The Soul of Tone: Celebrating 60 Years of Fender Amps (Book & CD) (Hardcover)

by Tom Wheeler (Author), Keith Richards (Foreword)
Key Phrases: custom shop, vintage guitar, custom series, Leo Fender, Twin Reverb, Super Reverb (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
From the same "dream team" that created The Fender Stratocaster Chronicles (Vintage Guitar magazine's 2004 Book of the Year) comes this new publication covering the other side of Fender's legacy, the instrument amplifier. Revered as much as one's guitar, the Fender amplifier gets its due in this full-color, richly illustrated book. Features over 400 images, including legendary guitarists such as Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Neil Young, Pete Townshend, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, Robbie Robertson and Dick Dale, and two CDs featuring over 100 tracks that make terms and topics come alive.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Hal Leonard (October 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0634056131
• ISBN-13: 978-0634056130
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 9.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #84,989 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Read - Good CD, January 7, 2008

By	Lens Guy "opdev" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This is really a treasure of information on Fender amps with enough pix to make you salivate.

The CD is ok but I expected more. Greg Koch's over the top playing (and commentary) can get a bit annoying.

Also, they just don't cover enough amps for my taste. No tweed pro, no tweed super, not enough time on the bassman.

The CD's are broken into two CD's. Vintage and Modern.

When they are talking about vintage deluxes, Koch decides to demo and spend most time onthe '57 Tweed Deluxe REISSUE!!!!!!!!! This to me dropped them a star since that should have been placed on the modern CD.

I guess there is not enough time to cover everything but I wish he did more.

The idea of a short clip of every Fender amp model ever made played with a tele, strat and LP makes me salivate ;).

This CD was an attempt to do that but falls short IMHO. However, it's better than nothing.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I LOVE this book, October 29, 2007

By	Michael J. Gauthier (Dover, NH United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm gradually becoming an avid amp fan. I have a technician's training, but little hands-on electronics experience. I've been playing guitar since my early teens, so that's over 40 years, now. In the past few years, I've bought several guitars and amps, and I'm having a great time with them. For whatever reason, I'm loving the electronics side of it. And I'm absolutely loving this book. For sure, it's not for everybody, although I *can* see this as a coffee table book, for the great photos, the musicians' quotes, and because I think a lot of people are attracted to music, bands, and instruments, etc.

I'm part way through the 3rd chapter, but I see myself reading it from cover to cover, and then looking for more. It makes me simultaneously want to play music AND build my own amplifier. The writing, in describing how the whole process of guitar amplification works, is the best I've yet seen. I've read enough about how electronic components work to be reasonably familiar with them, but Tom Wheeler writes in a way that I find *very* understandable and usable. He tells you how a component works, in a way that's true to the pure electronics aspect of it, but also how it works to change the sound. Then you know why a component is located, and used the way it is. You're not going to build an amplifier, using just this book, but you're going to understand a lot more about how that sound is generated.

But, this book does much, much more than talk about electronics. It's about Leo Fender, the Fender company, the amplifier industry, the development of 60 years worth of Fender's amplifiers, and how the music they produced affected our culture. And, it does a great job of it. It's accompanied by 2 CDs with sound samples of the various types of Fender amplifiers, so the reader can hear what's being described, instead of only imagining it.

So, if you like this kind of thing, then you will love this book, because it does superlative job of what it was created to do.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Soul of Tone is OUTSTANDING!!!, November 21, 2007

By	K. Clerke (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is second to none in information about the history of Fender Amps!

There are a tremendous amount of pictures and commentary from old time Fender employees and musicians throughout and this book is a GREAT buy for anyone that is a Fender enthusiast of any level.