LES Paul Low Ω pickups

[pucho812]

In one of the latest guitar mags to hit the shelf, they do an extensive looking into the genius that is Les Paul via the eyes of a guitar tech who worked with him for years.  They go over all kinds of things including how  the secret Les Paul thing was always using low Ω pickups, as he was designing them so that he could plug right into a mic pre, On the occasions that he was using an amp, He would use a transformer to make the guitar high Ω to work with a guitar amp. 

 

[PRR]

The modern sound of guitar is a lot to do with the hi-Z winding interacting with the cable and grid capacitance.

Les' technique is "technically correct" but requires a transformer to get into a tube grid with decent S/N.

Today we can buffer in the guitar, but this has not become popular.

Many things Les did were unique.

Do not forget how FAST he fell off the charts when rock-n-roll started.

 

[pucho812]

All true. I just thought the article was cool.

 

[Pip]

I played one of those Les Paul Recording Model Guitars. They also had a ton of tone options phase reversal switch and something else. They were also really heavy I mean really heavy. If you wanted squeaky clean they sounded fine. But IMHO they weren't all that. Yes for direct injection into a console they had there purpose but who does that all the time? Les and his contributions will never be forgotten but not everything is always gold.