http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-et-paul8jun08,0,4765416.story?track=widget
Man, I didn’t know he was still amongst the living. Well, just proves that music keeps you young!
Les Paul rocks! He single-handedly changed the course of guitar music by creating the electric guitar.
Let us not forget his playing of the instrument.He has always been a great player as well as designer.
Slan,
D.
Not only was Paul a pioneer in the development of the solid body electric guitar, he was also instrumental in the development of multitrack recording. He first tried it on a piano roll and later developed recording techniques. The first thing I remember hearing from him was The World is Waiting on the Sunrise. I thought he was just a pop musician but later I learned he was a great jazz guitarist and had toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic, an orginization I got to see several times-not with Les Paul though.
Steve
Not quite, Joseph. Les Pauls date from the late 40s but electrics were around in the mid 30s. Les Pauls might well be the first solid bodies though; they’d have to be pretty close.
I used to have an album with Les Paul and Chet Atkins. I wish I knew what happened to it.
Fly -my dad had that same one (Dad’s hero was Chet)…
If we’re talking guitar designers, Roger Rossmeisl is da man!
Except that Rossmeisl’s work was preceded by Paul’s by about 15-20 years or so.
There’s no doubting Rossmeisl’s contributions, but Paul blazed the trail.
By the way, what make is that?
Isn’t Rossmeisl’s claim to fame the Montego series?
Let’s hear it for Mary Ford!
Walden - Dad had some of Les and Mary’s recordings, too.
Missy
That is a Rickenbacker Capri. He made the designs that made Rickenbacker so distinctive (And superior, I might add ) I own a 330 model, basically a descendant of the above. I had a solid body Rick 12 but I sold it to (minimally) defray the cost of a new flute.
I know Rossmeisl worked for GIbson too, but I can’t remember the sequence of when/where.
I love ES335s but LPs just turn me off. Not Les’s fault though 
.
Wormdiet,
Just noticed the cutaway in that guitar – what’s the deal with that? It is an acoustic feature?
It’s a semi - acoustic. Weapon of choice of Jazz Heads everywhere.
Slan,
D.
Actually I dunno if the owner uses it for jazz or not. THe style is a predecessor of John Lennon’s famous black “Ed Sullivan” guitar (Among Others). The most stereotypical use of a Rick is for power-pop. They have a reputation for being “jangly.”
On the cutaway issue. . . I dunno! The later ones are a lot closer to electric sounding than accoustic sounding. I suspect they are there because they look cool.
Here’s a repro of Lennon’s guitar.
THe one below is a repro of Roger McGuinn’s 12-string (Of the Byrds)
There seems to be a bit of confusion here. Semi-accoustics don’t sound accoustic or a bit like accoustics. They do sound different, often more mellow, but that has to do more with the pickups than the sound box. They are rarely loud enough to be played accoustically in public but they are easier to hear when you are practising unamplified.
Rickenbacker semi-accoustics wouldn’t be used for jazz. Well, let me qualify that. They would not standardly be used but it is surprising what choices some people make. One complicating factor is that a maker might make custom guitars for a star to play that bear little resemblance to the off-the-rack models. With the right pick ups and amplification set-up, just about any guitar can be made to sound like a Gibson semi accoustic.
I don’t own a Rickenbacker guitar; apart from the 12 strings I don’t like the sound but I do have a vintage Rickenbacker bass. Their basses are known for a sort of trebbly sound and are thought not to be versatile but if you twiddle the knobs you can get a good Fender-like bass sound out of my bass. I do own a Les Paul but wouldn’t use it for jazz, not that I couldn’t coax jazzy sounds out of it.
Oh, just a note on cutaways. The point of these is first to make the guitar playable higher up the neck and second to be a design feature in giving it a distinctive look. Obviously double cutaways are favoured for their symmetry; they don’t make the instrument more playable. Accoustic guitars are rarely cut away because this eats into the area where the sound box should be, thus adversely affecting the tone and volume. Since semi-accoustics aren’t meant to be played in public as accoustics, making them thin and with very extreme cut-aways doesn’t affect anything important.
Good post, Wombat.
SO, what kind of Rick bass have you got? 4001/03 or something exotic? Finish? Year? Details!