Led Zeppelin released Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III and the fourth which didn’t even have their band name on it (it’s widely known as Led Zeppelin IV, of course).

I'll never forget it — an image of Frank Zappa, Gibson SG in hand, shirt off, long hair and commanding moustache, pictured in black and white in the pages of one of my guitar instructional books when I was ten years old. Who was this guy? He looked so… purposeful.

Reverb was one of the first effects guitarists used, and there's an established reverb vocabulary, a set of rules by which we expect to use it and to hear it. Reverb is something that usually trails our playing, adding a sense of dimension and depth. It also serves to place our music at a specific point in time, with reverb tails hanging in the air to remind us of notes that we've played but which are no longer being sounded. Would Van Halen's self-titled album have sounded so significant and powerful if we didn't have that breathy guitar reverb in the right channel, reinforcing the notes Eddie had just played? Well, probably, but it's still a pretty cool sound.

Conventional wisdom dictates that hollow body guitars aren’t the best instruments for rocking out. Their tones are more associated with jazz, country and blues — although post-Delta blues is more the province of solid body and semi-hollow body six-strings, the latter ala B.B. King’s Lucille and the ES-335s and their kin used by Freddie King and others.

There’s no denying that from the ‘80s onwards, the guitar instrumental has ventured into hitherto unexplored territories, with virtuosos such as Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen and others setting new standards for the concept. For the purposes of the list below, however, virtuosity is less a consideration than pioneering impact. Feel free to chime in with great instrumentals we missed — especially those with longstanding impact — in the comments section.

Making an album – even a classic album – sometimes can be an exercise in overcoming adversity. Still, the monumental troubles that Paul McCartney and Wings had to surmount to record Band on the Run, easily McCartney’s best post-Beatles album, easily could have served as fodder for an epic Hollywood film.

The iconic Gibson Explorer was so far ahead of its time when it was first introduced in 1958. that Gibson produced only about 100 of the famed instruments—many of which are now highly prized collectibles selling for upwards of half a million dollars. Today, the same far-out, futuristic Gibson Explorer—reintroduced in the mid-1970s—is one of the most coveted powerhouses of screaming rock and roll.

Ah, distortion! That beautiful growl that makes the electric guitar the perfect 20th and 21st century instrument — the sound of the blues colliding with noisy urban environs; the sound of the space age; the sound of anger or a wide range of other emotions, writ in howling detail; the sound of the future, stuttering to the beat of global warming and chaos, or crushed to the roar of digital feedback, zeros and ones beaten into hideous submission. Distortion can be all of those things and more.

2013 is already a landmark year for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Robert Levon Been. The co-singer/bassist/guitarist has reunited his late father’s band, The Call, and BRMC have just released a fine new album, Specter at the Feast.

Here are 10 suggestions you can follow without the help of a luthier to keep your guitar performing and looking its best.