Why has bass guitar tech always seemed ahead of our 6 string colleagues?

[Twunkbass]

As i've been learning guitar to add to my bass ability, ive noticed until very recently guitar has never really gotten past 1970 or so. Guitar with passive pickups into a valve amp with a few pedals has been the standard ever since. With bass we have had active circuits and pickups in our basses forever. Solid state tech has been way more successful , valves becoming an interesting but niche option. Only in the last 5 or so years has modeling tech become so good that guitarists can get their les paul into marshall plexi on a computer.

 

Am I missing something that explains this difference in mindset?

[chris_b]

Explain the mindset of a guitarist? No, I haven't got the time!!

 

Most of the guitarists I play with use Fender valve combos and a Strat. A couple also have a Gibson. I can't remember anyone using anything else. If they get rid of an amp, it's replaced by another Fender valve combo.

 

I played with a guitarist a couple of years ago who didn't use any pedals. That was a first! All the others have anything between 2 and 10 pedals.

[SteveXFR]

The tech has been there with guitar, just less popular. 

Guitarists have been using modelling amps a lot more commonly, especially at pro level.

[Doctor J]

Guitarists have double-locking, floating vibrato bridges, trans-trem bridges, countless active pickups, modelling and profiling amps. On the amp side, they're probably more developed than bass whereas bass is really only ahead when it comes to onboard EQ, something which hasn't really been embraced by guitarists. 

 

For every solicitor peddling fake blues on their Strat, there's usually a lad plodding away on a Precision beside him. That stuck-in-the-50's knife cuts both ways.

[Grimalkin]

It wasn't that the Luddites disliked technology, they disliked the fact that it would be used to replace them...

 

 

[Cato]

There have been efforts to bring the electric guitar into the 21dt century, but they've generally been rejected by consumers.

 

Often the new stuff has been poorly executed like Gibson's robotuners and their Firebird X but even the stuff which works as advertised such as  the Line 6 Variax has a limited following.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Cato

[Agent 00Soul]

The stereotype of the young 2010s guitarist was of a person playing a 1950s or 60s-design offset guitar plugged into a low wattage valve amp with 17 boutique pedals in the chain.  The stereotype for the 2020s is the same person, but plugged into a digital modelling amp with a pedal controller and a couple of vintage 1970s-90s pedal reissues.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Agent 00Soul

[Lozz196]

I’ve heard many many many guitars & amps over the years, as I’m sure we all have. Imo difficult to beat a Gibson & Marshall, which isn’t exactly new.

[mowf]

2 hours ago, Grimalkin said:

It wasn't that the Luddites disliked technology, they disliked the fact that it would be used to replace them...

 

 

Shame I only play 5s these days or I'd definitely be buying that. GLWTS.

 

[Bolo]

You may be exposed to a limited section of all music that's being played.

[Barking Spiders]

I might be considered one of the guitar Luddites. Like with cars, guitar design peaked decades ago;  Gibson 335 and the Les Paul (late 50s), Fender Strat and Tele (early 50s),  IMO later designs esp the flying V and other typically metal guitars  are as ugly as fvck. I have an Epi Sheraton II as for my money nothing beats the 335 design. It is to guitar what the E-Type Jag is to the car.  As those guitars mentioned have long been perfect why do any more to them?

[BigRedX]

It's the same with nearly all musical instruments - a blind nostalgia for the past. It's not just confined to guitars and basses, where in reality the development of the actual instruments over the past 70 has been minimal. Those innovations described in the OP are mostly red herrings and don't contribute much in the way of improvements to the overall playability or sound.

 

If you really want to be astounded by backward looking thinking you only need to look at the current state of the synthesiser market. The obsession with vintage (and re-issues) of budget instruments that back in the day were only popular because the synths we all really wanted were way beyond our financial reach. The current obsession with the Roland Juno 6/60 amazes me. Absolutely no-one I knew in the early 80s bought one because they thought it sounded fantastic. They bought it because it was the cheapest poly-synth available. Given the funds we'd have all bought Jupiter 8s, Prophet 5s or Oberheim OBXs. No-one really wanted the weedy sounds of a single oscillator and EG, and not even a unison mode for beefing up the sound. In fact the only real selling point was the on-board chorus because as soon as you turned that off everything sounded thin, weedy and lifeless. But despite that and the fact that almost every DAW comes with sonically superior synths built-in, the Juno 6/60 "sound" appears to still be popular with original instruments selling for far more than their real value, and numerous hardware and software recreations now available. Madness...

[Dad3353]

30 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

...No-one really wanted the weedy sounds of a single oscillator and EG, and not even a unison mode for beefing up the sound...

 

Maybe a parallel to be drawn with the humble flute, for example..? It has its scope as a solo instrument, for those that know how to play it well, and can be fitted into many more complex arrangements, as it has its own unobtrusive character that blends in well. Less is sometimes (often..?) more. Just a thought. 

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

Maybe a parallel to be drawn with the humble flute, for example..? It has its scope as a solo instrument, for those that know how to play it well, and can be fitted into many more complex arrangements, as it has its own unobtrusive character that blends in well. Less is sometimes (often..?) more. Just a thought. 

 

Not really. The whole point of the Juno 6/60 was that you could play more than one note at a time. To this end corners were cut from a sonic PoV in order to be able to get the price down to just under £1k (not an inconsiderable sum back in the early 80s). If you didn't need to be able to play chords there were any number of monophonic synths that had far more sound shaping capabilities for a fraction of the price.

 

And these days you can buy a decent modern two oscillator two envelope generator polysynth for what in real terms is next to nothing compared with £1k in 1982. If you really want to emulate the weedy sounds of the Juno you can simply not use the additional features. There's certainly no reason to spend lots of money on either a vintage model, and all the associated (un)reliability that come with it, or on an over-priced recreation of the same.

[Bassmidget209]

Is it maybe partly also to do with the nature of the limits of the tech and requirements of bassists. The original amps (fender bassman etc) simply were not up to the task of providing adequate bass reproduction for the stages of the era. Guitars and amps of the fifties and early sixties done and continue to sound great. The current products did not suffice and therefore further innovation and invention was required. The p bass and the jazz bass provided the right sound in an ergonomic package and have stood the test of time. Pedals were largely not suited to bass guitars and so further innovation was required. Amps weren't powerful enough until the svt came along and that is now the benchmark for many players. Bass frequencies are hard to tame and the nature of bass requires supporting other people's sound and therefore active basses with on board eqs (pedals can't provide tone adjustment as there were so few available to bassists of the day). 

 

Again the dissatisfaction with traditional bass constructions and tonewoods pushed for more exotic woods and constructions. Non traditional builders would adopt nontraditional shapes. The sheer size and weight of basses would necessitate further engineering such as light weight tuners and different headstocks, or even no headstocks at all! 

As more soloists appeared (essentially a whole new role for bass guitar) different builders would design basses with a focus on soloing and expansive fretboard 

Competition from synthesisers further pushed innovation into 5 string constructions.

 

There is a LOT of generalisation here and I added more as I started typing and only came up with this concept on reading this post so please feel free to correct me but my closing statement is essentially:

Bassists adopt new tech because the p bass and bassman where not up to the task of the evolving role of the bass guitar.

 

 

[Agent 00Soul]

When DIs first started becoming common, people liked the way it sounded with a bass but not a guitar.  The low-fi sound of a valve amp has continued to be the almost exclusive sound of choice for guitar and with bass it was just one of several that have evolved over the years.

[Sonic_Groove]

On 25/10/2022 at 14:55, Twunkbass said:

never really gotten past 1970 or so. Guitar with passive pickups into a valve amp with a few pedals has been the standard ever since.

 

Erm...

 

 

[Sonic_Groove]

 

[Grimalkin]

You shouldn't always assume technology is a friend, look at what auto-tune has done...

 

That'll be my product, an auto-tune for ropey fretless bass playing.

[funkydoug]

One factor is that amplifying guitar is easy, so simple tech works well  enough.

Bass frequencies present more problems in all kinds of ways and so there have been more reasons to want advanced tech.

[Nail Soup]

A theory.

The electric guitar was an adapted version of an old instrument (the guitar, now known as an acoustic guitar) so has more tradition etc stuck with it.

The electric bass was a new instrument, a break from tradition.

So bass is more liable to innovation.

[Dan Dare]

10 minutes ago, Nail Soup said:

A theory.

The electric guitar was an adapted version of an old instrument (the guitar, now known as an acoustic guitar) so has more tradition etc stuck with it.

The electric bass was a new instrument, a break from tradition.

So bass is more liable to innovation.

 

Not sure about that. The bass guitar was originally developed to be a portable, convenient and amplifiable substitute for the upright bass. There's as much dissimilarity between it and the UB and the guitar and electric guitar. The electric guitar predates the bass guitar by only about 20 years. Both were quickly used by musicians for their own, rather than any traditional qualities. 

[Agent 00Soul]

Another big difference is that the transients of the bass can be massive.  They are much less of an issue with guitars.  That might lead to a different route to engineering tech.

[Bassfinger]

Just to confound the OP I should remind the audience that I prefer passive basses. See, were not all ahead of the crowd. Indeed, I'm only grudgingly in the 21st century.

[tauzero]

On 07/12/2022 at 18:27, Bassfinger said:

Just to confound the OP I should remind the audience that I prefer passive basses. See, were not all ahead of the crowd. Indeed, I'm only grudgingly in the 21st century.

 

But if you were to embrace the future fairly recent past last 40 years, you'd have a much wider range of choice than if you were a guitarist.