Fender Telecaster Bass

The Fender Telecaster Bass was an electric bass guitar introduced in the late 1967 by Fender. Upon its introduction, this "Telecaster Bass" was essentially a straight reissue of the original 1951 Precision Bass design (which was in fact influenced by the Telecaster guitar), with a large pickguard, small Telecaster-shaped headstock, single pickup, and separate chrome control plate. Early versions had a two piece maple-capped neck with no "skunk stripe" on the back of the neck and some also had the rare paddle style tuners that were only otherwise seen on the Jazz Bass. The pickguard on the 60's Telecaster Bass was slightly more slender and employed more mounting screws than the originals of the 50s. There were also three different headstock decals in the early version. The earliest had a regular silver Telecaster guitar logo with the word "bass" added underneath. Only prototypes are known to have this decal. The second decal was the larger Black (gold outlined) Telecaster Bass logo (bass being in the same style of script as Fender). The third and most commonly used decal had the silver Fender script with the words Telecaster Bass written in a sans-serif type font underneath.

Within a few years, however, the old-style pickguard was redesigned to eliminate the control plate, and the single-coil pickup was replaced with a larger, more powerful, humbucking unit. The Telecaster Bass was produced alongside the contemporary Precision Bass through the '70s. The decal logo had changed from silver to gold, with black outlining.

The Telecaster Bass differs in shape from the original Telecaster guitar in that the latter is a single cutaway guitar and the bass is double cutaway, a feature which makes it resemble the Squier 51.

In the early 1990s, Fender Japan reissued the '51 Precision Bass, which is in essence, a reissue of the first-version Telecaster Bass. The earliest "Made in Japan" versions vary slightly from the current "Crafted in Japan" model. For example, the early 1990s version uses the larger, more historically accurate string ferrules that were used in the 50s.

Released in 2007 was the Squier Vintage Modified Precision Bass TB which is based on the '70s version of the Telecaster Bass, featuring a similar Telecaster Bass headstock, pickguard and humbucking pickup.

Literature

*Peter Bertges: "The Fender Reference"; Bomots, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-939316-38-1