Guitar Heaven: The Most Famous Guitars to Electrify Our World [Hardcover]

Neville Marten (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2007

In this captivating guide to the greatest electric guitars of all time, guitar expert Neville Marten selects the most seminal instruments, from Ampeg to Zemaitis, and reveals why each is musically and historically significant. Each guitar is presented with beautiful, evocative images and shown in the hands of an iconic musician to illustrate how, through combining the skill of the player and the instrument maker, an inanimate object of wood and metal can be transformed into one of the world's most expressive tools of communication.

The instruments showcased in Guitar Heaven have left an indelible impression on popular music, both in terms of sound and visual impact. This fascinating gallery shows the instrument not as the two-dimensional object so often depicted in most guitar books, but as a vibrant, epoch-changing icon of the twentieth century—and into the future.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Neville Marten was a guitar repairer for Gibson and Fender's UK operations during the 1970s and 1980s, working on a host of valuable and rare guitars, including Hendrix's "Woodstock" Stratocaster. As current editor of Guitar Techniques magazine and former editor of Guitarist, he has met and interviewed dozens of legendary guitarists, from Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler to Brian May and George Harrison. He plays guitar in British rock and roller Marty Wilde's Wildcats, a position he has enjoyed since 1983.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Collins Design (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061359440
• ISBN-13: 978-0061359446
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 8.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,178,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome book that fills a void in guitar history, April 27, 2008

By 

Jeffery L. Smith "Jeffery Smith" (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Guitar Heaven: The Most Famous Guitars to Electrify Our World (Hardcover)

I have been playing guitar for nearly 50 years. Back when I bought my first electric, there were very few choices of "quality" electrics. Gibson and Fender dominated the field, and Epiphone, Guild, and Rickenbacker were smaller players in the field. Since then, the guitar market has exploded with innumerable choices of truly fine guitars. Who plays what (and who played what) has become muddied in my mind. What was George Harrison playing in 1960? What did Keith Richards play in those first few albums? What is out there now that has the sound I like? Finding answers to these questions has been difficult, even with Wikipedia and Google to help me. I read 5 books on the Beatles and found out everything I really didn't want to know (their personal experiences but not their music making).

This book includes a lot of information that I already knew, but finding that information was not easy nor was the information authoritative, much of it coming from people's posts on forums. This beautiful and very reasonably-priced book is all about the fine guitars of the last half century and the people who played them. It is the book that musicians want, and probably would appeal less to non-musician rock fans. Why all of the attention to the instruments? Unlike pianos, flutes, and trumpets, different electric guitars sound very, very different. I can think of no other musical instrument that takes on so many different shapes, sizes, looks, forms, sounds, weights, and sounds. And those guitars can be tweaked to sound a bit different (as John Lennon did to his Epiphone Casino, sanding off the finish and applying only a protective layer of lacquer).

This is the ultimate coffee table book for me. While not as large or thick as some guitar "encyclopedias", I can pick this book up and read through the descriptions and histories again and again, and they evoke fond memories of music that has surrounded me for 5 decades. One omission that surprised me was the lack of mention of Mosrite, the guitar of the Ventures after they switched from Fender. But those guitars are barely in production now and are more likely to be collector's items, so I guess I can forgive the author on this one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a wonderful book!, January 28, 2008

By 

L. Seton (Calgary, AB, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Guitar Heaven: The Most Famous Guitars to Electrify Our World (Hardcover)

I happened across this book quite by accident but, as a budding guitarist, purchased a copy because I thought it might help me better understand the wide variety of electric guitars out there and their unique sounds. Not only did it fulfill this objective but it also provided me with hours of enjoyment. This was a real page turner. One after another, the reader gets beautiful photography and an excellent description of the best guitars we've all heard as far back as the 50's. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in guitars. Thank you, Neville. I've read a lot of books about guitars and I regard this to be one of the best. Thoroughly enjoyable!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guitar Heaven: the most famous guitars to electrify our world, January 7, 2008

By 

Christopher C. Cape (Chester, New Jersey) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Guitar Heaven: The Most Famous Guitars to Electrify Our World (Hardcover)

The photography of the instruments in this book is phenomenal and better still, a lot of great Rock 'n Roll moments have been captured. The information is good-I wanted to know the differences between an ES-335, 345 and 355; it's in there, like Prego. I was impressed that the guitar that Chris Spedding played on the Dutch Robert Gordon DVD [Duesenberg] was mentioned and described. Oh, and the best thing of all; how much is this book? $75? $50? $30? Amazon.com sold it to me for less than $20[!] I have bought four of these books and given three out to friends.