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World's oldest bass guitar...


josie
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In all fairness, what he sold was 'the world's oldest bass guitar that is not a Fender or a Rickenbacker or anything that most people would recognise'.

I'll bet the world's oldest Fender would sell for a bit more than the price of a family car ...

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2 hours ago, xgsjx said:

At the risk of being unnecessarily picky...

Frying pan

Predates the model shown by around 5 years. I've done a bit of admittedly superficial digging but haven't been able to come up with a value, although I rather suspect it might be a bit more than the $7.5m paid for the one shown.

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9 hours ago, josie said:

Apologies if someone else has beaten me to this: 

https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/world-oldest-electric-bass-guitar-sells-on-ebay-for-23000

It does bring home the difference in price between guitars and basses. What do you reckon the equivalent "normal guitar" would cost? 

What gets me wound up, is people doing a no finger style demo. Its all slapbass (See bottom of link). The thing is ancient too (1936), it's just wrong, him sat there slapping the stinky poo out of it. Then he breaks out a pick from nowhere and really goes to town with that too.

I stopped watching when he started tapping.

I want to hear its normal finger style tone. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haha only joking. There isn't any slap bass or pick playing in the demo , I wish there had been. I'm parodying demo comments. 

 

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If you understand French, I wrote a mémoire some 15 to 20 years ago about the origins of electric basses and guitars up to 1965.

It was an event day around lutherie and I also made a presentation of the main usual basses and their respective sound, and also explained how to have the real sound of your instrument with any amp.

I can create a topic and put a link to the pdf.

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7 hours ago, leftybassman392 said:

At the risk of being unnecessarily picky...

Frying pan

Predates the model shown by around 5 years. I've done a bit of admittedly superficial digging but haven't been able to come up with a value, although I rather suspect it might be a bit more than the $7.5m paid for the one shown.

I suspect the real name was 'Worlds oldest solid body bass guitar', as I assume someone stuck a pickup on a double bass way before the 30s

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11 hours ago, leftybassman392 said:

At the risk of being unnecessarily picky...

Frying pan

Predates the model shown by around 5 years. I've done a bit of admittedly superficial digging but haven't been able to come up with a value, although I rather suspect it might be a bit more than the $7.5m paid for the one shown.

stromberg_v4gjv0.jpg

Stromberg catalogue 1929

At the risk of being even pickier - in 1929 the Stromberg Voisinet Company was selling flat tops with an integral pick-up and a companion amplifier which looks remarkably like something Phil Jones might have put together. So that's six years before the Rickenbacker / Electro-string Ken Roberts archtop in the article about the guy in Lewes and three years before the frying pan.

 

248131437_vivitone1933.jpg.3d0819baedcb9469774351ec8b7fc408.jpg

Vivitone Electric Guitar circa 1933

Now let's get really picky...

Gibson's Lloyd Loar was working on pick-ups and amps from 1919 onwards and in 1924 designed an electrically amplified upright bass. Though Loar was their mainstay guitar designer Gibson's management scoffed at his ideas about electrics. Outcome? Loar got the ar$e and had it on his toes to set up his own operation. By 1933 Loar's Vivitone company was chopping out arch-tops with a pick-up and a companion battery powered amp (busking, anyone?) that pre-dates the Pignose. There wasn't much demand so Loar turned his mind to the idea of electric pianos. Gibson would eventually catch up in 1936 when the company released the ES-150.

 

227043.jpg

Vivitone electrics / dope cubbyhole

The eagle-eyed observer will have spotted that Lloyd Loar's hollow-body Vivitone has no f-holes through which to insert the electrics (early attempt to reduce feedback?). Loar's elegant solution was to put everything in a little sliding drawer on the bout which presumably also provided stash-space for jazz cigarettes. All this was 85 years ago and two years before Rickenbacker.

 

399822651_perrybotkinvibrola.jpg.f19cfae7cfb2e11adddf9d638442d65f.jpg

Jazz Great Perry Botkin with Doc Kauffman's Vibrola guitar / amp combo

My favourite early guitar is the Vibrola designed by Doc Kauffman which debuted in July 1936 and was taken up by Electro-String. The guitar was mounted on a pole which was attached to the amplifier. Inside the solid guitar body was a system of electrically driven pulleys which provided a mechanical vibrato effect.

Doc Kauffman not only invented the first guitar whammy bar in 1928 (Les Paul bought one) but went on to found K&F with Leo Fender in 1945, leaving around the time that Leo started working on the Telecaster. In another wang-bar coincidence, around this time Leo was allegedly picking Paul Bigsby's brains for solid body guitars and nicking the design for the Strat headstock. Fender's distribution company was owned by Francis Hall who in 1951 bought Rickenbacker from Adolph Rickenbacker, he who had first produced the frying pan, drawing on his experience manufacturing steel guitar bodies for Dobro back in the 1920's. (Francis Hall's son John now runs Rickenbacker; his hobbies include firing off menacing threats at UK bass forums).

Thing is, all these guys knew each other or were aware of each other's work. Fascinating times.

Edited by skankdelvar
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Well, if we're going to get that picky...

Mzxmyft.jpg

This fellow was using electrics on solid bodies in the very late 17xx's, according to Ms Shelley. The experiments were not popular with the neighbours, though, and the technique was abandoned for a couple of centuries.

Edited by Dad3353
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44 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

This fellow was using electrics on solid bodies in the very late 17xx's, according to Ms Shelley.

250px-EVH_frankenstrat.jpg

Quite so, though posterity would have to wait. The Frankenstein guitar was first successfully animated by Dr Edward Lodewijk Van Halen in the mid-late 20th century. Ita fiebat.

Funnily enough, Mary Shelley is the aunt of Pete Shelley out of The Buzzcocks.

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