The Gibson Les PaulThe Les Paul has a long legacy. It is also a key feature in the development of the solid body as a standard guitar. The guitar was developed in 1941 when Epiphone allowed Lester Paulfus (Les Paul) to develop guitars in their workshop.
While there, Les Paul developed a guitar branded 'The Log', which had a solid neck, attached to a slab of wood, which carried all of the hardware and had wings to make the guitar look more conventional. Les Paul took his prototype to the Gibson Company, but they were not interested, and instead called his 'Log' a 'Broomstick with a pickup on it'. Gibson turned Les Paul down.
But in 1950, things changed, and as a respected guitarist, Gibson signed him-up and agreed that they would market his guitars with his name, and give him a royalty. Two years later Les Paul was happy with the guitar he had developed and dubbed the guitar the "Gibson Les Paul" but Gibson were not sure if the guitar would be a success, so instead of risking their name, they called the guitar "Les Paul" and kept the 'Gibson' tag at a distance. But Maurice Berlin said 'Maybe we Should Put The Gibson name Back On', and it was a smart move, as time has told.... In 1962, Les Paul's contract with Gibson ended and as Les Paul was occupied at the time with a divorce with wife Mary Ford, he -unfortunately- gave in on guitars. He did eventually go back, just another part of the Gibson Legacy. For info on what happened later in the Les Paul story please read the Gibson SG Review.
Les Paul's idea was for the guitar to have a natural 20 second sustain, and the only real way to do this was to make the guitar heavy, which obviously has its good points and bad points. Good because the sustain was/is vital and Bad because the guitar is -at-times- unmanageably heavy. The main part of the body was made from Mahogany, and the guitar had a 12mm maple top. Despite being attractive, the main reason for this was to make the guitar hard to duplicate. The cap also adds some "brightness" to the "darkness" of the Mahogany construction.
The very early Les Paul's were fitted with two 'P90' (Super Loud Single Coil Pickups) and the later models (1957 Onwards) with two Gibson "PAF" (Patent Applied For) Pickups (Developed by Seth Lover and Ted McCarty). The Guitar is also fitted with a three-way pickup selector switch, with separate volume and tone controls. The early models also had a 'Trapeze' tailpiece, but always went out of tune and were later replaced by the 'Tune-O- Matic' tailpiece. The Les Paul comes in many forms. The most common you will probably see are the Standard (As Above) and the Custom, also referred to as the 'Black-Beauty', and it differs from the standard with it's blank/ebony finish, option of 3 pick-up's and double binding, with the custom though comes the inflated price tag.
The Stats -
Body : Maple top, Mahogany back
Neck Profile : Mahogany/Rounded
Fingerboard/Inlay : Rosewood/Trapezoid
Scale/Nut Width : 24 3/4"/1 11/16"
Binding : Single-ply top+fingerboard
Bridge/Tailpiece : Tune-o-matic/Stop bar
Hardware : Chrome
Pickups : 490R Alnico magnet humbucker
498T Alnico magnet humbucker
Controls : Two volume, two tone
Three-way switch
Finish : Ebony, Heritage Cherry Sunburst
Honey Burst, Vintage Sunburst
Wine Red.
Written by Chris Halfpenny, please contribute a Guitar View.All Rights Reserved© 1998.
