Jazz Bass:
The Jazz Bass (or J-Bass) was the second model of electric bass guitar created by Leo Fender. The bass is distinct from the Precision Bass in that its tone is brighter and richer in the midrange with less emphasis on the fundamental harmonic. Because of this, many bass players who want to be more "forward" in the mix (including smaller bands such as power trios) prefer the Jazz Bass
The Fender Jazz Bass is a solid body bass guitar typically with two pickups, four strings, an adjustable bridge tailpiece, maple neck (usually with a rosewood fingerboad), alder (sometimes ash) body built with a 34 inch scale length. In vintage models, it sometimes had a removable pickup cover for style.
First introduced in 1960 as the "Deluxe Model", it was marketed as a stablemate to the Jazzmaster guitar which was also marketed as a "Deluxe Model" in its own right; however, it was renamed the Jazz Bass as Fender felt that its redesigned neck - narrower and more rounded than that of the Precision Bass - would appeal more to jazz musicians. The Jazz Bass has two single coil pickups with two pole pieces per string. This gave the bass a stronger midrange sound to compete with the Rickenbacker bass, which had been introduced in 1954 and which was famously "bright." As well as having a slightly different, less symmetrical and more contoured body shape (known in Fender advertising as the "Offset Waist Contour" body), the Jazz Bass neck is noticeably narrower at the nut than that of the Fender Precision Bass. While the Precision Bass was originally styled similarly to the Telecaster guitar (and, after 1957, the Stratocaster), the Jazz Bass' styling was inspired more by the Jazzmaster guitar, with which the Jazz shared its offset body and sculpted edges that differentiate it from other slab-style guitar bodies.
The original intention was to encourage upright-bass players to switch to electric bass guitar. The original Jazz Bass had two stacked knob pots with volume and tone control for each pickup. Original instruments with this stacked configuration are highly valued in today's vintage guitar market. Around 1961 it received three control knobs: two controlling the volume of each pickup and one the overall tone. Despite this new feature, many stack knob models were made until about 1962. A number of cosmetic changes were made to the instrument since CBS purchased Fender in 1965. During 1965/66 the Jazz Bass received bound rosewood fingerboards with pearloid dot position inlays (which replaced the older "clay"-style of the early '60s) and oval-shaped tuning machines. Block-shaped fingerboard inlays and an optional maple fingerboard were introduced after 1966/67. Fender switched to the 3-bolt neck fixing in the mid-'70s before reverting back to the normal 4-bolt neck fixing and dot-shaped fretboard markers in 1983. A fourth push button control is available on American-made Jazz Basses produced after mid-2003. Known as the "S-1 Switch", this feature allows the pickups to operate in standard, parallel wiring, or alternatively in series wiring when the switch is depressed. While in series, both pickups function as a single unit with one volume control, giving the Jazz Bass a sound more similar to the Precision Bass. The two pickups are built to be opposite from each other in both magnetic polarity and electrical phase, so that when heard together, hum is cancelled -- the humbucking effect. The Highway One Jazz Bass is a moderately priced American-made bass introduced in 2003, featuring a BadAss II bridge with grooved saddles, Posiflex graphite neck support rods, '70s styling and a Greasebucket tone circuit since 2006.
Although the original Jazz Bass is made by Fender, 'boutique' bass manufacturers also make bass guitars with many of the same features and some of the design sensibilities of the Fender Jazz Bass. Examples of these include Sadowsky Basses,Fclef Basses Valenti Basses, Alleva Coppolo, Celinder, Modulus Vintage series, Pensa, Suhr, and even Lakland and the Elrick New Jazz Standard, which have slightly different body shapes often to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits. In addition, low cost copies of the Jazz Bass are produced by many of the same manufacturers, and in much the same manner, as the ubiquitous strat and p-bass copies.
P- Bass:
The Fender Precision Bass, known as "P-bass" for short, is the first model of the electric bass designed by Clarence Leonidas Fender and brought to market in 1951.
Although the Precision Bass was first presented some 15 years after the original solid body, fretted, guitar-style electric bass produced by the Audiovox Manufacturing Company in Seattle, Washington, the Precision Bass was the first mass-produced and commercially successful electric bass. In its stock configuration, it is a solid body instrument equipped with one split-coil electric pickup. The Precision Bass is probably the best selling electric bass of all time and is still being manufactured today.
The Standard model P-Bass is sanded, painted and assembled in Ensenada, Mexico along with the other Standard Series guitars. The American Series (featuring the S-1 switching system since 2003) and Highway One (which feature '70s styling, BadAss II bridges with grooved saddles and a Greasebucket tone circuit since 2006) models are manufactured in Corona, California.