RL Before the Humbuckings came out you went to low impedance pickups. You can hear it in your recordings in 1955.

LP From the very beginning I told Gibson you can have everything but my sound. I said, "Unless you find it, I'm not going to tell you." And so the sound that I had on the guitar, excluding the House of Blues, was mine. My son Russ said, "Boy, he had one hell of a time with it." What happens is when you go to a club or a place other than your own environment, and you have a guitar and you know how it should sound. It's a pretty difficult thing when you grab some Bozo amplifier and it doesn't matter.. it can be a Twin Reverb, it can be a this one or that one or the other. The speaker couples to the room. You go direct out, pre-amp out, you're coming out of the speakers and they mike you in the PA system, and the toughest thing to do in the world is to be as good OK when you have everything to make it great. I don't care who the guitarist is. They go in to make a recording and sometimes they spend months doing one number or to get the sound they wish. Well I happened to be privileged to make my own studio and my own sound.. and got it! And it wasn't until you go out and make the personal appearances AND you switch guitars and you get away from the very things that are so important.. the combination. And when things start to change.. OR you don't realize that these changes are taking place until they are down the road away. And I'm sure that goes for if the Beatles make a live appearance, they're not going to sound as good as their records or get the sound. They are going to go on the stage on the Ed Sullivan Show and they give them an amplifier or whatever it is, and the guys get out there, and it's pretty stupid compared to what you hear on the record.

RL So you got the idea to go in a different direction with some fidelity. Nobody else had that insight.

LP Capitol Records said to me one time, they asked this question. No, it was RCA Victor, and the chief engineer at Victor he says, "Les".. at that time he called me hum hiss Paul, and he says, "Boy, nobody goes through what you go through to get the sound with no distortion, clean, no hum no hiss and all that." And he says, "does that make a hit record?" That makes you think because you can make a hit record and it's a terrible sound. But if you got "Ode to Billy Joe" going or whatever the hit song is, would it be a hit if it had lousy sound? Probably so but I wanted to.. you see, in my time it started out with discs. And you're going to record with a disc so you're bopping back and forth on disc. Then when I invented the "sound on sound", it's one machine in mono and then you realize that 24 dubs down, the quality with the distortion and the degradation of the tape, the loss that has taken place in 24 dubs. You played the guitar 24 dubs later and it doesn't even sound like one! And so that's the problems I had. I had many more problems than the next person to me. That they can go out there with only one generation, two generations. Cause you know, when they get done with the master, whether it's disc, tape or whatever it is.. you don't use that. You use that to make a master in the days of a phonograph record. And then you got to go stamp these things out. That's another generation down! By the time they hear "How High the Moon" they're 28 generations down.

RL So your final melodic line is one of the last parts you lay down because it's up front.

LP Well that was the thing. You wouldn't know that unless I told you. That was one of our techniques which is very hard to do. That was always to put down the most unimportant parts first. And so sometimes you have to play the fourth part first. And now you're doing this and you're trying to make that record sound like you're jamming, like this is not rehearsed. So you're trying to get that feel into a record starting with the fourth part first or the ninth part. And you go that way. And the lead doesn't go on until the record is final. THAT is HARD to do. I don't see anybody doing it and they don't have to.

RL You thought it out..

LP I had to.

RL Charts?

LP No charts. Everything is in the head. No charts.

RL Just ideas.. so you said, "I'm going to do this part", and you start with this particular part to layer it with.

LP That's right.

RL So you start with your coloring to begin with.

LP Whatever I start with, that's what you end up with only it is nothing like the first generation. And you just make sure. And if any one of them is out of step, if one guy is walking with his foot on the curb, I'm meaning a part, then there is nothing you are going do about it. Because you say the third part is too loud, the second part is too loud. And the lead, you can't go back and do that either because every time you punch that record, you've erased the previous tracks. So when you go to let's say the 30th part, you've just erased the whole recording and you have the combination of 29 parts, the one you did last..

RL And the right effect.

LP Everything's got to be right, echo, reverb, time, everything and no click tracks.

RL You had a lot of experience developing that. You worked on it all the time didn't you?

LP I was born with it. I grew up with the invention. I had the invention. I know the idiosyncracies. I know how tempermental it is. How arrogant the tape machine is (laughs).

RL How did Wally Jones help you?

LP Well Wally Jones was a dear friend of mine and I needed a mixer. I needed a four channel mixer with no VU meters, no EQ. All I wanted is four line amps and that's all I wanted. And he gave that to me. We worked in his garage until we got it. And we had to finish building it on the road. Now Wally never finished it so he sent us the drawings and we tried this, we tried that and we finally got it. And our zero was a minus 20. We couldn't get a zero (laughs). So we turn the Ampex up louder, ha ha! Oh boy, we do it the hard way. But that's all we had.

RL And somebody scrutinized it and couldn't figure out how it was possible to do.. and you guys did it.

LP First you have to be stupid. You can't do this if you're brilliant because you wouldn't do it. You would say, "I'm not ready", but I was ready for anything because I just didn't fear it. I wasn't bright enough to do all that.

RL So you told Wally what you wanted and he masterminded it.

LP That's right. Whether it's Wally, whether it's the fellow making the speakers like Jim Lansing, whether it was Harry Olsen, whatever it was. Yeah, we just had to adlib to create.

RL So Wally was a part of your sound.

LP Oh yes. Wally Jones' mixer, we couldn't go on the road without it. And we couldn't have gone without the Ampex. And I never told Ampex any more than I told Gibson. I never told them what I was doing. Five years went by and nobody knew what was going on. The combination of so many people involved.

RL And Wally Kamen, your bass player was winding your pickups.

LP Well sure. Yes, each person. There was nothing I ever did in my life including tonight, when you came over to get my batteries ok. There is nothing that I've done alone. I needed help and I got help from many different people who probably..

RL And Mary.

LP Yes.. who probably I never had the opportunity to thank them enough or to tell people who were so important. Everybody either put their foot in the way to keep me from getting there, or helped me get there.

RL It was a necessary chemistry to create ultimately what you set forth in stone.. in sound!

LP Well we did. to be continued..

Part Three
Les Paul's HOB Interview

RL Didn't your bassist Wally Kamen start winding your low impedance pickups in the mid fifties?

LP Well that was me. I was low impedance since time began! I got it from the Bell Telephone. I got it right from the very beginning when I did a hysterectomy on Mother's phone. And when I took it apart, I saw.. and they did all the brain work for me. All I had to do was put their earphone under my string. And Bell Labs had done all the searching for me. And that was years ahead of anybody else.

RL When did microphones become low impedance?

LP Well they started before me. You go to 1915 the carbon microphone was there and the earphone was there. The telephone was there.

RL So they had to develop low impedance to get the fidelity and use long cords.

LP Yes. Anybody who does things the correct way would say if we're going to do this in a professional manner they would go low impedance.

RL Did you have the low impedance on your Epiphone "Clunker" in the forties?

LP I had both. It was more than just hearing it in the pickup. But anyway, those were all contributing factors. It's endless.

RL When you listen to your records, the demarcation seems to be about '55 when you can really hear the difference.

LP What does that mean 55?

RL 1955.

LP Oh, ok. I thought that was 55 on the dial somewhere. You know how musicians are! Talk about deep!

RL Talk radio!

LP You mean to tell me you turn it up to seven! (laughs) I remember when Gibson came to me and they had a problem and they say, "Well I don't know what to do with the problem here." I asked them what the problem was and they said, "we have to make a better amp and we want to do things better than our competitors." I said, "what do you have in mind?" He said, "another knob." (laughs) So I said, OK, we'll dream up another knob! What do you want to put on it?" He says, "it doesn't matter. Just give me another knob. (laughs) One more than Fender has or what ever it was at the time."

RL They had their presence control that was a feedback loop in the late fifties.

LP All those things, yeah, without getting into it. Yes, we had those things going, the same thing with the volume control. I say, "Hey, you just tell me what you want." Some just want to say it's so damn loud at two! OK. I say, "no matter which way you make it on the knob, the taper on the pot, you're coming up with the same difference. It's just a number. But in fact in those days guys would say, "What about that amp? Oh God, you turn it up to seven." So everybody ran out and got one and the sound was right at seven. This was just in extreme cases. But it was there.

RL You told me they used Bauxendal circuitry?

LP Oh that's for equalizers. One of the first. Yes, that's with tube equalizers.

RL Why was the Gibson GA-40 Les Paul amp only 18 watts? Why didn't they make a 40 or 60 watt Les Paul amp?

LP I can't answer that. That was all kinds of strange reasoning. I'll tell ya one of the biggest problems Gibson had for a million years is that somebody said some comment that stuck through that company for YEARS. And it was, "I guess we weren't meant to make an amplifier."

RL They shot themselves down.

LP Well it sort of worked its way through the whole system. And sometimes you have to turn things around.

RL They are collecting them now, the Gibson amps.

LP Some of them were damn good!

RL I know, I have a few. The Gibson amps had a warmth and richness to them, but they didn't have that high end of the Fender amp. Especially the late fifties amps.

LP Sure. Listen, you can do anything you want. You got a pair of speakers in there and whatever you're dealing with. And you got closed back, open back, you got whatever the resonance is of the combined components. You put the thing together and that's what you got. Now how far you want to dance with it, you can go crazy, and you can go forever.

RL Now you've embraced the Twin Reverb.

LP Not all Twin Reverbs! Not all any one thing. I wouldn't embrace the one I played tonight. {red knob version} I'll tell you why.. ok? In my opinion, I could put down the amplifier I used tonight. But I'll put down.. it's got a lot of knobs. And I happen to be one that says, "the more knobs the more confusion." I go over and see a console now that is so loaded and so technical ok? And you can say, "oh well, he's from the old school." But that isn't my argument. My argument is that when you got pull-outs on there and you can waltz with that son of a &!+@# in 24,000 ways, you got just that many problems. And my wish would be, if I had an amplifier, a speaker, the whole system.. plug it in with my guitar and I'm in heaven. Now that's what I like. Not even a volume control if I had to!

RL The first Fender Princeton combo had no controls. Just one knob on the guitar!

LP Let me tell you this too. You get any guitar out there, and 99 percent of the time I'd win the bet. And for sure, you turn the volume down, and many a guitar player couldn't live without it. You turn the volume down you change the tone. We made one that didn't change the tone with the volume. Which is not easy to do, not hard to do. It can be done many different ways. You know what? Several guitar players came to me and they said they don't like the control cause when they change the volume, the tone doesn't change! They've become so used to it, that they use it to their advantage.

RL So what advice do you have for all those Les Paul guitar fans?

LP Don't get married! Don't have any kids! (laughs) My advice personally is.. first of all find out it you have an ear. And if God gave you that good gift that you have an ear, then you practice damn hard because it's a rough road. And it's very rewarding that I'm one of the few that were as fortunate as you can get I guess in this business. And I'm very grateful for everything. But I'm sure that it's damn hard, it's a tough tough road. There's many ways of skinning a cat. But I just can't advise a person, don't do it or do it. You have to make that decision. But it IS not easy.

RL It's so great playing guitar. We love your guitars. We love the tone of your guitars. And your guitar.. has the Cadillac of tone!

LP Well thank you. That's real nice. I hope you mean that. (laughs)

RL I do. When I'm in the studio, there's no substitute for the Les Paul guitar. It has the big tone, it has the warm tone, it has the rich tone.

LP Wait a minute. There are a lot of others that have great sounds also. I stood right on that stage tonight, not only tonight but everywhere. I hear all kinds of different sounds that can be made. You pick it here, you pick it there. You do this, you do that. And it's endless.

RL Lot's of different sounds.

LP It's like I defy you.. you say, "here's a way to mike a guitar." And if the guy isn't playing it right, you can't mike that guitar, an acoustical guitar, right? And if you have the best player, it's difficult. The same as a piano, the same as anything. You're going to mike that thing and you're going to find this is good and that's not so good. It depends upon just how critical you want to get.

RL I think the marriage of your ideas and the Gibson guitar created the most beautiful, big, and warm sound of any solidbody guitar that's ever been made.

LP Well thank you. We've been very fortunate. I will say this for the Gibson people.. it's a pleasure to be with them all this time, but what's more of a pleasure is to see that they are trying very hard to make it better. We had some difficult decisions to make to use the name Epiphone on a Gibson guitar. There was a lot of.. oh boy. Going overseas was almost a trainwreck. Henry Juszkiewicz is a great person to work with for that reason. Henry and I, and I'm sure Henry wouldn't mind me saying this. When he purchased Gibson, he said, "Les would you like to, you and I, to get together and just find out what's going on? Because he's new in the company and he had a couple of partners with him. Henry and I went a whole day in New York. We down and had some Chinese food in China Town and sat in the Waldorf and talked for hours. And we laid out the things that are happening today. And that was myself and Henry probably just changed Gibson forever to be bigger and better.

RL Set them on a good track.

LP Yes. I can't say enough how good the company is. I agree with what you're saying. They not only make a great guitar but the quality control is better. And you can go out and get one for such a reasonable price. And one of the things in the conversation, most important of all was this.. is that we had to make a guitar for the beginner that doesn't expose them to cruel, terrible fingerboards, things to hold them back from playing well. That they should be given a modest priced instrument but never should we do it at the expense of the player. That quality that we put into the most inexpensive guitar, that was one of the keys. And to make the best guitar better! I remember them sending me a guitar and I said, "you know this is almost too good!" (laughs) So one of the guys said, "maybe we'll make it less good." That's a joke! (laughs) I'm only joking! But it was a joke between us.

RL So what do you think is the feasibility of the Advanced Les Paul guitar with the 25 1/2" scale length? As a production model for people who need that extra room at the end of the fingerboard for soloing.

LP I've always been a believer in that. Yes. I believe just why. Look. When you put a pickup under the string, you're making a big choice. Because if you put it here you're not going to get that, if you put it there, your not going to get this. And so you're really doing a juggling act. Ok? You put two pickups, you put three pickups, it doesn't make any difference. You've got problems. So no matter how you amplify that guitar guitar, it's a compromise. Just like the whole world is a compromise.

RL Just like the frets.

LP Well the frets. We'll go to that. There's no reason in the world within.. you can start an argument with it. But without nitpicking on it, my belief was to put 22 frets on there. There was only 19 and 21. And no one had that thing going so I came out with it and insisted it be that way.

RL And you knew that polepiece had to be right by that harmonic.

LP Oh yeah. Like I say, you're going to get one, you're not going to get the other. And so there it's a compromise. It just says what had you are wearing.

RL So the compromise with the 25.5 scale is a more taut string yet you have a more harmonically rich sound.

LP Sure. It's a very interesting thing. We're saying a 9 foot grand piano is going to sound better than a 7 foot grand. I'm talking about the length of the string and the sounding board. Yeah, I dig.

RL Ultimately, having more room on the neck to play more freely will help.

LP It goes back to the year one. It goes back to the Chinese. It goes back to the very first thing that had a string on it. Ok? They were going nuts then! 1,500 years ago, 2,000 years ago when the guy says the down stroke sounds different than an up stroke.

RL Like when the Marshall's speaker intitially moves away from you instead of towards you like a Fender.

LP Ok. Then the other one that's just as interesting when the guy has, not a harmonica, but a blow-draw horn. When I blow on it, it's got a different sound than when I draw on it. And so for the next thousand years they're talking about how they can get the same tone when they blow on it and when they draw on it. So we're not the ones, ok? Who discovered when that guy climbed out of the water, that bug! Ha Ha!

RL Thank you Les! LP You're welcome Robby.

©2001 Robb Lawrence All rights reserved