The Bass Book: A Complete Illustrated History of Bass Guitars

Like the one guy said, not a lot about Gibson but it covers them enough. Lets face it Fender has always dominated the Bass industry so this book covers it accurately in my mind. They cover from the incarnation and the breakthrough of the P bass up through the birth of active electronics to modern basses. Not much about a lot of modern basses like Ibanez or anything but pretty thorough historically from the 50's through the 90's pretty much. A very interesting read with lots of great photographs.

This is a great book, well written and researched and contains a treasure trove of wonderful photos. However, my copy of the book was printed on extremely thin, cheap copy paper and the pages were merely photocopied (as if it were a proof copy). I am not sure if this was correct or intentional, but I was expecting a full-color book. The photos are admittedly much less interesting and enjoyable when its printed at such low quality, but I still greatly enjoyed the writing and information.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought this book used to contain color illustrations. Regardless, the pictures of the basses and musicians are all in black and white and the print quality of this book is very poor. It honestly looks like the pages are photocopied - it's really that bad. I mean c'mon, this is a collector's book. Some of the pictures are so poor that you can see the pixels. In fact, the printing in last half of the book looks like the printer was running low on toner... the print gets light and blurry!I recommend not buying this book.

I like those encyclopedias about modern music instruments and it's history.Have The Drum Book: A History of the Rock Drum Kit as well.Beautiful books, valuable, useful, interesting content.I'd look for others like those.

If the bass is your instrument of choice then this books belongs in your library. You will spend many excellent hours reading and rereading while you examine every photo and soak in every beautiful bass.

A great overview of the development of the electric.bass. Focuses on Fender and touches on many other bass companies. Covers predominantly American basses -could include more like Ibanez (not mentioned). Overall a great read with beautiful photos.

This revised edition is very informative and relatively complete, covering many models and designs of bass guitars. It's a quick read, but its greatest utility is serving as reference when you need some quick information about bass guitars.

Great quality. Exactly as expected.

I was hoping for an almost microscopic level of detail on the early Fender Precision Bass, but this book doesn't provide it. It just barely mentions the early two compressed fibre saddle bridge set up and there are no pictures showing the guts of an early precision with the metal covers removed. All to many of these books regurgitate the same details at a fairly superficial level. You might claim that's because anything deeper has been lost to history but, it would be possible to analyse an early precision bass by direct examination of existing examples. How much do they typically weigh, what's the inductance of the pickup, what material were the fibre saddles actually made from, and so on.. What about the early strings ... were they flat wounds, what gauges were used...

This book looked great from the preview pages on Amazon's site - lots of high quality colour illustrations of vintage guitars. However, what actually arrived was a rather slim volume with the same cover as that shown on the site but very different indeed inside. The paper on which the pages were printed was really thin and flimsy - more like cheap home printer paper - and all the illustrations were in black and white. Actually they were more of a fading grey and white, and so was the text. Apart from the cover, the whole thing looked as though it had been put together on an ageing photocopier. Needless to say, it has been returned. Very disappointing, as it had been bought as a birthday present.

I was looking forward to reading this book, but realised that, although Fender have obviously contributed a great deal towards the development of the bass, there was far too much "Fender" and not enough of the other pioneering makers and manufacturers that have helped make the bass an exciting instrument in its' own right, and not just another version of a "Stratocaster". Disappointed is not an adequate word to describe my feelings and am thankful that this was a personal purchase and not a gift!!

One very happy bass player

Good condition,very welcome gift