A plucked string instrument, closely related to the guitar. See double bass for the traditional bowed string instrument.
A bass guitar can be distinguished from a standard guitar by the fact that it almost always has four strings, and four tuning pegs at the top of the neck, usually along one side or with two on each side directly opposed. The bridge is also much closer to the bottom of the body to accommodate the longer strings.
Acoustic basses feature a larger resonator body to better amplify lower frequencies and a longer neck compared to their acoustic guitar counterparts.
Electric bass guitars use pickups to sense and convert string vibrations into electromagnetic impulses. Often they are based on existing electric guitar designs but nearly always have four or five strings as opposed to guitar's six, although there are some six string models. Electric basses, especially those equipped with active pickups, tend to have more control knobs than an electric guitar with an equal number of pickups.
