Acoustic bass guitar of acoustic bass guitars. The bajo sexto, with six pairs of strings, resembles a twelve-string guitar tuned an octave lower. The heavy gauge strings generate a large string tension, yet the guitar is built relatively lightly. Musicians began to use the bajo sexto in Texas in the 1920s with the rise of "Tex-Mex" music, and remains in common use to play parts that would be played by the piano in traditional American popular music. It matches the standard tuning of a 12-string guitar, one octave lower. The tuning of these instruments is (capital letters are an octave lower than small
Scale length (string instruments) electric basses built in the 1930s by fitting an otherwise normal double bass with electric pickups, and so had a scale length of about 43" (109 cm). In 1951 the Fender Precision Bass shortened this to 34" (86 cm). This is still often regarded as the standard length for a bass guitar. On a modern bass guitar, 30" (76 cm) or less is considered "short" scale, "standard" (also called "long") scale is 34" (86 cm) for a 4-string and 35" (89 cm) for a B-E-A-D-G 5-string, and "extra-long" scale basses of 36" (91 cm) also exist. Quite an uncommon scale