Mystery Gibson LP?

[Rick Turner]

Note that this is not actually a "Les Paul" even though it shares a shape. Anything with Les' name on it had to be approved by the man himself. It was quite the deal when Les finally allowed the "Orville" "Les Pauls" to be made in Japan, only for distribution in Japan. Les did not particularly want his name on lesser (pun intended) guitars than Kalamazoo or Nashville-made Gibsons. But he did like the royalty checks...

[g1]

Les did not particularly want his name on lesser (pun intended) guitars than Kalamazoo or Nashville-made Gibsons.

Or even some made in Kalamazoo, apparently. The GK name signified Gibson Kalamazoo.

So, sitting here smugly thinking "at least my Firebrand is a Les Paul", I realized I'm wrong, the trussrod cover says "LP Firebrand". I guess not putting the name on it = no royalty paid = technically not a Les Paul .
Likewise with "The Paul" I guess.

[Rick Turner]

Not sure about "the Paul"...that was the all walnut one, right? Pretty cool guitars, as I recall. There were also some wood bound and purfled Les Pauls made by Abe Wechter and Richard Schneider in the mid 1970s that were just beautiful.

[big_teee]

I worked on a Customer/Friends "The Paul" late last Summer.
It was a great sounding guitar when we got it running again.
It was a Set Neck guitar, but was not a true Arch top, it was flat on top, but rounded on the top edge.
Like this one.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2...5/DSC00092.jpg
The pickups were in bad shape, and I put a set of antiqued covered pickups in it.
A neat guitar.
T

[g1]

I'm not 100% but I think the LP Firebrand (early, mine is '80) were all mahogany, then the Firebrand "The Paul" came out in all walnut (81-8?).
Like you say T, they did not have the carved top which made them significantly lighter, like a special. Mine has T-tops which is what I see in most of the photo's.

[Rick Turner]

I think those walnut ones are real "sleepers" on the vintage market. That's a cool guitar. I think that's another Tim Shaw project. He, by the way, designed the famous Sunrise acoustic magnetic pickup but sold the design and company to Jim Kaufman in the 1980s. That may have been the first "stacked" humbucking design.

[David Schwab]

You know Les didn't want an arch top, he wanted a flat top.

This was his Les Paul Recording prototype:

[SpareRibs]

Hello,
David, can you tell me about those pickups on the Les Paul Recording ? I want to make a replica of the Les Paul Log. It seems I saw a photo of him holding The Log and it looked like it had that type of pickups on it. However in photos of just The Log the pickups look very crude and handmade.

[olddawg]

Hello,
David, can you tell me about those pickups on the Les Paul Recording ? I want to make a replica of the Les Paul Log. It seems I saw a photo of him holding The Log and it looked like it had that type of pickups on it. However in photos of just The Log the pickups look very crude and handmade.

I had an aquaintance in HS that had an LP Recording about 1973. I thought it was an utter piece of crap. It had an Xlr jack that he had to run into a microphone impedance matching transformer to input his guitar amp. He pickups were very anemic. I found it useless, but I was playing rock and roll. I think they wrecsupposed to be very clean and jazzy. Who knows what it might of sounded like if he ran it into a low Z preamp and then into the amp as a boost?