Fender Precision Bass

The Fender Precision Bass (often shortened to "P-Bass") is a model of electric bass guitar manufactured by Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. In its standard, post-1957 configuration, the Precision Bass is a solid body, four-stringed instrument usually equipped with a single split-coil humbucking pickup and a one-piece, 20-fret maple neck with rosewood or maple fingerboard.

Its prototype, designed by Leo Fender in 1950, was brought to market in 1951. It was the first electric bass guitar to earn widespread attention and use, remaining among the best-selling and most-imitated electric bass guitars with considerable effect on the sound of popular music. Leo Fender designed the P-bass for big band guitarists. As the Fifties progressed the big band era was winding down. Guitarists were usually the first to be fired. If a guitarist could double on bass then they had a better chance of staying employed. Double basses had no frets so the P-bass got frets. Upright bass players sometimes took umbrage when first asked to play the P-bass. Wes Montgomery's brother, Monk, almost got fired by Lionel Hampton when he said he would only play double bass. Lionel offered him two weeks' pay and a one-way ticket back to Indiana. Quickly embracing the P-bass, Monk became an early endorser of the P-bass.

The double bass is among the largest and most physically cumbersome instruments which are regularly still transported by the player on their own. It is also hard to hear in large bands or those that use amplified instruments, and it requires specialized skills to play that are distinct from those required to play the guitar. The Precision Bass was designed to overcome these drawbacks. In particular, the name "Precision" came from the use of frets to play in tune more easily than on the fretless fingerboard of the double bass.

As the electric bass guitar provides different tonal qualities than the double bass, players and bandleaders naturally needed some time to incorporate the new instrument into their musical visions. Subsequently, the more solid, harder-edged sound with more sustain of the electric bass guitar became increasingly dominant and an important factor in the transformation of the beat and rhythm of pop music from jump blues and swing to rhythm and blues, rock music, soul and funk.

Upright bassists initially looked at the new instrument with similar contempt as guitar players did with its solid-body sibling, the Telecaster, with vibraphonist/drummer Lionel Hampton's band among the first to incorporate the new instrument. Elvis Presley's bass player Bill Black, was beginning to use a Precision Bass during the filming of Jailhouse Rock and the recording of its soundtrack, but became so frustrated over his initial inability to get used to playing it, he angrily threw it on the floor. Elvis picked up the P-bass and finished the bass for "You're So Square (Baby I Don't Care)". Bill Black did overcome his frustration, playing on the single "Jailhouse Rock", and would play P-bass onstage with Elvis. Black continued using the P-bass with his own band, the Bill Black Combo, until his death. Interestingly, on Jailhouse Rock there is an early example of detuning: the bass is tuned down a halfstep to Eb-Ab-Db-Gb with a low open-string E flat clearly audible on the track.

Fender delivered an early Precision to Los Angeles session bassist and arranger Shifty Henry. Monk Montgomery became the second jazz player to popularize what would be widely referred to as the "Fender Bass" at the time, first with Lionel Hampton, and then with his brother, guitarist Wes Montgomery. By 1954 Henry and Montgomery were appearing in Fender's advertising.

By the end of the 1950s the "P-Bass", as it would later be called, was finally gaining acceptance with rock 'n roll and country bassists, and also with guitarists who would double on the instrument. The most notable of the latter was Carol Kaye, originally a jazz guitarist, who as a bassist became best known for her work as part of the consortium of L.A. session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew.