This is the Fender Bass VI. Originally marketed in 1960-something, it came with three selector switches, and you could get it in any finish you wanted --- as long as it was three-color sunburst. It looks deceptively similar to a Fender Jaguar (which was spawned in the same decade), but the Fender Bass VI is a baritone guitar. This means it is meant to be tuned an octave below a normal guitar (would that be an"alto" guitar?), or two (perhaps three) octaves below a mandolin ("soprano" guitar?). The Bass VI was designed with the surf-guitar bands of that era in mind, but it proved to be unpopular (second to the Danelectro baritone), and was discontinued in 1970-something.

Then, in 1979, came a four-piece band from Britain known as the Easy Cure. Lead-singer/guitarist Robert Smith had a vision of creating ground-breaking music using a bass for soloing rather than a guitar. This technique made some of its earliest appearances in songs like "10:15 Saturday Night," "Primary," and "The Hanging Garden" (by then, the band had become considerably less "easy," so they were re-named The Cure).

Smith and friends continued to employ the four-string bass guitar in their incurable songs until 1984, when original guitarist Porl Thompson picked up a Fender Bass VI for that year's Cure release, "The Top." Porl was a rich boy, so he could have his Bass VI in a white finish, and he played his white Bass VI on songs like "The Wailing Wall," and live performances of "Primary," among others. But the Fender Bass VI made perhaps its most lasting impression on The Cure's audience in 1989, when it was widely used on almost every song in "Disintegration."

"Disintegration" was the mother to songs such as "Plainsong," "Pictures of You," "Fascination Street," and the ten-minute epic, "The Same Deep Water As You." In "Disintegration," Robert Smith's creative vision had been realised, and the sound and tonal qualities of the Fender Bass VI were perfected on tape as well as in live stadium concerts. The Cure's next release, "Wish," in 1992, continued with this finely tuned formula (most notedly on "To Wish Impossible Things"), but alas, the tour that followed was the last we would see of Porl Thompson. It was the end of a perfect band in which Porl had contributed an equal, if not superior creative force in The Cure's songwriting process as Smith himself had. Consequentially, the 1996 follow-up to "Wish," "Wild Mood Swings," was a nearly soulless, unromantic, creative humbug without the input of Porl's exemplary guitar work. The only saving grace of the album was "Jupiter Crash," in which Robert's now trademark baritone solo had once again appeared, and hinted at what might have been Smith emulating Thompson.

Until the Fender Bass VI finds its way into the hands of a talented musician once again, the world will be a very scary place.