Ask the average citizen to picture a bass guitar, and assuming they know what you’re talking about, they’ll likely imagine something like the Fender Precision or Jazz Bass. The incredible staying power and ubiquity of Leo Fender’s original designs are extraordinary when one considers how long ago the first Fenders were loaded onto a Ford panel truck from a Fullerton loading dock, Chuck Berry gleefully shouting from the mono tube radio. Sure, there have been occasional stabs at wholesale innovation — Steinberger’s très ’80s L-series new-wave rectangles come to mind — but most manufacturers generally follow in Fender’s footsteps. There’s no arguing that the Fender formula works; it is the definitive bass for a reason. But it undeniably has some inherent shortcomings, even if we’ve all learned to live with them. First, most bass guitars don’t balance well at all. The combination of the headstock, densely packed with large tuning machines and the terminal wraps of e