Fender

(Reference). The Fender Telecaster is regarded as the first commercially successful solid body electric 'Spanish' guitar. Designed by Leo Fender at a time when the words rock and roll were not even coined, the 'Telly' is the senior member of a family of instruments whose sounds and looks helped revolutionize the world of popular music. This book relates the story of Telecaster Guitars since 1950 - everything you ever wanted to know is explored through lots of color and black and white photos, charts and interviews.

Gorgeously illustrated and authoritatively written, Fender 75 Years is the officially licensed celebration of the legendary brand's landmark anniversary, covering all of Fender's iconic guitars, amps, and basses.

Fender Amps is the first book to chronicle this company's amazing contribution to the amplifier, providing a complete overview of its history and operation. From the K & F amp of 1945 to the Custom Amp Shop line of today, you'll understand why musicians continue to collect, rely and relish the sound of a Fender amplifier.

The Ultimate Fender Book provides an exciting new look at the history and importance of Fender electric guitars. Back in the 40s, Leo Fender and his team ran a small business in California making a handful of steel guitars and amplifiers. Using this expertise to produce the world's first commercial solidbody electric guitar, they made musical history. Everyone from Hendrix and Cobain to Clapton played a Fender, and millions of unknown guitarists drawn to them today ensure Fender is still the world's leading guitar maker. The Ultimate Fender Book provides an exciting new look at the history and importance of Fender guitars as well as the never-ending future of the brand. A lively and accessible guide to every Fender electric guitar made from 1950 to the present day, it is full of detailed information and colour illustrations of more than 300 instruments. On the DVD, author Dave Hunter and guitarist Carl Verheyen guide viewers through a remarkable collection of vintage Fender guitars and amps, showing why these are among the most highly rated guitars ever made. It's a Fender fan's dream come true, offering the history and specifications of every Fender electric guitar in one clearly presented and easily accessible volume.

“A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history” (The New York Times Book Review), this one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound—Leo Fender and Les Paul—and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built. In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock ’n’ roll—and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul—whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought—to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo. While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s—including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton—adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable. In “an excellent dual portrait” (The Wall Street Journal), Ian S. Port tells the full story in The Birth of Loud, offering “spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of guitars” (The Atlantic). “The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new” (The Washington Post).

book for musicians, instrument collectors, and fans of Fender. This, at last, is the complete Fender story." --Book Jacket.