Customer Reviews

American Basses: An Illustrated History and Player's Guide to the Bass Guitar

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book presented very well with good information supplied. The book does however, double up on certain manufacturers if they were involved with more than one company. The pictures are good quality. My only grief is that the author could have focused more on construction techniques than just an encyclopedia of american basses.

Full of interesting information for a bass player. Also some interesting techniocal information on care and maintenance of basses.

This book is a useful historical profile of major bass builders, and an interesting read. There are plenty of color photos to balance the detailed biographical and product line descriptions for a wide range of US bass manufacturers. Cover to cover, the reading gets tedious because the writer follows similar patterns for presenting the narratives. Toward the end, the founders' quotations begin to sound like a broken record, and many of the product line descriptions read like press releases.

From reading this book, I get the feeling that the author sent out a bunch of survey forms to all big US bass builders and a handful of favored one-person shops in the early 2000s, compiled their responses; then added a few defunct builders that he thought were important enough to merit inclusion. What struck me most was the omission of a number of early, defunct builders who were very much part of bass history - the Renaissance Plexiglas bass and the Bartell Black Widow bass come to mind right away. I am sure there are others.

That said, aside from a database type publication such as Blue Book, this book profiles more bass manufactures more thoroughly than any other bass reference that I have seen, the production quality is good, and it passes as an interesting read for the gearheads who read this type of stuff for enjoyment.

This is an interesting book about the history of the different American Bass companies. It goes into detail of the companies strengths and model lines. I would recommend it.