Forgive my less than perfect photo but I wanted to quickly illustrate the size of this itty bitty book, it literally rests in the palm of my hand! And yet it is stuffed to the brim with photos and information on 500 of the coolest, weirdest and iconic guitars in the history of the instrument. This book was seemingly written just for me! Okay, not just for me, but for all you guitar junkies out there this is an absolute must. I am a little disappointed that it isn’t a full size book, in fact poster size would have been nice, because they have everything from the first guitars of the baroque period through to the modern day creations of Fender, Gibson and even Finland’s Juha Ruokangas (whose ”Duke” previously featured here on Guitar Noize) and everything in between over 528 pages.
The book doesn’t start at the very beginning but rather what some what call the real beginning of the guitar, the development of the steel string acoustic. After a quick overview on how guitars are constructed and what affects tonal variation, the book quickly delves into the work of Christian Frederick Martin Sr. the founder of Martin guitars and away we go. From the flat top acoustics of the 1930’s to the Bacon & Day Archtops and early Epiphone’s. There are brief artist profiles along the way such as Bob Dylan, Robert Johnson, Django Rheinhardt that show the progression and diversity of the instrument through the years. There is a nice section on John Dopyera, inventor of the resonator guitar and co-founder of The National String Instrument Company and later, founder of the Dobro company with some great photos of his early 1930’s guitars.
One of the biggest milestones in the guitar’s evolution was the electric guitar so it is no suprise that there are some examples of early creations such as Les Paul’s ‘The Log’ made from a pice of railroad track, and the bodyless Lloyd Loar Vivi-Tone! Apparently Loar went on to work for Gibson where he designed the groundbreaking L-5, which leads me very nicely onto the next section, “American Icons” which is a chapter highlighting 23 guitars that changed history. I won’t list them all here, I’ll let you try and work out which were included, but the first is the afformentioned Gibson L-5. They include guitars from Gibson, Fender, Martin, Gretsch and PRS. Of course the Stratocaster, Les Paul, SG and Flying V all get a mention.
The next section of the book focusses on classical and jazz guitar and plots the development of the instrument through the 1800’s with a special mention for Andres Segovia and his Ramirez guitars. It also showcases some Flamenco guitars before moving on to the archtops that players like Wes Montgomery played. But not all the guitars featured are old instruments, there are archtops in this section such as the Greenfield Newport and Vanguard from 2004 and 2006 respectively which were both carved from Cello woods!
But it really is the last third of the book that had me drooling. From Clapton’s “Brownie” (’56 Sunburst Strat) to Hendrix’s ‘67 Flying V. The jaw droppingly beautiful Juha Ruokangas Mojo Grand with its Arctic Birch top, the 70’s Zemaitis, B.B. King’s “Lucille” and even some Jeff Traugott Fan Fret guitars and the Teuffel Birdfish. This book is like the Guitar Noize bible!! I absolutely insist that anyone even remotely interested in the guitar go out and buy this book, or buy it online at Amazon “Guitars - A Celebration of Pure Mojo by David Schiller” for just $11! At that price there really is no excuse not to! It should keep this site going for quite some time, thanks for the inspiration David!
For more information including a much better photo of the cover go to Workman Publishing. Special thanks to Jackie from Workman for sending me this fantastic book!
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