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This Stash bass with its crazy design made me think: what is the last innovation that really blew me away?
Come to think about it, there was a lot of great post-Fender innovations: active electronics, 5/6 strings, Dingwall fanned frets, piezo pickups...but judging by the amount of bassists who like me prefer playing a Fender style bass, the life of a bass builder trying to come up with something new and exciting must be tough.
I feel differently about bass amplification though. They may sound great I would never want to lug around some of those huge vintage amps. And overall I feel that some of those new portable amps and cabs can sound fantastic. So in terms of innovation I totally embraced modernity when it comes to amplification. What do you guys think?

I can think of some more innovations:
- graphite-reinforced necks to improve stability and reduce dead spots;
- instruments (partially) made of various 'new' materials like graphite, composite, 'luthite' (Ibanez and Cort used it, on the Ergodyne and Curbow series. It's basically a mixture of wood fibres and composite), and many more;
- bigger bridges machined from a solid piece of metal instead of bent steel plates or wood;
- compound radius fingerboards;
- tempered tuning (like the Buzz Feiten tuning system).

I've not used and embraced all of them, but I have basses with graphite-reinforced necks, steel-reinforced necks (the Ibanez Musician has two steel rods alongside the truss rod), active electronics, fatter bridges. They're not always better, in many cases a vintage instrument just suits the job better than a modern instrument, but some of these innovations have found their way to classic instruments too. A new USA Fender Jazz will also have a fatter bridge, graphite rods underneath the fingerboard and so on. Oh, and I mainly play 5-strings as we play modern female-fronted metal and both my guitarists play 7-string guitars, so there's one innovation I use all the time

I like those modern lightweight amps a lot too! And in-ear monitoring, DI's and other stuff to make our lives easier, and save our backs and ears

A few innovations from my perspective:

5 or 6 string basses, back in the day all basses were 4 strings, I don't play a 5 string much, only when I really need to but I really like many of the 5-6 string players. I may be showing my age but for me the 5 and 6 string are a great bass innovation.

Hipshot Bass Xtender Drop D that allows us 4 string bass players to drop to D for certain songs.

Lastly being a Mike Lull fan he uses PLEX for his instruments, PLEX allows great craftsman another tool to deliver a great product lhttp://www.mikelull.com/site/repairs.html

Don't get me wrong, I also like some of a lot of those innovations, sometimes I love playing a fiver too. I was just putting myself in the head of a bass builder and how difficult it is to stick out with something new. I guess a lot of them just re-visit a classic and and find a market by doing it well like Sadowsky or Lakland. I remember owning some custom basses with sleek designs in the early 90's but they did not age well sound-wise and design-wise.
I'd say Warwick is the builder who has impressed me the most over the years. Awesome innovative designs, usable sounds with tons of personality. Thumbslam won't contradict me.

I guess it comes down to the old if it ain't broke don't fix it. Music has been made on electric guitars and basses for over half a century now and there's been little to no change to the standard instrument at least in the mainstream. I suppose concert band and orchestra instruments have not really changed drastically either for hundreds of years.

So yes, I agree it's very difficult to innovate when this is the case, and even luthiers like Mike Tobias have had to satisfy the market by making fender style instruments.

And the ones that do try to do something really innovative and different, well, they just don't really take off. Remember this?

Ned Steinberger and his headless,all graphite, minimal body bass comes to mind. To me a real revolutionary design that actually worked. Not everyone's cup of tea but I own a 1984 L2 that I've had since 1986 and have yet to find a bass that records as well. Also the perfect bass for city gigs as well as travel.

I do think that bassists have, in general, taken to innovation more than guitarists.

I agree.

True.
So what bass stuff blew you guys away during the last 10 years?
For me it is all those super light class D amps, especially the ones with tubes.

+ 1 on the Steinberger. if only replacement parts were readily available.

I'm a sucker for innovation. Anything that challenges the basic conventions of instrument design and/or can make my life easier is alright in my book. Granted, some innovations over the years have been a bit gimmicky, like the sliding PUP on the Gibson Grabber or the plug in effects cartridges of the MPC Electra Outlaw bass, but I respect a manufacturer's attempt to try something different.

There are certain innovations that I've been surprised have not taken off as I would have expected. Line 6's Variax bass seemed like a great concept, though it's my understanding they were not as stable as their guitar counterparts, with numerous complaints of the circuitry failing. Likewise the further development of midi bass, particularly the Industrial Radio bass, which offers the best bass midi controller/lowest latency to date for bass. (http://www.industrialradio.com.au/). I guess bassists aren't all that interested in having trumpet sounds come out of their instruments.

I do predict, however, that pitch-to-midi technology will improve greatly in the coming years and you will see the development of more synthetic-based bass instrumentation - an instrument that will serve as a controller/standard bass that you can load high quality VST sampled sounds into via USB. (Fishman's new Triple Play pitch-to-midi PUP for guitar supposedly offers the best tracking/lowest latency to date for any pitch-to-midi device on the market, with a bass unit in the works). You can already do that to a certain extent using midi controllers such as the Ztar bass, YouRock Guitar, etc., but the desire for an instrument that looks, plays, and feels like a traditional bass will always prevail. I also predict improved sounds/performance with the further development of mobile device-based amplification, effects, etc. I'm already using my iPhone as my wireless midi patch change controller for my guitar effects, and I've been experimenting with IK Multimedia's Vocalive as my vocal processor. Imagine that: bring nothing more to your next gig but your iPhone as your bass amp, vocal processor, mixer, etc. We're already there.

Me too (although I've never tried one with tubes). Class D for me was the single most important thing to affect my career since my original lessons.

Hey PJ, there's a guy in Poukepsie(?) NY called Don Greenwald who has an amazing collection of Steinbergers (he also buy,sells and refurbs them). Real nice guy,I've spoken to him a couple of times. His company is called Headless USA and his website has some really useful info . He even has some hard to find lefties. He also can hook you up with parts. His phone is 203 395 8013. Check him out.

as far as bass synths, the future lies in laptops.
the whole midi pick up shtick is a big turn off. the next big step will be
a decent stable polyphonic audio to midi converter. this kind of stuff needs to be a simple as possible, musicians are 9\10 technophobes. that's why they hate digital so much.
as well as the fact that you're paying 250$ for a pick up which does only that.
you'd just plug into an audio interface and use downloaded f\x. any laptops processor
is a shit ton more powerful then any bass synth\ multi effect processors. period.
it's either that or the complete opposite, hex pick ups with breakout boxes which will
connect into analog synth circuitry. highly expansive very neiche, but I thought that boutique amps are also overly expansive and neiche but look at where orange (and bogner and various other companies) are now as compared to a decade ago.
as far as the INSTRUMENT itself I don't any reason for it change.
maybe multi range pick ups which will give the ever extending range (6 string is almost a standard for allot of companies egg: Ibanez) different responses for different areas of the spectrum. this is something that allot of bass player are already doing by themselves (timmiy c's multiple distortion channels for instance) and maybe someone will figure out how to this inside the guitar with no hassle.
I just don't see it physically changing. most innovations just fade away (a couple of years ago floyd rose came up with a brilliant way to make their tremolos not a maintenance nightmare, no one uses it. people who had that shit on their guitars replaced it because finding the special strings eventually became a problem).
and people don't like change.
this was just my opinion and I'm not an expert on nothing.

ohh yeh and +1 on everything p.j wrote.

It would be awesome, as a bassist, to be able to just plug your cable into a Moog module and play with a moog sound with a perfect tracking the expressivity, the polyphony and the dynamic of a real bass playing. Most Bass Synth pedals suck, don't track well creating a lot of unwanted sounds and are not expressive at all. Pretty much sounding like the bass in Stevie's Superstition without using a keyboard. So that's on my innovation wish list.

Oh I've always loved those Steinberger basses, it's the bass you want if you are stranded on an island with your buddy Wilson and need to paddle away.

I think the best innovation is," they" made left hand basses!

Exactly right, and this is the direction we're heading. (or if not laptops, more powerful tablets). Roland's 13 pin hex technology is now outdated, as Fishman's Triple Play eliminates the need for a 13 pin connection to access sounds, using your laptop or computer as your sound module/sound library via wireless USB. But you still have to mount that ugly PUP to your instrument, and it's still a fussy, time consuming setup! Sonuus came up with a "solution" to that problem, offering their i2m interface that you (in theory) just plug any guitar into right to your laptop to control midi sounds, but no polyphony.

The latest technology of interest is Jam Origin's Midi Guitar software, which enables you to plug any guitar directly into your computer, iPad, or iPhone via a standard audio interface.

http://www.jamorigin.com/midi-guitar/Windows-Mac/

I downloaded the free app for my iPhone and can control Sampletank sounds with it. The tracking/latency is about as good as Roland's, IMO, and is very plug and go with none of the time-consuming minute setup required with Hex PUPs, which makes it especially interesting. The problem, as always, is bassists are the last to be considered for this technology, since bass's lower frequencies still present latency problems.

Simplicity is key though! What was that Ernie Ball bass that came out that offered over 250,000 different PUP combinations?! Nevermind, I found it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDdjp_g7Rzc

Great concept, but how'd they sell? I'm guessing it's tanking. Do you really wanna scroll through 250,000 combinations to discover you like sounds #s 1, 2,863, 10,011, 157,694, etc? Better get a cheat sheet...and permission from your bandmates to take 3 hrs. between songs to find your sounds again. They should rename this thing the Gig Loser.

When all is said and done most of us are perfectly happy with a handful of good solid sounds and minimal fuss. That's why the P and J will always survive in some form or other.

I was thinking jam origin when I posted that. never tried it but heard good things.
it's just a question of someone sitting down and doing the maths. "numeric signal processing"
I would recommend (since this is midi) the try and solve the low freq problem with a high pass filter and to just compensate for it in the v.s.t you're using.
as far as moogs, moogs are monophonic so that's the end of that.
I would love to see an analog bass synth which wouldn't suck, I actually have an idea how to make one but don't have the tools skills and time to do so. so maybe as graduation project I'll build one channel out of the 4-6 we need.

Fanned frets seemed like a great idea, which makes me wonder if anyone here has owned or owns a fanned fret bass, and if so, what are your thoughts on them?