The Gibson Electric Guitar Book: Seventy Years of Classic Guitars Paperback – September 1, 2007

This book is a must read for any electric guitar fanatic, required reading for any Gibson fans. Not only does it take you through the ups and downs, trials and tribulations, innovations and failures of this storied stringed instrument company, it puts all that within the historical perspective of what was going on at Gibson's major competitors at the time, Fender chief among them. Clearly Carter, once historian for Gibson, knows wherefore he speaks. And the photos of Gibson electric guitars as they morph through their history is worth the price of the book. Loved it.Tony Tedeschifounding editornaturaltraveler.commyspace.com/stuckinthesixties

This is a good book, but it is not all-inclusive as it hoped it would be. For example, my ESS-339 is not even shown in the book! Other than that, it is a good read.

Material is nicely covered with great vintage photos. A good book to pick up if you want to learn more about Gibbies.

Thank you!

Fast delivery, Great price!

~ This book covers the first 70 years of Gibson electric guitar history; through 2007.~ The author has based the book on Gibson production, shipping and accounting records, old sales literature, and interviews with former employees, so the book is well researched - or at least as well researched as possible for a company that has changed ownership several times and a company that is notorious for poor record keeping. Wisely, the author does not try to make sense of Gibson's method of assigning serial numbers to it's guitars.~ The initial 127 pages of the book is evenly split between text and photographs. While the photo is extensive, it is not all-inclusive - that would require a much bigger and more expensive book. This section of the book is informative with regards to the many changes in management, ownership, and philosophy as well as the introduction, elimination, and reissuing of the plethora of Gibson electric guitar models of the years. The author does not hold any punches and is not afraid to point out Gibson's several failures in design and marketing.~ Following the 127 page history is a 30 page "reference" section organized be model name. This section is useful for looking up specific models and trying to make sense of the changes that were imposed on that model over the years. There may be a few models missing in this section (perhaps models that had limited production runs) but overall this reference section is useful and informative.~ The author, Walter Carter, has published several other guitar history books that are worth reading:  Martin Guitar Book (Softcover) , The Epiphone Guitar Book: A Complete History of Epiphone Guitars , Classic Electrics A Visual History Of Great Guitars , and others.~ Recommended, but I only gave it 4-stars because like any "history" book it is out-of-date by the time you buy it, or at least by the time I read it in 2013.

The text is insightful and the pictures are beautiful.However, most real fanatics will want more than the usual stuff that is regularly covered in guitar magazines. Many models are missing and some of them are covered too briefly.This book is a broad overview of the history of Gibson's electric guitars. In my opinion, there isn't enough in here to satisfy the real fans. It is nonetheless a beautiful book.

This book has a lot of information packed into relatively few pages (160). The pictures are also clear and plentiful. However, there is too much concentration on the various incarnations of the single cutaway Les Paul model for my liking. In fact, there are very few pages of pictures that do not feature at least one of a variation of that model. In contrast to that, for example, there is not a single picture in the book of a twin soapbar, double cut Les Paul special, although there are a couple of the P90 equipped Junior. While I appreciate that this book is called "The Gibson Electric Guitar Book" it would have been nice to also have a couple of pages and paragraphs about the basses Gibson made. There are not so many books about Gibson guitars in general so this book is worth having, particularly for the text. If you're a Les Paul guitar lover you'll probably enjoy the pictures as well, although there's nothing here that you won't find in books specifically about Les Paul's. For me it's an addition to the collection but not one I'll be pulling out very often.

This is an excellent book! I bought it mainly fot he pictures as I thought that I already had a reasonably good knowledge of the history of the electric guitar but I have learned so much more!Of particular interest to me was learning about some of the marketing strategy used during the synthesiser boom of the '80s. Rather than devalue the brand by lowering the price, they marked many first grade instruments as 'factory seconds' so they could sell them at discount! This is particularly pertinent to me as I own a 1981 ES347 with 'second' stamped on the back of the headstock. I have never been able to work out what was supposed to be wrong with this guitar and now wonder whether this was one of these intruments? I will never know for certain but it is interesting to speculate.All in all this book is a thoroughly good read despite needing an update to cover the last 10 - 15 years.Highly recommended.

Great quality book. Bought it for someone who owns several classic jazz guitars, including a Gibson. He really liked the book and said it had good quality images and a wealth of information on the guitars too. Had absolutely no issues with the seller. The book was received as described and within the stated timescale.

This book is amazing, brilliant read and great resource

Well written with excellent photography, a recommended read