Hear 4, 5, 6 and 8-string bass — each in its own register.

Pick a configuration. Tap an open string to hear it, or play the open-string line. Headphones strongly recommended — the low B on a 5-string bass is about 31 Hz, below the lowest note on a piano, and most phone speakers physically cannot reproduce it.

Synthesised bass timbre with added 2nd and 3rd harmonics so the notes are audible on small speakers — your brain reconstructs the missing fundamental. On real headphones or a sub the low B becomes physically perceptible as much as audible.

1951 — Leo Fender invents the bass guitar

For the first half of the 20th century, popular music's bass instrument was the double bass — the 6-foot-tall upright string instrument played in jazz combos, big-band rhythm sections, and country bands. It was acoustic, unfretted, hand-carved, expensive, fragile, and almost impossible to amplify in the loud post-war honky-tonk rooms where electric guitars were taking over. Bassists were going inaudible.

Leo Fender — the radio repairman in Fullerton, California who had introduced the Telecaster guitar in 1950 — responded in 1951 with the Fender Precision Bass. It was electric. It had frets, so inexperienced players could hit the right note instead of approximating it as on the unfretted upright. It was the size and shape of a Telecaster, played horizontally with a strap. It had a single magnetic pickup. It had four strings tuned EADG — the same tuning as the upright double bass, one octave below the lowest four strings of a guitar.

By the mid-1950s every working country and rock-and-roll band had switched. By the time the Beatles arrived in 1962 with Paul McCartney playing a 4-string Höfner 500/1 violin bass, the upright was effectively gone from popular music. The Precision Bass remains in production today as essentially the same design Fender introduced 74 years ago — a small fact that says a lot about how thoroughly Fender got it right the first time.

The 5-string — why bass players reach down, not up

Fender themselves released a 5-string bass in 1965, the Fender Bass V. It had the extra string tuned as a HIGH C above the standard G. Almost nobody bought one. It was discontinued in 1971.

Fender had misread what bass players wanted. Bassists do not generally play high — their job in an ensemble is the harmonic and rhythmic anchor at the bottom of the mix, locked with the kick drum. The notes they need that they don't already have are below the open E, not above the open G. Modern pop, R&B, gospel, hip-hop and metal regularly write to D1, C1, or B0 — the territory two to five semitones below the 4-string bass's bottom. On a 4-string you can only reach those notes by detuning the low E mid-song.

The first 5-string bass with a low B was a prototype built in 1976 by New York luthier Carl Thompson for session bassist Anthony Jackson — who had asked him for a six-string contrabass to extend his range downward. The five-string version followed shortly. Yamaha brought the concept to mainstream production with the BB5000 in 1984, and Music Man's StingRay 5 (1987) made it the studio standard. By the early 1990s any serious session bassist owned at least one 5-string.

The 4-string never went away. Most rock, punk, indie, country and blues bassists still prefer it — the wider string spacing is more comfortable, the lighter neck reduces shoulder fatigue, and the absence of the low B avoids unwanted mud in busy mixes. The choice between 4 and 5 in 2026 is almost entirely about the music being played. Pop, gospel, R&B, hip-hop, metal: 5. Almost everything else: 4.

Why low B specifically, not low A or low C?

Because EADG is tuned in perfect fourths — five semitones between adjacent strings — and adding the new string in the same interval pattern is what keeps the fingering geometry consistent across the whole instrument. A perfect fourth below E is B. Adding a low D would have made the spacing irregular; adding a low A would have made it a full octave below the existing A. B is what the fourths-tuning system asks for, and it gives you down to roughly 31 Hz, which is far enough below E to cover almost any music ever written.

The 6-string bass (BEADGC) adds the high C using the same logic — a perfect fourth above the existing G. The intervals end up symmetrical around the middle. This is also why some modern guitar players who want to add range add a low B (7-string) or low F# (8-string) — the same intervallic logic, scaled down by an octave.

All the bass string counts

Highlighted row is the standard. Anything beyond 6 strings is a boutique or custom build; the 4 and 5 between them cover ~95% of working bass guitars in 2026.

Not the bass guitar?

Double bass (also called upright bass, contrabass, string bass, or bass fiddle) — the orchestral instrument from the violin family. Acoustic, fretless, played upright with a bow or fingers, the largest bowed string instrument. Same EADG tuning as a bass guitar, but a completely different instrument otherwise. Used in classical orchestras, jazz combos, and bluegrass.

Bass ukulele / U-Bass — a ukulele-sized solid-body bass with polyurethane strings, tuned EADG one octave below a guitar. Same notes as a bass guitar; produces a thumpy upright-bass-style tone in a tiny portable body. Popularised by Kala in 2009.

Six bassists who decided what the instrument does

James Jamerson (1936–1983) — the unbilled Motown session bassist whose 1962 Fender Precision (the "Funk Machine") played on most of Motown's hit catalogue between 1962 and 1971. He effectively codified what the electric bass does in popular music: melodic, syncopated, locking with the kick drum but moving against the rhythm. Almost every modern pop bass line is a descendant of Jamerson's vocabulary.

Paul McCartney (b. 1942) — the Beatle, on a 1961 Höfner 500/1 violin bass strung left-handed. Most listeners do not realise how prominent and melodic his bass lines are because his vocal pulls the ear. His playing on "Something" (1969) and "Come Together" (1969) is the high-water mark of melodic bass in mainstream rock.

Jaco Pastorius (1951–1987) — Floridian. Removed the frets from a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass with a butter knife in 1970, taught himself to play the resulting unfretted instrument with violin-like vibrato and slides, and reinvented what an electric bass could be as a solo voice. His self-titled debut album (1976) is the dividing line between "bass as supporting role" and "bass as virtuoso instrument."

Larry Graham (b. 1946) — bassist in Sly and the Family Stone from 1967. Invented the slap-and-pop technique — striking the strings with the thumb (slap) and pulling them away from the fretboard with the index finger to release with a percussive snap (pop). The defining funk-bass sound, and the foundation of every Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, Flea, and Victor Wooten line that came after.

Anthony Jackson (b. 1952) — New York session bassist who designed the modern 6-string contrabass guitar in 1975 (built by Carl Thompson, 1976) — adding both a low B and a high C to the standard EADG. The instrument changed what was possible in studio session work; his playing on the Steely Dan, Paul Simon and Steve Khan records of the late 1970s and early 1980s is the introduction of the extended-range bass to popular music.

Flea (b. 1962) — Australian-American, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist since 1983. Brought slap technique into mainstream alternative rock in the late 1980s and 1990s, and proved that the bass could carry hooks in a guitar-led band ("Around the World," "Aeroplane," "Higher Ground"). Plays both 4 and 5-string Fender Jazz Basses depending on the song.

Continue exploring