quality produced by this nonlinearity is, however, subject to taste, the external load usually consists of resistance and capacitance between the hot lead and shield in the guitar cable. The electric cable also has a capacitance, which can be a significant portion of the overall system capacitance and this arrangement of passive components forms a resistively-damped second-order low-pass filter. Single coil pickups act like an antenna and are prone to pick up mains hum along with the musical signal. Mains hum consists of a signal at a nominal 50 or 60 Hz, depending on local alternating current frequency. The changing magnetic flux caused by the mains current links with the windings of the pickup, the pickups also are sensitive to the electromagnetic field from nearby cathode ray tubes in video monitors or televisions
9.
Single coil guitar pickup
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A single coil pickup is a type of magnetic transducer, or pickup, for the electric guitar and the electric bass. It electromagnetically converts the vibration of the strings to an electric signal, single coil pickups are one of the two most popular designs, along with dual-coil or humbucking pickups. In the mid-1920s George Beauchamp, a Los Angeles, California guitarist, originally using a phonograph pickup assembly, Beauchamp began testing many different combinations of coils and magnets hoping to create the first electromagnetic guitar pickup. He wound his earliest coils using an out of a washing machine, later on switching to a sewing machine motor. Beauchamp was backed in his efforts by Adolph Rickenbacker, an engineer and wealthy owner of a successful tool, Beauchamp eventually produced the first successful single coil pickup. The pickup consisted of two massive U shaped magnets and one coil and was known as the horseshoe pickup, the two horseshoe-shaped magnets surrounded the strings that passed over a single core plate in the center of the coil. The Gibson Guitar Corporation introduced the bar pickup in 1935 for its new line of Hawaiian lap steel guitars, the pickups basic construction is that of a metal blade inserted through the coil as a shared pole piece for all the strings. A pair of large magnets were fastened below the coil assembly. In 1936 Gibson introduced the ES-150, its first electric Spanish styled guitar, the ES-150 was outfitted with the bar pickup. Jazz guitar innovator, Charlie Christian, began playing an ES-150 in the late 1930s with the Benny Goodman Orchestra and this caused the popularity of the electrified guitar to soar. Due to Christian’s close association with the ES-150 it began being referred to as the “Charlie Christian Model”, the P-90 is a single-coil pickup designed by the Gibson Guitar Corporation. These pickups have a large, flat coil with adjustable steel screws as pole pieces, the adjustable pole pieces pick up the magnetism from the magnets. Moving the screw closer or further away from the magnet determines signal strength, occasionally, they are mistaken for pole pieces, thus, the P-90 is sometimes erroneously said to have eight pole pieces. Dog ear is a type with extensions at both sides of pickup that somewhat resemble dogs ears. These are extensions of the predominantly rectangular cover that encompass the outlying mounting screws, dog-ear P-90 pickups were commonly mounted on Gibsons hollowbody guitars like the ES-330 and occasionally on solid body models like the Les Paul Junior. The same pickups were available on Epiphone models and the design is best remembered for its appearance on the hollow body Epiphone Casino of the mid to late 1960s. Despite its tonal qualities the P-90 fell out of favor with Gibson in the early 1950s as a consequence of guitar players complaining about the amount of hum it put out. Gibson employee Seth Lover solved the hum problem by designing a hum-canceling pickup known as a humbucker, it was supposed to sound like a P-90 and it nevertheless became Gibsons mainstay pickup from that point on
10.
Humbucker
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A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of electric guitar pickup that uses two coils to buck the hum picked up by coil pickups. Most pickups use magnets to produce a field around the strings. Humbuckers work by pairing a coil with the poles of its magnets oriented up. By connecting the coils together out of phase, the interference is reduced via phase cancellation. The string signals from both coils add up instead of canceling, because the magnets are placed in opposite polarity. The coils can be connected in series or in parallel in order to achieve this hum-cancellation effect, in addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used to cancel hum in dynamic microphones. Hum is caused by the magnetic fields created by transformers. While playing a guitar without humbuckers, a musician would hear a hum through the pickups during quiet sections of music, sources of studio and stage hum include high-power amps, processors, mixers, motors, power lines, and other equipment. Compared to unshielded single coil pickups, humbuckers dramatically reduce hum, the twin coiled guitar pickup invented by Arnold Lesti in 1935 is arranged as a humbucker, and the patent USRE20070 describes the noise cancelation and current summation principles of such a design. This Electric Translating Device employed the solenoid windings of the pickup to magnetize the steel strings by means of switching on a short D. C. charge before switching over to amplification, in 1938 A. F. Knoblaugh invented a pickup for stringed instruments involving 2 stacked coils. This pickup was to be used in pianos, since he was working for Baldwin Piano at the time, the iron cores of these pickups were magnetized to have their north-south poles at the opposite ends of the core, rather than the now more common top-bottom orientation. To overcome the hum problem for guitars, a humbucking pickup was invented by Seth Lover of Gibson under instruction of then president Ted McCarty, about the same time Ray Butts developed a similar pickup that was taken up by Gretsch guitars. Although Gibsons patent was filed almost 2 years before Gretschs, Gibsons patent was issued 4 weeks after Gretschs, both patents describe a reverse wound and reverse polarity pair of coils. A successful early humbucking pickup was the so-called PAF invented by Seth Lover in 1955, humbuckers are also known as dual-coil, double-coil, or hum-canceling pickups. In any magnetic pickup, a guitar string, magnetized by a fixed magnet within the pickup induces an alternating voltage across its coil. Guitar pickups reproduce this noise, which can be quite audible, the direction of voltage induced across a coil by the moving string depends on both the coil winding direction and the polarity of the fixed magnet. On the other hand, the direction of current induced by external fields is only dependent on the direction of winding, therefore a humbucker has two coils wound in such a way to cancel hum and maximize signal when they are connected. By convention humbucker coils are both wound counterclockwise, however typically the outside ends of the coils are connected together so that the starts are out of phase
11.
Bass guitar
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The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb, by plucking, slapping, popping, strumming, tapping, thumping, or picking with a plectrum, often known as a pick. The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to a guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length. The four-string bass, by far the most common, is tuned the same as the double bass. The bass guitar is an instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds to avoid excessive ledger lines. Like the electric guitar, the guitar has pickups and it is plugged into an amplifier and speaker on stage, or into a larger PA system using a DI unit. Since the 1960s, the guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary widely from one style of music to another, many styles of music utilise the bass guitar, including rock, heavy metal, pop, punk rock, country, reggae, gospel, blues, symphonic rock, and jazz. It is often a solo instrument in jazz, jazz fusion, Latin, funk, progressive rock and other rock, the adoption of a guitar form made the instrument easier to hold and transport than any of the existing stringed bass instruments. The addition of frets enabled bassists to play in more easily than on acoustic or electric upright basses. Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period, around 1947, Tutmarcs son, Bud, began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, prominently advertised in the nationally distributed L. D. Heater Music Company wholesale jobber catalogue of 1948, however, the Tutmarc family inventions did not achieve market success. In the 1950s, Leo Fender, with the help of his employee George Fullerton and his Fender Precision Bass, which began production in October 1951, became a widely copied industry standard. This split pickup, introduced in 1957, appears to have been two mandolin pickups, the pole pieces and leads of the coils were reversed with respect to each other, producing a humbucking effect. Humbucking is a design that electrically cancels the effect of any AC hum, the Fender Bass was a revolutionary new instrument, which could be easily transported, and which was less prone to feedback when amplified than acoustic bass instruments. Monk Montgomery was the first bass player to tour with the Fender bass guitar, roy Johnson, and Shifty Henry with Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957. The bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, following Fenders lead, in 1953, Gibson released the first short scale violin-shaped electric bass with extendable end pin, allowing it to be played upright or horizontally. In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass, the EB-0 was very similar to a Gibson SG in appearance
12.
Double bass
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The double bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. It is an instrument and is typically notated one octave higher than sounding to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. The double bass is the modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths, rather than fifths, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2. The instruments exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, the double bass is a standard member of the orchestras string section, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of genres, such as jazz, 1950s-style blues and rock and roll, rockabilly, psychobilly, traditional country music, bluegrass, tango. The double bass is played either with a bow or by plucking the strings, in orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, Classical music uses just the natural sound produced acoustically by the instrument, so does traditional bluegrass. In jazz, blues, and related genres, the bass is typically amplified with an amplifier and speaker, the double bass stands around 180 cm from scroll to endpin. However, other sizes are available, such as a 1⁄2 or 3⁄4 and these sizes do not reflect the size relative to a full size, or 4⁄4 bass, a 1⁄2 bass is not half the size of a bass but is only slightly smaller. It is typically constructed from several types of wood, including maple for the back, spruce for the top and it is uncertain whether the instrument is a descendant of the viola da gamba or of the violin, but it is traditionally aligned with the violin family. While the double bass is nearly identical in construction to other violin family instruments, like other violin and viol-family string instruments, the double bass is played either with a bow or by plucking the strings. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed, in jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, except for some solos and also occasional written parts in modern jazz that call for bowing. In classical pedagogy, almost all of the focus is on performing with the bow and producing a good bowed tone, some of these articulations can be combined, for example, the combination of sul ponticello and tremolo can produce eerie, ghostly sounds. Classical bass players do play pizzicato parts in orchestra, but these parts generally require simple notes, vibrato is used to add expression to string playing. In general, very loud, low-register passages are played with little or no vibrato, mid- and higher-register melodies are typically played with more vibrato. The speed and intensity of the vibrato is varied by the performer for an emotional and musical effect, in jazz, rockabilly and other related genres, much or all of the focus is on playing pizzicato. In jazz and jump blues, bassists are required to play extremely rapid pizzicato walking basslines for extended periods, as well, jazz and rockabilly bassists develop virtuoso pizzicato techniques that enable them to play rapid solos that incorporate fast-moving triplet and sixteenth note figures. In jazz and related styles, bassists often add semi-percussive ghost notes into basslines, to add to the rhythmic feel and to add fills to a bassline
