The soul of tone - Celebrating 60 Years of Fender Amps
Nettopreis CHF 115.-

You could fill a library with all the books written about Fender guitars and basses over the years, but now comes a truly comprehensive, meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated work on the other half of Fender’s sonic legacy, its amplifiers.

The Soul Of Tone: Celebrating 60 Years of Fender Amps hits the shelves this fall, from publisher Hal Leonard Books and one of guitardom’s most prolific and celebrated authors, Tom Wheeler. In the book’s 512 pages, Wheeler chronicles the entire history and evolution of “The Other Legacy of Leo Fender,” leaving no knob unturned, with extensive commentary from those who’ve designed, built, marketed and played through Fender amps ever since their humble post-war beginnings in a Southern California radio shop right on through to today.

It’s all there—from the first tiny K&F lap steel amps of the mid-1940s to the great and revolutionary Fender amps of the late 1950s and early 1960s; from the oddball CBS-era solid-state amps of the late 1960s and 1970s to the powerful and brilliantly resurgent Fender amps of the 1990s and today’s digital tone machines.

The book’s hundreds of black-and-white and color photos of amps, artists and artisans are a goldmine unto themselves, and Wheeler’s characteristically elegant prose makes for an entertaining read and an invaluable reference work.

“The Soul Of Tone is one of the coolest music-related books I’ve ever seen,” said Shane Nicholas, senior marketing manager for Fender Guitar Amplifiers (and featured in the book). “Hats off to Tom Wheeler, author of many great books—he’s done it again. It was an honor to be involved with him and with Hal Leonard on such an epic project.”

The book features a forward by Keith Richards and comes with two audio CDs featuring various vintage and modern Fender amp sounds, as produced by guitarist extraordinaire Greg Koch and Fender’s own John Dreyer, Ritchie Fliegler, Steve Grom, Mike Lewis, Richard McDonald and Nicholas.

Wheeler himself is quick to point out that the story of Fender amplifiers is much more than tubes, wires, transformers and speakers; that these devices “aren’t just boxes with handles and knobs on ’em.”

“What fascinates me most are the stories of the quirky, brilliant people who designed and played these things,” he said. “How innovation, technology and style all come together to influence culture, and how these products in my view could only have emerged from Southern California in the late 1950s and 1960s.”

“Accordingly, while there’s plenty of information about tubes and speakers, I also investigate how California architecture, the aviation and aerospace industries, Hollywood, surfing, sports car and hot rod esthetics, and other aspects of ‘California cool’ helped shape the way these products looked and how their marketing helped change the way the public views musical instruments, musical performance, and even to some extent the roles of men and women in advertising.”

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