1940 Bud-Electro Serenader Solid Body Electric Bass Guitar

This is our very rare 1940 Bud-Electro Serenader Model Solid Body Electric Bass Guitar c. 1936-1940 made in Seattle, Washington. It pre-dates any other solid body bass guitar design by Fender & Gibson by 1/2 a decade. It’s got a very unusual construction having a 1 piece body & neck design way ahead of its time in a pretty Dark Cherry finish over a hardwood body and neck w/a dyed maple fretted fingerboard. Its got 1 powerful rail shaped pickup & 1 volume knob. It’s got a power cord that comes out of the upper left side of its body. It’s sporting a cool thin metal pickgard that pulls its design all together. It’s excellent overall & includes a small Fender hard case.

We have seen a lot of oddball instruments over the last few decades, but this is one of the oddest. This small (and fairly conventionally shaped) electric bass is actually the tip of a historical iceberg very little appreciated in the 21st century. It also poses as many questions as it answers; although we can say for sure WHERE it was made, the “WHEN” is less certain. The best guess is this instrument is a hybrid, built with a 1940s Bud-Electro Bass neck, bridge and pickup assembly mounted on a body fashioned by Bud Tutmarc sometime after 1958. That, or Bud actually invented the Fender Jazzmaster offset body!

“Serenader-Bud-Electro Mfg. Co.” is on the headstock plate, along with its birthplace of Seattle, Washington. This a is largely forgotten direct descendant of the 1930s Audiovox Bass, the world’s first electric bass guitar. Starting around 1932 Seattle teacher/inventor Paul Tutmarc made some of the earliest electric steels, but his most prescient invention was doomed to near total obscurity. A February 17, 1935 news article showed Tutmarc demonstrating a solid body cello-like electric bass noting “You pluck a string – and out of the electric amplifier comes a rich, deep tone… sustained as long as you want it”

Tutmarc’s Audiovox company began marketing his more guitar-like #736 Electronic Bass in the Spring of 1937 featuring the magnetic pickup he and Arthur J. Stimson concocted as early as 1931. Stimson independently patented and sold the design to Dobro in Los Angeles for their 1933-4 All-Electric model, while Tutmarc soldiered on alone in Seattle. Although small and oddly shaped the Audiovox #736 was the world’s first electric bass made to be played guitar-style. Rickenbacker, Vega and even Gibson experimented with upright electric basses in the 1930s, but only the Audiovox bass was designed to be held and played like a guitar.

Around 1947 Tutmarc’s son Bud began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, even arranging distribution through northwest jobber L. D. Heater. It appeared in their 1948 catalog, but apparently garnered little interest. The Serenader Bass retained the small abstractly shaped minimalist body of the 1930s Audiovox, which essentially looked like one of Tutmarc’s lap steels with a long neck attached. It was not only awkward looking but not particularly convenient to hold in playing position, something Leo Fender was careful to get right.

All of which brings us to this Bud-electro Bass. It’s possible this was fashioned for a local student and/or customer of Bud Tutmarc (practically all these were sold locally) who was a sale prospect for the bass, but objected to the body shape. Or perhaps Bud was just idly experimenting with an unsold bass left languishing around the place. What resulted is the slim, 29 1/2″ scale neck, crude pickup assembly and cast metal bridge of a 1940s Bud bass with a later body fashioned by him, likely in the early 1960s. How do we know Bud made it? If you’ve ever seen his routing style, it is distinctive to say the least!

The VERY thin neck has a short 29 1/2″ scale length and only 12 frets, topped by a small headstock with four openback guitar tuners. The rather crude handmade blade-pole pickup has a large internal horseshoe magnet, and is little changed from the original 1930s design including the integral cloth cord and single large black plastic radio knob. The bridge is a piece of cast brass chrome plated, with the strings running through the body behind it.

The body itself is made of laminated hardwood, professionally cut out and finished in a subtle dark Cherry red finish. It appears to have been traced closely from a Fender Jazzmaster of Jaguar (unless you choose to believe Leo stole the shape from Bud Turmarc !). There is no lower strap button; the bass was likely intended to be played sitting down.

Whatever the genesis of this bass, it remains a fascinating historical artifact, one of the few Tutmarc basses known to exist and a unique one at that. It is fully playable, with a good sound although not really comparable to a Fender bass. A mystery wrapped in an enigma, this quizzical bass is a fretted oddity par excellence !