From the course: Bass: Teach Yourself
The bass
- Alright, let's get to know your bass a bit better. There are many different types of basses, some have four strings like this one, others have five or even six strings, some are fretless, but let's just get to know the basic parts of your bass. The main three segments are the body here, the neck is this whole segment and then finally, the head stock. At the end of your body, you'll see the strap button, and then also there's another strap button on the other side of your body. The bridge is this segment where the strings are held to the body, underneath that, is the quarter inch jack, and then these two knobs, this one is a volume knob, and this is the tone knob, which attenuates the high frequencies. These are both pickups, which takes the signal that you're hearing acoustically and amplify it to send that out electronically through the cable, then this is the pick guard, this section of the bass is called a waist, and then this is called the cutaway to allow you to reach the higher frets. On the neck you have a fret board, which is the part that's facing the strings, and then these frets which are the metal wires that are perpendicular to the strings. You also have these fret markers, which are the dots that are typically both on the fret board facing out as well as on the top. At the end of the neck is a nut and then as you get to the head stock, you have the string posts and then finally the tuning pegs.
Practice while you learn with exercise files
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