Zappa's Gear: The Unique Guitars, Amplifiers, Effects Units, Keyboards and Studio Equipment

Frank Zappa was an unremitting musical innovator and experimenter, always looking for ways to exploit the latest advances in technology. His working life coincided with the explosive development of music technology that ran from the 1960s through the following three decades. Without such inventions as the Marshall amplifier, the Gibson SG, the wah-wah pedal, and the Synclavier – much of it modified to his requirements and used in ways for which they had never been designed – Zappa's “air sculptures ” as his music has been described, would have had a significantly different shape and texture.

Lavishly illustrated – including over 180 unique photographs of Frank Zappa's guitars and equipment taken by the author at his UMRK studio in LA and featuring a foreword by Dweezil Zappa – Zappa Gear offers an unprecedented inside look at the machinery behind the legendary music. In addition to a detailed presentation of the equipment, Zappa Gear also introduces some of the pioneering inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs without whom the instruments would not exist.

Zappa Gear is an official Frank Zappa book produced and written with the full cooperation and endorsement of Gail Zappa and the Zappa Family Trust.

Mick Ekers (UK) is a lifelong Frank Zappa enthusiast, first seeing the original Mothers of Invention at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1968. A musician and self-confessed equipment geek, in the 1970s he worked as a sound engineer and also sold sound equipment and early synthesizers.