Sunday 22 February 2009

Stratocaster Greats: Playing in the Style of Fender

Customer Review: History of the Fender Guitar
This is not really an instructinal DVD it is more of a history lesson about the Fender Stratocaster Guitar and its rise from the early 50's to today. Tom Kolb explains such mundane things as the Bridge section of the guitar and control knobs, tremelo,pickup's...ect.But the highlite is when he plays in different styles such as Jeff beck, Eric Clapton,Ritche Blackmore,and other great Strat players.Fun to watch if you are a huge Strat fan like me... but may bore others who were hopping to glean some riff's off of this DVD. After watching this dvd you do realize just how important the Strat has been to Rock and music in general.Its the only true example i can think of where they got something right the first time! the body and structure of the Srtat has not changed in 60 years....thats beacause it was perfect to begin with.
Customer Review: Don't waste your cash
I've played keyboard for over 25 years. I've now decided to start playing guitar and purchased this video. No doubt that Tom Kolb knows how to play a guitar. If I didn't have any previous musical knowledge I would have been completely lost watching this DVD. What it shows to you is a bunch of information about various styles of various guitar players. That's what it is suppose to do right? Well what is shown to you is a guy playing his guitar really fast and talks about nothing on how to apply techniques and use them. Then you are referred to look at a cheezy photocopied handbook that is suppose to explain everything. Wrong! Every "technique" that is shown... if you can pick it out during his fast playing... would already be known by an experienced player. Beginner.... forget it, you won't see anything that will help you. I could go on for hours on how useless this video is. But I'll keep it short. Spend your money on something else.


Electric guitar history begins in the 1920's and 1930's when two Los Angeles musicians George Beauchamp and John Dopyera began trying to find ways of creating louder guitars. They first created a resonator guitar using aluminum disks with a metal body that was three times louder than an acoustic guitar. The resonator guitar evolved into what me commonly refer to now as the dobro.

It wasn't until 1930 that Beauchamp and another man Paul Barth developed the first working pickup. They then contacted Harry Wilson who carved the neck and body of what would be the first electric guitar. They nick-named it the frying pan due to it's round body.

The first man to build and market an electric "Spanish" style guitar was Lloyd Loar. Loar created Vivi-Tone, a company dedicated to the production of spanish style electric guitars. However the design was poor and within a year Vivi-Tone failed.

In 1935 Gibson began work on developing a new guitar pickup. This pickup would become incorporated onto the standard f-hole arch-top guitar known as the ES-150. The Gibson ES-150 is considered the first modern electric guitar in history.

A milestone in electric guitar history, the ES-150 became an instant success. However their were still some undesirable characteristics. Because of the hollow body design there were often problems with feedback and distortion.

The answer to this problem was the solid body electric guitar. The solid body electric guitar can be accredited to two men. Les Paul and Leo Fender. Les Paul's idea was to take a 4x4 piece of pine and attach two magnetic pickups. He then glued two cutaway halves of the original hollow body design to the 4x4.

Leo Fender's model was slightly different. His solid body was made of oak and instead of gluing two halves of a hollow body to a solid middle Leo Fender had carved the entire body solid. In 1949 Fender released the first successful solid-body electric guitar called the "Esquire."

It wasn't until 1952 that Gibson decided to release Les Paul's version of the solid body electric guitar. Although Fender had been on the market for a short while Gibson's Les Paul quickly become the industry standard and to this day is considered the most sought after guitar in electric guitar history.

By the 1960's electric guitar history had hit its maturity. Gibson introduced the humbucking pickup which helped to reduce unwanted noise from the magnetic coils in pickups. Fender and Gibson came out with more futuristic designs like the SG and Stratocaster.

Since the 1960's There have been numerous electric guitar manufacturers to come on to the scene. Manufacturers like Ibanez, Jackson, Paul Reed Smith, Dean and B.C.Rich are just a few of the modern companies who are still continuing to make electric guitar history.

John Robert has been playing guitar longer than he can remember and teaching for the last three years. His innovative teaching methods have helped many guitarists maximize their practice time for optimal playing potential. To learn more great guitar playing tips visit Jam-o-rama.info

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