Customer Reviews

Guitar: A Complete Guide for the Player

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...make it this one.
This book is amazing, my wife gave this to me as a Christmas gift. When I thumbed through it on Christmas and saw the tab and exersizes(sp) for different genre's of music I thought it would be good for a few licks. When I started to really look at it a couple weeks later I couldn't believe how informative it is. This book should be in every beginners library, that said, the intermediate guitarist who is looking to improve how his/her guitar sounds or just understand the how the guitar works will find a lot of material to work with. Here is a rundown of the book as I see it:

This section is an excellent place to start if your looking to buy your first guitar, you must match the kind of music you want to play to the guitar you buy or it will be a waste of money and you'll most likely quit playing.

Chapter 1:
Sound and Construction: Describes 7 of the most common guitar types, Classical, Steel-String Flat-Tops, Archtop Acoustics, Archtop Electrics, Solidbody Electrics, Semi-Acoustics, and Piez-Magnetic Hybrids.

This sections is a great overview of some of the most popular amps and effect on the market. It gives good detail on the circuit types and tube variations that make up different sounds.

Chapter 2:
Amps and Effects: Describes basic amp & effect types, Classic Tube Combos, Tube Hotrods (Channel switching, high gain amps), The Big Stacks, Solid State, Modeling Amps, Clasic Pedals, and Racks & Multi-FX.

This section is worth 10 times what you'll pay for this book. This book should be renamed THE GUITAR BIBLE because of this section. I learned so much from this section and will continue to refrence it in the future.

Chapter 3:
Maintenance: Stringing Up and Tuning, Set-up(this includes checking and adjusting the neck relief, nut heighth, playing action, string heighth, vibrato performance and adjustment, how to set intonation properly, how to install pick-ups both strat style and les paul style plus a lot more) Professional Repairs (what to pay somebody to do), Cleaning, also Care & Storage.

The rest of the book (150 pages or so)focuses on playing and is devoted to showing the guitar player 10 different genre's of guitar along with tabbed examples to practise and learn from. It allows all players to experience a different type of playing, it allows the beginner to play different types of music at a basic level and can help the intermediate and more advanced player break out of a rut with something new or just learn a little something about a different genre.

Chapter 4:
Play Guitar: Acoustic, Rock & Pop, Blues (excllent intro to blues), Country, Rock'n'Roll, Metal, Latin, African, Classical, and Jazz.

This book also has a glossary of common terms and an index to find information quickly. I will never get rid of this book it has already saved me a ton of time by showing me how to properly adjust the trem and properly clean the switches to make everything I play sound better (when I play it well that is).
This won't be the last book about the guitar that you buy, but it absolutely should be the first one you buy.

Hope this review helps you decide to purchase this book it is worth it.
Sparky

What a wonderful book, a bit large to carry around, but otherwise it will take the place of several books you may have, or are about to buy. Well written , great photos, truley a one stop deal. The repair and setup section is very easy to follow, unlike some of the better known books. The music in the latter half is great. If you start at the front and work your way through , you will have learned what it has taken some of us 20 years to accomplish.

I picked this up at a local bookstore for just over 12 dollars - what a deal! This book makes an excellent reference for any guitarist. I've been playing in bands for over 20 years and this book gives an overview of all popular styles from country to metal and pop rock to jazz with tab notation, recommended listening and some history of each genre. Over 300 full color pages. The first 115 pages give detail instructions for guitar maintenance (photos included) - everything from how to change strings based upon the type of guitar you have to how to make major adjustments - and that alone was worth the price of the book for me.

$7.99 Bargain Book price further discounted with a 30%-off coupon at a chain bookstore = $6.04 w/tax - what a steal! Just started learning guitar and have bought a few books that looked good and were low priced, and this has information the others don't have and covers so many things. Downsides: It's large and is probably best read as a coffee table-type book. Also, it should be spiral-bound, because there are many playing exercises, but the binding and size do not adapt to placing the book on a music stand. While the hardbound edition might lie flatter, the added weight would make using a music stand (unless one has a heavy conductor's stand) even more difficult. If I play the exercises, I'll have to lay it flat on the bed and try to read it from that position. Or, with another coupon, I'd be tempted to buy another copy of the book and separate the approx. 180 pages (7/16" thick) of exercises from the binding and have a copy shop punch and bind it with a coil or plastic comb binding (the pages are 12-3/4" tall).

I have been playing for over a quarter century and have an entire bookcase dedicated to books on the guitar. In my opinion this book should go with every guitar purchase...

I would not recommend for novices but definately will serve those in the 'beginner' category. I am pretty amazed at the in-depth coverage of a significant amount of topics and the quality job given to each, so I would recommend it for beg - advanced. I have most of this information scattered through several different books. This book is quickly becoming the first book I go to now...

Highly Recommended and at the current sell price it is in my opinion a 'no-brainer'...

Great reference book for anyone that owns a guitar but especial for me because I am a beginner. One this I learned from this incredible book was how to take my "Throw Away Guitar" aka Epiphone electric guitar apart and cleaned it after getting it from a pawn shop for abut $90 it's worth about $200 now that it looks like new.

I use this book to look up information prior to purchasing my second guitar - Taylor Grand Concert Acoustic Electric Guitar - Series 500. There are several different configurations and this book was a great reference too.

This book is very comprehensive in what it covers in the guitar world. I manage to run across this book at a bookstore for less than $8.00. I was impressed with how much information it provided. The big book format is pretty nice too. Definitely recommend it.

I ran across this book while on vacation and decided to order from Amazon so i didn't have to lug it around (good decision, btw).

The book is a great reference for all things guitar. From guitar types to wiring diagrams to exercises for practice, i think this is a great book to have in the library.

As a young guitarist, with no lessons, I've learned so much that i never knew that i needed to learn, and I'm not even done yet! It's an amazing book I love it, and I don't even like to read. :)

While certainly not "Complete" (it's about 1/3 on guitar construction, amps, effects, etc, and the other 2/3 on various genres of playing styles) it is certainly well worth the low price that it can be found for. Perhaps a studio musician will not learn anything new from this book, but other folks - even professionals - will find worthwhile tidbits on styles of playing that they were perhaps not familiar with. But a big CAUTION! I purchased a copy from the bargain bin of a well known bookseller (cough - Borders - cough) and it is fraught with many, many typos and layout errors. I suspect that no one bothered to proof-read it before it was released. My copy was printed in Singapore in 2009. Hmmmm... Still, all and all, it is an attractively produced book (lots of mouth-watering guitars in it) with tons of info. I like it!