Les Paul, The Master

[shartom]

I have been reading The Les Paul Legacy 1915-1963. It covers both the early life of Les Paul and the developement of the Gibson Les Paul Gold Top.

Most ot Les Paul's early recordings were done on Epiphones, primarily "The Log". He played Epiphone acoustics for quite a long time prior to his experimenting with the Log Guitar which was an Epiphone neck and Body mounted on a 4X4. The really funny thing is, he would cover up the Epiphone label on the headstock and stencil Gibson on it's place.

I just picked up a copy of "The Best of Les Paul" dated 1944 through 1947. Sure enough, you can see where the headstock had been painted over.

There were so many screw ups during the developement of the Gold Top, it is a wonder Gibson ever pulled it off.

The book is great reading and I highly recommend it.

[tulsaslim]

Hopefully you haven't re-opened the can of worms. There's people on this forum who think Les Paul is an overrated hack whereas others agree with you that he is a true innovator. I think he's a great innovator.

[carverman]

I have been reading The Les Paul Legacy 1915-1963. It covers both the early life of Les Paul and the developement of the Gibson Les Paul Gold Top.

Most ot Les Paul's early recordings were done on Epiphones, primarily "The Log". He played Epiphone acoustics for quite a long time prior to his experimenting with the Log Guitar which was an Epiphone neck and Body mounted on a 4X4. The really funny thing is, he would cover up the Epiphone label on the headstock and stencil Gibson on it's place.

I just picked up a copy of "The Best of Les Paul" dated 1944 through 1947. Sure enough, you can see where the headstock had been painted over.

There were so many screw ups during the developement of the Gold Top, it is a wonder Gibson ever pulled it off.

The book is great reading and I highly recommend it.[/quote

 

Well one should be careful "paraphrasing" on a Gibson owned forum.. that being said...

Using my book as a reference " Gibson Guitars"..Ted McCartys golden era '48-66",

Lester had to cover up the Epiphone name after he signed up with Ted McCarty where

he was supposed to play NO other brand except Gibson and the Les Paul, or lose

all his accumulated money from the contract.

 

As far as the "20lb log", the way I understood it, was that the neck was replaced with

a Gibson neck. The archtop tailpiece contribution by Lester was the biggest problem with the

early LPs as far as staying in tune. Another (possible) mistake was the colour chose for the LP Custom and

Standard was reversed. Lester wanted the Custom to be Gold and the Standard to

be black, according to this book. The biggest mistake that he may have made was

that he did not want his name associated with the SG and insisted that his name

be removed from that model.

 

The early SGs did have a nameplate showing Les Paul them though..

.so had THAT decision and the colour switch not been made, the

whole history of the guitar world could have taken a different road.

[RotcanX]

The biggest mistake that he may have made was

that he did not want his name associated with the SG and insisted that his name

be removed from that model.

 

The thing is, Les Paul was going through a rather messy divorce around that time and part of the reason his name disappeared from Gibson products was that he wanted the divorce finalized before entering into any new contracts with Gibson.