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A little introduction to the history of the violin bass.
Using the term 'violin bass' in the following simply picks up the usual description of this instrument that became accepted in the linguistic usage and was even used by Hofner to put it on the market. We can assume that Karl Höfner was aware of the difference between a violin and a viola d'amore which the bass reminds most on - but the man on the street wasn't. But this target group knew what a violin was what makes it most likely that the simplification 'violin bass' was chosen for marketing reasons - although historical incorrect.
Asked about the make of the first violin bass of the world, many self-styled experts say immediately: "Gibson with the EB-1". Perhaps it's not the wrong answer but already the question is wrong if we don't define precisely what a violin bass exactly is. You don't have to saw through a violin body to find out that it's hollow. This hollowbody is part of the principles used for these instruments to generate their distinctive sound. So let's find out, which of the first violin basses really deserves this term.
Gibson EB-1
After
World War II the onset of rock and roll music adamently demanded new
musical instruments and as soon as Rickenbackers 'Frying Pan'
turned into the first public available electric guitar, the double-bass
men often had a
problem to be heard in the mix.
While
Leo Fender succeeded with his Telecaster guitar, he tried to expand
this success by inventing his first Precision Bass, based on his
experience with the Telecaster. Although his
invention was geared towards jobless guitar players who should be able
to accept job offers as bass players with the guitar-like instrument,
he also hoped for acceptance by the double-bass players. But many of
them hesitated to try this new way, mainly because they were not used
to play some sort of 'guitar' which was hanging around their necks
instead of
playing it upright as they were used to all the years before. Thus, the
sales of the Precision Bass didn't meet the expectations.
One
of Fenders Competitors during these times was the successor of the 1918
departed Orville Gibson, who noticed the
sluggish sales of the precision bass and decided to offer
something to the market that could trick the mental refusal of the bass
players. It's a fact, that Gibson already experimented with an electrical
upright bass
in 1938, but during WWII they didn't continue its developments and the
two
prototypes vanished in the storeroom. Remembering that project the
company eventually came out with their own model of
a sort of 'precision' bass (Fender had called it 'Precision'
because
it was the first
fretted bass that should give guitarists a familiar feeling) but
keeping the shape as close as possible to the well known double-bass.
Needless to say that
they had to make its body smaller as it first of all should be bearable
for
those willing to try the new way of bass playing.
So
Gibson took a piece of mahogany, machined it to the shape of a common
bowed instrument and gave it a four string neck, little shorter than
the 'longscale' seen before from Fender. In order to attract also the
old
fashioned bass players, they attached an endpin that could be unscrewed
and replaced by a pole, so the instrument could also be played upright.
With painted f hole-fakes the downsized double-bass was called 'Gibson
Electric Bass' and joined the scene in 1953, about two years after
Fenders
Precision Bass.
1955
No one really can deny that a solid piece of wood, weighing 11,681lbs (5,3kg) and an attachable iron bar on its bottom has nothing to do with a fragile violin. The saw that left a violin-shape in the timber didn't hollow it out and therefore the result wasn't actually a violin-like body and therefore the instrument definitely wasn't a violin bass! Less important but perhaps worth mentioning is the fact, that a delicate hollow body would have been problematic with holding the upright stand. As far as I know, this is why only few attempts were made in this direction e.g. by Crown or Egmond/Lion using an end-to-end sustain block in the middle of the body that virtually eliminated the lightweight advantage.
Until
1958 Gibson unsucessfully tried to overtake Fender in bass sales with
their Electric Bass but eventually the idea was discarded by
introducing the new
EB-2 type because the export sales for the heavy mahogany chunk had
barely reached some hundred instruments. In the same year, not long
before the production of the unfortunate
'Gibson Electric Bass' was abandoned, it was renamed to 'EB-1'. For
more
than
10 years the EB-1 was not produced until in the late sixties the first
wave of nostalgia rerequested the instruments of the fifties. In 1969
Gibson gave the EB-1 a new chance, this time with a Humbucker,
different
tuners and bridge. But they judged the market wrong again, this time with an export rate
that
didn't reach the two digit range and the
production was
closed three years later in 1972.
Although
the EB-1 nowadays has only a relevance for collectors, it was a target
of
copiers over the years, simply because Japanese guitar manufacturers
copied nearly everything coming from a successful company. As a tribute
that this ancestor of electric basses deserves, a collection
of violin shaped solid bodied basses and EB-1 copies is also covered on
this site. However the only official copy was the 1999 introduced EB-1
reissue model from Epiphone, even though this time it was again not the
most successful
instrument on the bass market.
