The original Bass VI we saw released in 1961 (right) was a bit different than the usual. The original version had a Jaguar-style control plate with 3 switches, 3 Strat type pickups in square, almost humbucker-sized metal enclosures, and no mute. Not a lot of these were made and they are quite the collectors piece now. This design lasted until 1962 or 1963, when it got updated, taking features from the Fender Jaguar.

In 1962 or 1963, the Bass VI was updated to use 3 Jaguar pickups, had a new 4-switch control plate to allow the Strangle Switch - a capacitor wired in series with the signal on a switch - to be added to the Bass VI as well. Also, a larger version of the Jaguar's "Vibramute" was also applied to the Bass VI along with the original oversized rocking bridge assembly. Other than that, it followed the same changes as the Jaguar and Jazzmaster, getting a bound neck in 1965, and then later in 1965 or early 1966, started to get blocks inlays installed. This incarnation of the Bass VI managed to carry on until 1975, with only 800 total being made in that time, showing how unpopular they were.

1970's (1973?) Fender VI from a Fender Catalog around that time

During that time, people who played the Fender VI were either guitarists who ware moonlighting on bass, Spaghetti Western types looking for that "Tic Tac" bass sound, or guys like Jet Harris who were using hte "baritone" capabilities of the VI to play really low melody lines. So it had it's players in the sixties, just not very many.

The Shadow's Bassist Jet Harris played a Bass VI on his "The Man with the Golden Arm" album, including the title theme and apparently some of the other tracks.

John Entwhistle played one with The Who in 1965 for about six months, and then 1967-1968 for a time. His main complaint was with the inefficient amps of the time he could not get enough low-end out of it, something I can agree with, especially with the weedy light string gauges Fender puts on these things from the factory (I run a .105 Low E on mine)

John Entwhistle & The Who in 1967 with a Sunburst Bass VI, not sure if it's the same one he had in 65 or not, but he ran one a few times

The 70's, on the mainstream, were not kind to the Bass VI in general. In 1975, Fender discontinued it for poor sales and something like only 800 VIs had ever been built to that point since 1961. However, that same year, Aerosmith put out the song "Back in the Saddle" which is probably rock's most famous use of one. It's not playing the bass, and it's not playing guitar, it's playing it's own part, through a phaser, that gives the song it's unique western-meets-hard-rock feel.

Still discontinued as we enter the early 80's, the second most well known user of the Bass VI appeared, Robert Smith of The Cure started using one on some of their songs on the second or third Cure albums, and it became a synonymous instrument with The Cure. It was used on quite a few tunes of theirs starting into their mid-80's period including "Pictures of You".

Probably the most well known site of a VI on film though, would be 1984's Spinal Tap, a rock music mockumentary about a quasi-fictional rock group called Spinal Tap. At one point in the movie the narrator/videographer and lead guitarist Nigel Tuffnel are at Nigel's house looking at his guitar collection, and in the corner is a Sea Foam Green sixties Fender VI with the hang tags on it, it was the famous guitar that had the lines "it cannot be played" "don't even touch it, don't even look at it" tied to it. Sort of a comical critique of the rock star guitar collector and vintage guitars you can't even look at or touch, doomed to just sit on a stand for eternity.

In the early 1990's Fender Japan made a short run of MIJ VI's at the Fujigen factory, and then stopped making them again toward the later half of the 1990's. This version had the proper sized bridge but did not have the vibramute or cover, and were styled after a 1963-1965 model with a dot neck. These would come and go off/on again like most of the Fujigen and Dyna Japanese Fender lineup would off and on again.

In 2012 Fender introduced the "Pawn Shop" series, a series of guitars and basses likely inspired by modified pawn-shop instruments. The VI had a version in this lineup that was a dot-neck instrument, with the upper control plate omitted in favor of a 5-way selector like a Stratocaster would have. It also had a Jazzmaster pickup in the bridge position, instead of the regular Jaguar-style pickup as usual.

The first thing is what the heck is this thing. What is it's role. The real truth is "anything you want it to be". BUT, we all know Fender says they originally promoted it as a "Deluxe Bass". So that's it's original purpose, to play bass guitar in a band, to do the job of the "doghouse" bass in a jazz or country band, or the job of a Precision Bass in a pop, rock, or r&b band. But it never caught on because bassists and guitarists are two separate worlds with clearly defined elements. Your typical 4-string bass guitar has 4 large tuners with large, clublike keys on it. A Very long 34" scale neck with 18-20 frets, a elongated body with one or two pickups switched by a blend knob if there's more than one, one tone, one volume, a chunky metal bridge for the bridge cables these things use for strings, usually being like an .056-.124 gauge set. No mutes, no switches, no doohickeys of any kind, just a neck, a body, 4-strings, a pickup or two, and two or three knobs at most, that's it. Oh yeah, and FRETS ARE OPTIONAL. While guitar players are used to having as many as three pickups, five switches, four knobs, a vibrato bridge, pretty much always 21 or more frets on the fretboard, a scale length bebtween 23" and 25.5", a regular sized body, and six small machine heads.....what do we have here?

We have a 30" scale - between bass and guitar - instrument, with SIX strings, but .032-.095 gauge (or .105 for the low E if you're me), a vibrato system, 3 GUITAR pickups, an elongated body like a bass, a fancy circuit like a guitar, 21+ frets like a guitar, and small guitar-like tuners. So what is it, a guitar, or a bass? Fender sold it as a "bass for guitarists to play" - which some people such as John Lennon used it as (Bass on Helter Skelter people - that's a VI), but then you have Jet Harris using it like a Danelectro Longhorn Baritone (Tuned A-A I believe), then there's Joe Perry who uses it somewhere between - like a mix of a bass, extended range guitar, and a regular guitar, then you have Robert Smith using them in a similar way, then you have loons like me who use it as a bass, an Extended Range guitar, and as a melodic thing of it's own being. I'm just as likely to Djent a Bass VI (and oh how they can DJent!) as I am to carry a groove on one.

As a bass, the VI shines as being good at emulating most popular bass guitars. Middle pickup alone is very much in P-bass territory, bridge is like an old Danelectro bass or a Jazz Bass on bridge only, both pickups on is like the traditional J-bass sound, while all three on yield almost an "active" bass like an ESP BT-204 or a Steinberger bass. The neck alone is EB-0 minusthe muddiness that makes it awful - much tighter. Neck + middle alone is pretty unique. That's why it's the only bass I have, I can use it to cover so much ground, and it plays like a Mustang Bass but can do so much more. Slapping is possible, but you kind of need to modify your technique due to the thinner string spacing, and be mindful you will probably need to mute the strings behind the bridge while doing it to make sure they don't jump the saddles. I have used the VI to do some slappy-stuff and it sounds great for that.

As a Baritone or ERG, it benefits from lower output pickups. One of my complaints from the late 90's/early 00's was this idea that you NEEDED heavy, loud, thick, 12+K Ohm humbucker pickups to "sound metal" back then. This was just toxic masculine posing by saying "My humbucker is 16K ohms" "Oh yeah! Mine is 18K!" - but then you listen to both and they sound like a hot tub motor being listened to through a pillow filled with bees, while the Bass VI sounds like a 2x4 upside your head wielded by an angry robot running at overvoltage. That's why every Neo-Korn sounds more like Children of the Corn watching a hand being ground up in a blender - because Munky and Hed know more about E.Q. than you probaby do, so their Ibanezes don't sound like a swarm of hornet's sieging a shorted power line.

The traditional Bass VI thing is to find an open string - or capo one to key - and then play against them melodically. Think of every Cure song with a VI on it. I wrote a piece called "Power's Out" on my VI - that uses a similar method to this. It can be a very pretty instrument when done right, Robert Smith mastered that, and this style also carries over to distortion well as the most cited example is Back in the Saddle Again. But it also can play a pretty mean "Rock Lobster" as well.

The Vibrato Bar makes much less of a pitch change, but it's nicely used for warbles on the higher strings, or occasionally diving it under high gain on the Low E for a swooping effect or a falsified dive-bomb. With a stronger spring I'm pretty sure it'd have longer range, but I Find that might be the thing that tears the vibrato up on this since it was originally intended for the Jazzmaster. I'm tempted to design my own extended range vibrato for the VI in the future that makes this thing really capable of some dive-bombing craziness.

One key thing to talk about is string sets because I think most instrument string makers totally neglect the VI if they even make any strings for it at all. So this was intended as a "deluxe bass" but the darned thing has a low E a full .020 lower than the standard Bass Low E string. Finding strings for it is a pain, I'm sill using the samae set mine came with + that 105 Low E for lower tunings.

The typical String set for a bass VI is .024, .034, .044, .056, .072, .084 going off a D'addario EXL156 set. Fender is getting closet with their .024-.100 set for the Bass VI, which is likely the next set I'll be buying for the Squier. These are .024, .034, .044, .065, .080, .100, and the set is 250B6. LaBella offers theirs in .026, .035, .044, .056, .075, .095, which are the ones most Bass VI Players seem to clamour on about.

I've toyed with making my own Bass VI set, setup around what I use the VI for - sort of a light-top, heavy bottom set, also designed to reduce stress on the neck as well - maybe using a .020w, .030w, .042, .060, .080, .105 - that way lightening the load on the neck and allowing me to really bend on the high end, and drop pitch on the low end and play in Drop D and Drop CG without losing output or bass response when doing bass parts with it. Also, that .105 is a BEAST in djent and metal stuff as a ERG. Maybe toss a compressor or preamp into the mix to tighten things up a bit.