A Guide to bass guitars

Bass guitars are in tremendous demand in the music industry. Many musicians prefer to play the guitar rather than any other musical instruments. A bass guitar is an essential instrument at many musical events. The artists playing the bass guitar at concerts have an audience and fans of their own. It is one of the most important musical instruments at rock shows, jazz concerts, country music events, and rap and blues concerts and even on pop albums. The function of a guitar, especially a bass guitar, is multi-faceted.

While purchasing a guitar the options available must be carefully weighed. All the details should be examined thoroughly in accordance with the purpose of the guitar. A bass guitar may be used to play for large audiences, small audiences, or simply for leisure and recreation. One of the main attributes of a good guitar is the wood it is made of. One of the options available is Mahogany. It has a relatively low velocity of sound. Koa wood has a considerable density and low overtone content, Brazilian Rosewood contributes to the tone coloration. It offers high sound velocity and broad range of overtones.

Rock and roll bands realized the urgent need to define the tone and character of the music produced by a guitar. This requirement was adequately fulfilled by the bass guitar. A bass guitar, as the name suggests, makes use of electricity to transmit the sounds produced. It has six strings, which are tuned with the help of a tuning peg. It has several frets and a long neck. The guitar body is usually made of solid wood and sounds are produced by the magnetic pickups. These pickups are controlled by several knobs at the end of the neck. To produce sounds, a bass guitar senses the vibrations of the strings electronically. They are then sent as an electronic signal to a connected amplifier and speaker.

There is a magnetic pickup mounted under the strings on the body of the guitar body. This pickup consists of a bar magnet wrapped with as many as 7,000 turns of fine wire. The bass guitar is a product of pure physics. The coils and magnets have the capacity to turn electrical energy into motion and vice versa. In the case of a bass guitar, the vibrating steel strings produce a corresponding vibration in the magnet’s magnetic field. This causes a vibrating current in the coil. This current is then transferred to the amplifier and finally to the speakers.

Another important detail is the body style. Bass guitars come in three basic body styles. They are solid-body, semi-hollow or semi-solid body and hollow-body. The neck of the guitar can help in the quality of sound output. The type of neck the guitar should have is depends on the length of the guitarist’s hand. Necks come in a number of shapes such as C-shaped, thin, and thin and wide. While purchasing a guitar, it is advisable to scrutinize the scale length, intonation, and number of frets, finish, the bridge, pickups and tuning machine.