At the dawn of the electric bass, there were a lot of questions about who these instruments would suit. Would upright players make the switch to the electric four-string? Would guitar players ditch a couple of strings and start playing bass? These questions sparked the creation of the gear that we're going to be looking at today: classic six-string bass guitars.
At the time, these instruments were called "baritone guitars," but today that means something else to guitar players. Today, "six-string bass" also means something different than it means here. These instruments are all their own, featuring a longer scale length with strings somewhere been the size of a guitar's and bass'.
In the video above, Joe Shadid is digging into several of these classic models to show off how they sound and what they can do. He'll playing through a Fender Bass VI, Gibson EB-6, and Danelectro Longhorn 4623—the major players in this space at the time. See the video above to hear these instruments in action.