The original P-Bass is a fascinating instrument. It’s wasn’t the first electric bass guitar—inventor and owner Paul Tutmarc claimed that title with the instruments he created and sold through his Seattle, Washington, music shop in the 1930s and ’40s. But the P-Bass, released in 1951, was the first electric bass that really mattered—the one that made the instrument a fixture of our musical landscape.
The P-Bass has evolved much over the course of its 60 years. In fact, its creators instigated the first big makeover back in 1957, when Fender abandoned the original Telecaster-inspired styling and single-coil pickup in favor of a sleeker, Strat-type look and a split-coil pickup wired in humbucking mode. (The earlier P-Bass style resurfaced in the late ’60s as the Telecaster Bass, and in Fender’s ’51 P-Bass reissues.)
