Les Paul — Rig Network

The guitar designed in collaboration with Gibson — Les Paul's specification led directly to the Les Paul Custom with its multi-humbucker configuration and ebony fretboard. He used the Custom throughout his performing career, the guitar becoming as associated with him as with any rock artist who later adopted it.

Before the Gibson partnership, Les Paul played Epiphone archtops — the large-body Emperor and Zephyr provided the warm, projecting jazz archtop tone of his Capitol Records recordings with Mary Ford.

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One of the first true solid-body electric guitars — a 4x4 piece of pine with guitar neck, pickup, and strings, with the sides of an Epiphone guitar glued on for aesthetics. Predates the Fender and Gibson solid bodies by a decade.

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Les Paul modified and built his own amplifiers throughout his career — a practical necessity given his studio recording demands. The custom amp provided clean headroom for overdubbing multiple guitar passes without colouration.

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Ampex reel-to-reel tape machine used as a delay effect — Les Paul ran his guitar signal through a tape head at a different position from the recording head, creating slapback delay before any pedal delay existed.

Unique to this artist in the database