Bass guitar in 1958. 1956 saw the appearance at the German trade fair "Musikmesse Frankfurt" of the distinctive Höfner 500/1 violin bass made using violin construction techniques by Walter Höfner, a second generation violin luthier. The instrument is often known as the "Beatle Bass", due to its endorsement and use by Beatles bassist Paul McCartney. In 1957 Rickenbacker introduced the model 4000 bass, the first bass to feature a neck-through-body design in which the neck is part of the body wood. The Fender and Gibson versions used bolt-on and glued-on necks. With the explosion of the popularity of rock music in the
Vox Bass Guitar a polished sycamore neck. The Panther was Vox's lowest priced bass, available in black only, and had one single-pole pickup mounted at a 45° angle to the strings. The Bassmaster had two passive pickups and came in red, white or sunburst finishes. Both had the smaller "guitar"-sized machine heads. The Hawk had the active electronics, a thinner neck and the large-ratio "Fender Bass"-type machine heads on a very large ovoid headstock and four "Precision Bass Tuners" on the one up-side. The Cougar bass was modeled in shape after the Gibson EB-2 hollow body bass guitar, which in turn was modeled