SOLID BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR

Les Paul: In His Own Words

THE CREATION OF THE LOG, THE FIRST SOLID BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR

Something terribly important developed in 1941 as I continued my efforts to create an electrically amplified guitar whose acoustical properties didn’t cause feedback. The facts were pointing the way, and I was realizing more and more that for an electric guitar, the solidity of the neck and body, along with the way the strings attach, were the critical factors I needed to pursue. When I stripped the problem down to that simple understanding, I realized what I needed to do was to put the railroad rail into the guitar.

Working on Sundays, I took a length of 4×4 pine, attached an Epiphone neck to it, wound a couple of homemade pickups, and mounted them on the wood. Then I added a bridge and a Vibrola tailpiece, strung it up, and I had the Log. I went back to the Epiphone factory, took the soundbox of an old Epiphone archtop, and sawed it in half right down the middle. Then I braced up the two halves so they could be attached to the sides, and two Sundays later, the Log had its wings and looked much more like a normal guitar.

The Rail – Electric guitar beginnings

Les Paul began experimenting with electrifying his guitar when he was in his early teens. He connected a radio as an amplifier to his acoustic guitar, but he wanted to hear just the strings vibrate and he wanted the strings to vibrate longer.

Using a short length of steel railroad rail and two railroad spikes, I invented a device that could give me a consistent reference point for my experiments. I took a guitar string and fastened it at each end of the steel rail, using the spikes like a bridge and nut to raise the string so it could be plucked. Then I took a telephone microphone, wired it into Mom‘s radio for amplification, and placed it on the rail under the string. I soon figured out that the tremendous solidity of the rail allowed the string’s vibration to sustain for a longer time, and there was no feedback.