LES PAUL’S LES PAUL

Guitar genius’s genius guitar

Fans of the Les Paul guitar tend to be ardent purists, always seeking the most authentic recreation of 1959. Ironically, the guitar was designed by one of the most forward-thinking musicians of the 20th century. Les had prototyped his own solid bodies in the 1930s, one out of a railway sleeper and another, ‘the Log’, out of a 4x4” board with strings. He was looking to eliminate body resonance entirely to maximise sustain. In practice, the most desirable guitars are those that resonate exactly the right amount, producing long sustain with woody tone. The extremely heavy Les Pauls of the 70s and 80s are closer to Les’s vision, but less popular.

Les continued to innovate and his personal guitar was anathema to traditionalists.

Called the Recording Model, it featured low impedance pickups, switchable circuits for recording direct or with an amplifier, and a complex array of knobs including a phase switch and a ‘decade’ switch that tuned treble harmonics.

In 2014 Gibson released a updated version of Les' original design (pictured here). Now discontinued, they are hard to find on the second-hand market but well worth trying out if you can find one.

Depending on who you believe, Peter Green's '59 Les Paul's spectacular out-of-phase sound was because either the neck pickup’s magnet was installed upside down (luthier Jol Dantzig) or its coils were rewound the wrong way (Bare Knuckle’s Tim Mills). However, Greeny’s magic was not just the pickups, but its open and airy acoustic tone that translated into a beautiful amplified sound in all positions. Gary Moore owned it for 25 years, before Kirk Hammett reportedly paid $2 million for it in 2014.