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Lot Essay
LES PAUL
It would not be hyperbole to call Les Paul one of the most important, influential, and pioneering guitarists, recording artists and inventors in American music. His innovations in recording gave us audio effects like controlled delay, echo, and reverb. His signature recording technique, which he called "Sound on Sound", was the basis of multi-track recording. Whether analogue or digital, multi-track recording changed the recording industry and how we all hear music to this very day.
Les Paul has said that even at an early age he was always in search for a distinctive tone in his guitar playing. While on this pursuit for a unique sound he came to the idea that it might be achieved by amplifying the vibrations of a guitar's string while removing all the ambient overtones and color inherent in an acoustic instrument. Fortunately, Les Paul grew up in the ‘Machine Age’, a time when electronics, radio and amplification were becoming standard applications in the consumer world. The tools to play with were all around him. And play he did. We should not be mistaken that his mission was altruistic. To make the world better for musicians was not his aim, nor was leveraging his innovations for financial gain. It was always about his guitar, his art, his singular pursuit of a sound and tone that would be identified uniquely his and his alone.
Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1915, the man that we know as Les Paul was christened Lester William Polfuss. The grandson of German immigrants, young Lester received his first guitar at age eleven. By age thirteen the ginger-haired guitarist was gigging with his band at a local barbeque stand as the ‘Red Hot Rag Time Band’. Here he began his foray into guitar amplification by taking his father's radio-phonograph and attaching the phonograph stylus to the guitar's bridge. It was far from perfect, and feedback was a big problem but, in his words, it got me noticed and I started making more money. While experimenting with a piece of steel train rail and two rail spikes to act as a bridge and nut, he suspended a guitar string along the rail. With a telephone mouthpiece wired to his mother's tube radio he heard his first purely amplified sound of a guitar string. What he learned in that experiment would be the basis for all his electric guitar developments moving forward.
Frustrated by the guitar amplification options available on the market in the mid-1930s, Les Paul commissioned a solid top guitar made for him by the National String Instrument Company on which he mounted his own hand-made pickup. For amplification he used a tube-powered speaker box from a Bell & Howell 16 mm sound projector. Displeased with his results on the National, Paul approached the Larson Brothers guitar shop, who built him three guitars all with maple tops and without sound-holes in which he continued to experiment with pickup design and placement. Finally, he turned to his budget priced Gibson L-50 archtop where he mounted his pickup and cut a hole in the back so he could easily access the wiring and move the pickup with ease. With multiple holes cut in both the top and back the L-50 would not survive for long.
In 1941 Paul recalled the success of his train track experiment where the volume, tone and sustain of the guitar string was unencumbered by the acoustic sound box on a traditional guitar. Applying this knowledge, he married an Epiphone guitar neck to a solid length of 4 x 4 pine. With two pickups, a solid steel bridge and nut, along with a tailpiece, he reveled at the tonal quality and sustain it would create. He finally had an instrument where he could control the feedback. Paul would later write, It was crude, but when I plugged into an amp, it worked. He had produced a solid-body electric guitar. To make it appear more like a guitar, Paul then sliced the body of an Epiphone archtop length-ways and married the two halves to the pine 4 x 4. He called it his "Log".
It has been said that Paul first showed the "Log" to Gibson in 1941 and received a less than positive response from America's largest guitar manufacturer. Paul has said, They thought it was a joke and laughed a lot, not scoring too well with the idea of a solid-body guitar. They called me the character with the broomstick with pickups on it. That same year Les Paul came into possession of an Epiphone Zephyr archtop electric guitar. Originally manufactured with an access panel in the back of the guitar, Paul realized that the Zephyr would allow him the ease of changing the electronics on the guitar on a whim without cutting holes in the body and sacrificing the structural integrity of the instrument. Throughout the 1940s three of these Epiphone Zephyrs would be in constant rotation with alterations to the pickups, bridge and controls. He called them his "Klunkers" and they became his mainstay electric instruments for his most celebrated recordings and performances up to 1952.
THE RETURN TO GIBSON
Faced with the loss of market share after the successful launch by Leo Fender of an electric solid- body guitar in 1950, the management team at Gibson realized that the electric guitar phenomenon was here to stay. In 1950, Gibson president Ted McCarty put a team together to develop what would be Gibson's first solid-body electric guitar. His desires were clear: this new instrument needed to be both unique and excel at fulfilling the needs of the guitarist while upholding the high quality in guitar manufacturing for which Gibson was celebrated. McCarty also recognized the need for help in both the design and marketing of this new product.
The Gibson company had a long tradition in garnering endorsements from celebrity musicians who helped Gibson position their instruments in the marketplace. Nick Lucas, Roy Smeck, Charlie Christian, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, as well as Les Paul, were just a few of the many Gibson Artists. Both Lucas and Smeck had their own guitar signature models, which had become successful sellers for Gibson.
In 1951 Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford were household names. Their recording How High the Moon had reached Number 1 on the Pop Charts, with thirteen other recordings charting in the Top Ten. Thanks to radio and then television, Les Paul’s prowess as a guitarist was known globally. He was also one of the few proponents of the solid-body guitar and played one of his own design and manufacture. With this knowledge, Gibson approached Les Paul and began the process of improving their prototypes with Paul's input.
The question of whose proposal ideas took precedent during the final design phase of the Les Paul guitar is a hotly debated topic and will remain so. But by paying attention to the final product and comparing the historical works both parties had previously attempted, it is safe to say the project was in many respects collaborative. There exists a visual dialogue between Les Paul's ideas about solid hardwood tops to combat feedback and steel bridges to increase sustain. Equally evident is Gibson's long history with carved-top string instruments, with necks set into the body in a traditional luthier's manner. What transpired was a single cutaway body of solid mahogany capped with a top of book-matched flame maple. Paying homage to their 1922 F-5 mandolin and the L-5 archtop guitar, Gibson anticipated finishing the figured maple tops in their trademarked Cremona Brown sunburst finish. We can only guess that Les found this a bit too old-school and pushed for the tops to be finished in a flashy gold-bronze finish. This would guarantee the added ‘bling’ to his and Mary’s performances.
After the prototype process, the Gibson shipping ledger books indicate that the first two Les Paul Models were sent to Les Paul on May 20, 1952. Following the first public performance of Les and Mary on the new Gibson at New York's Paramount Theater in June 1952, the official corporate launch by Gibson was held the following month at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The model was an immediate success for Gibson with 1,716 Les Paul Model guitars shipped that year and another 2,245 shipped in 1953. After refinements in neck angle, fingerboard and bridge design, as well as custom wiring and control configurations required by Les Paul, these “Goldtop” Les Paul Models can be seen in multiple performances by Les and Mary from 1952 through 1954.
1954 AND THE LES PAUL CUSTOM
By 1955 the original Les Paul gold top guitars were seen less in the hands of Les and Mary, having been replaced by Gibson's Les Paul Custom. The narrative surrounding the creation of Gibson’s Les Paul Custom is as fraught with controversy as the first Les Paul Model guitars released in 1952. Again, collaboration is evident in the final product released by Gibson in 1954, when compared to how Les Paul utilized the new instrument himself. The competitive market forces at work demanded that Gibson expand the product line to both compete with Fender’s continuing success and to widen the spectrum of price points they could offer. On the budget end, the slab mahogany bodied, one pickup Les Paul Junior followed by the double pickup Les Paul Special helped to flood that lower price zone. But Gibson always branded itself as producing guitars of the highest quality. In the effort to reach for a higher value point, they developed the Les Paul Custom. Architecturally it was in many respects built on the preceding Les Paul Model platform, with some important additions, alternations, and improvements: the carved top mahogany body would no longer have a book matched maple top, giving the instrument a warmer tone equated better to the jazz market; the fingerboard would be ebony with pearl block inlay like that on the Gibson L-5 archtop; and the headstock would appropriate both the size and five-piece split block pearl inlay seen on their top-of-the-line jazz archtop, the Super 400. We can only speculate that the team at Gibson might have envisioned returning to their famous Cremona Brown sunburst finish, but it is known that Les Paul preferred a finish in all black.
With its gold-plated hardware, white pearl inlay and multi-bound body against a stunning black finish, the Les Paul Custom appeared to be a guitar dressed in formal attire with gold cufflinks. Amongst many other monikers, the guitar would be marketed as the “Black Beauty”.
This guitar was camera ready and showcased the exceptional quality produced in Gibson's workshops. Les Paul, a keen observer of the visuals in entertaining, quickly jettisoned the earlier Les Paul Model for the eye-catching Custom.
Beyond the visual aesthetics, the Les Paul Custom introduced significant improvements to Gibson’s solid-body electric that enhanced both playability and tonal quality. Retaining Gibson’s famed single-coil P90 pickup at the bridge, the rhythm neck pickup was a redesigned single-coil with exposed Alnico V magnets. Already in use on Super 400s, the LP Custom was fitted with Gibson’s Tune-O-Matic, ABR-1 bridge. With separate adjustable saddles for each string, intonation could be perfectly dialed in. Mounted with adjustable studs deep into the body and paired with a stud-mounted tailpiece, string vibration would be transferred into the solid mahogany body, increasing sustain. The ABR-1 bridge and stud tailpiece combination would later become standard on most Gibson electrics and the industry standard for other manufacturers. Ease of playing with the exceptionally low frets was celebrated by Les Paul and many other players, earning the LP Custom the name “Fretless Wonder”.
It can be assumed that Les Paul and Mary Ford would have received their first prototypes in about 1953. As with all of Les’s guitars the electronics and control layout would have been bespoke, fitting his requirements. Earliest images show the input jack on the face with three controls and a toggle switch. The guitar would be used for recording and performance but more importantly as a test platform for all of Les Paul’s electronics experimenting.
It was not long before Les dispensed with the stud tailpiece and replaced it first with a Kauffmann Vib-Rola vibrato tailpiece and then later with a Bigsby. The Alnico V neck pickup disappeared and would be rewrapped and hidden along with another coil under the enlarged pickguard cover plate. Before it was an industry standard, Les Paul and his brother-law Wally Kamin had been experimenting with double-coil technology to obtain a cleaner sound. Using Arnold Lesti’s ideas from 1935, they would wrap a second coil with reversed polarity and mount them internally in the enlarged cavity on the guitar. Referred to as ‘phantom coils’ they would “buck the hum” just as Seth Lover’s later Humbucker did for Gibson electrics.
By 1973 the prototype Les Paul Custom would be retired, but not before Les Paul had exhausted its potential as a platform for his tonal experiments. He had by then fully changed the electronics and altered the bridge multiple times, before giving the guitar to Tom Doyle. Doyle recalls the constant alterations he made to his instruments to achieve that special sound that only he could hear. Les Paul is often remembered with a Gibson Les Paul, the control panel removed, screwdriver and soldering iron in hand, making a final adjustment before entering the recording studio.
TOM DOYLE
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1942, Tom Doyle grew up in Rockland County, New York. Starting to play guitar at age eight, Doyle passionately took to the instrument as many of his generation would. His guitar heroes were the celebrated virtuoso players of the mid 1950s like Chet Atkins and Les Paul. By high school Doyle was performing with other members of his family, before launching a brother-sister act with his sister Susan Doyle. Landing a residency at New York’s West Village club the Bitter End, they would open for visiting booked acts as varied as Richie Havens and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. It was at one of these performances that Les Paul caught their act and they met for the first time.
By 1966 Doyle had transferred his talent and passion for the guitar into guitar making and repair, opening his own shop in 1970. Les Paul would become one of his early customers, along with the likes of other celebrated guitarists like George Benson, Bucky Pizzarelli and Tony Matolla, to name a few. The relationship with Les Paul quickly converted into a friendship, where they developed a close working rapport. With an equally inquisitive mind regarding electric guitar tone, Tom Doyle began working closely with Les Paul on his tonal experiments and innovations and along with being Paul’s go to luthier, Tom Doyle became his trusted audio engineer. For those lucky enough to attend a Les Paul performance at New York’s Fat Tuesday’s or The Iridium Club, you were sure to see Tom Doyle overseeing the stage audio set-up, sound check and then sitting at the board, mixing the sound for both the audience and performers.
Tom Doyle has related that Les Paul could be insufferably thrifty and would barter guitars in lieu of payment for his luthier services. He stated that in 1976 Les Paul traded this Les Paul Custom along with a collection of experimental parts in exchange for various repair jobs.
Doyle recalled that the guitar came to him unplayable, with a broken neck and none of its hardware. In exchange for a repair on a D’Angelico, Les delivered all the pickups and hardware with which the guitar had previously been fitted. Included where the early experimental pickups and controls utilized by Les. After the structural repairs were completed, Tom Doyle set about returning the guitar to playability. With Les Paul’s guidance and the many parts supplied, Tom Doyle was able to return the guitar to the previous iterations and setups used by Les Paul. Today it is presented in one of the more utilized configurations, with low impedance pickups much preferred by Les Paul and accompanied by additional electronic components representing his earlier experimentations.
Guitarist, author and journalist Robb Lawrence described this guitar best when he wrote in 2015, The "Black Beauty" guitar, brain child of Ted McCarty and built in Kalamazoo with the spirit of Orville Gibson embued, played by the great Les Paul, modified by Wally Kamin and owned by Tommy Doyle, is an icon of Americana and will forever be cherished as a pivotal instrument that graced our lives with amazing music, class and pure tonality. Les, Ted and Orville would be proud!
It would not be hyperbole to call Les Paul one of the most important, influential, and pioneering guitarists, recording artists and inventors in American music. His innovations in recording gave us audio effects like controlled delay, echo, and reverb. His signature recording technique, which he called "Sound on Sound", was the basis of multi-track recording. Whether analogue or digital, multi-track recording changed the recording industry and how we all hear music to this very day.
Les Paul has said that even at an early age he was always in search for a distinctive tone in his guitar playing. While on this pursuit for a unique sound he came to the idea that it might be achieved by amplifying the vibrations of a guitar's string while removing all the ambient overtones and color inherent in an acoustic instrument. Fortunately, Les Paul grew up in the ‘Machine Age’, a time when electronics, radio and amplification were becoming standard applications in the consumer world. The tools to play with were all around him. And play he did. We should not be mistaken that his mission was altruistic. To make the world better for musicians was not his aim, nor was leveraging his innovations for financial gain. It was always about his guitar, his art, his singular pursuit of a sound and tone that would be identified uniquely his and his alone.
Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1915, the man that we know as Les Paul was christened Lester William Polfuss. The grandson of German immigrants, young Lester received his first guitar at age eleven. By age thirteen the ginger-haired guitarist was gigging with his band at a local barbeque stand as the ‘Red Hot Rag Time Band’. Here he began his foray into guitar amplification by taking his father's radio-phonograph and attaching the phonograph stylus to the guitar's bridge. It was far from perfect, and feedback was a big problem but, in his words, it got me noticed and I started making more money. While experimenting with a piece of steel train rail and two rail spikes to act as a bridge and nut, he suspended a guitar string along the rail. With a telephone mouthpiece wired to his mother's tube radio he heard his first purely amplified sound of a guitar string. What he learned in that experiment would be the basis for all his electric guitar developments moving forward.
Frustrated by the guitar amplification options available on the market in the mid-1930s, Les Paul commissioned a solid top guitar made for him by the National String Instrument Company on which he mounted his own hand-made pickup. For amplification he used a tube-powered speaker box from a Bell & Howell 16 mm sound projector. Displeased with his results on the National, Paul approached the Larson Brothers guitar shop, who built him three guitars all with maple tops and without sound-holes in which he continued to experiment with pickup design and placement. Finally, he turned to his budget priced Gibson L-50 archtop where he mounted his pickup and cut a hole in the back so he could easily access the wiring and move the pickup with ease. With multiple holes cut in both the top and back the L-50 would not survive for long.
In 1941 Paul recalled the success of his train track experiment where the volume, tone and sustain of the guitar string was unencumbered by the acoustic sound box on a traditional guitar. Applying this knowledge, he married an Epiphone guitar neck to a solid length of 4 x 4 pine. With two pickups, a solid steel bridge and nut, along with a tailpiece, he reveled at the tonal quality and sustain it would create. He finally had an instrument where he could control the feedback. Paul would later write, It was crude, but when I plugged into an amp, it worked. He had produced a solid-body electric guitar. To make it appear more like a guitar, Paul then sliced the body of an Epiphone archtop length-ways and married the two halves to the pine 4 x 4. He called it his "Log".
It has been said that Paul first showed the "Log" to Gibson in 1941 and received a less than positive response from America's largest guitar manufacturer. Paul has said, They thought it was a joke and laughed a lot, not scoring too well with the idea of a solid-body guitar. They called me the character with the broomstick with pickups on it. That same year Les Paul came into possession of an Epiphone Zephyr archtop electric guitar. Originally manufactured with an access panel in the back of the guitar, Paul realized that the Zephyr would allow him the ease of changing the electronics on the guitar on a whim without cutting holes in the body and sacrificing the structural integrity of the instrument. Throughout the 1940s three of these Epiphone Zephyrs would be in constant rotation with alterations to the pickups, bridge and controls. He called them his "Klunkers" and they became his mainstay electric instruments for his most celebrated recordings and performances up to 1952.
THE RETURN TO GIBSON
Faced with the loss of market share after the successful launch by Leo Fender of an electric solid- body guitar in 1950, the management team at Gibson realized that the electric guitar phenomenon was here to stay. In 1950, Gibson president Ted McCarty put a team together to develop what would be Gibson's first solid-body electric guitar. His desires were clear: this new instrument needed to be both unique and excel at fulfilling the needs of the guitarist while upholding the high quality in guitar manufacturing for which Gibson was celebrated. McCarty also recognized the need for help in both the design and marketing of this new product.
The Gibson company had a long tradition in garnering endorsements from celebrity musicians who helped Gibson position their instruments in the marketplace. Nick Lucas, Roy Smeck, Charlie Christian, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, as well as Les Paul, were just a few of the many Gibson Artists. Both Lucas and Smeck had their own guitar signature models, which had become successful sellers for Gibson.
In 1951 Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford were household names. Their recording How High the Moon had reached Number 1 on the Pop Charts, with thirteen other recordings charting in the Top Ten. Thanks to radio and then television, Les Paul’s prowess as a guitarist was known globally. He was also one of the few proponents of the solid-body guitar and played one of his own design and manufacture. With this knowledge, Gibson approached Les Paul and began the process of improving their prototypes with Paul's input.
The question of whose proposal ideas took precedent during the final design phase of the Les Paul guitar is a hotly debated topic and will remain so. But by paying attention to the final product and comparing the historical works both parties had previously attempted, it is safe to say the project was in many respects collaborative. There exists a visual dialogue between Les Paul's ideas about solid hardwood tops to combat feedback and steel bridges to increase sustain. Equally evident is Gibson's long history with carved-top string instruments, with necks set into the body in a traditional luthier's manner. What transpired was a single cutaway body of solid mahogany capped with a top of book-matched flame maple. Paying homage to their 1922 F-5 mandolin and the L-5 archtop guitar, Gibson anticipated finishing the figured maple tops in their trademarked Cremona Brown sunburst finish. We can only guess that Les found this a bit too old-school and pushed for the tops to be finished in a flashy gold-bronze finish. This would guarantee the added ‘bling’ to his and Mary’s performances.
After the prototype process, the Gibson shipping ledger books indicate that the first two Les Paul Models were sent to Les Paul on May 20, 1952. Following the first public performance of Les and Mary on the new Gibson at New York's Paramount Theater in June 1952, the official corporate launch by Gibson was held the following month at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The model was an immediate success for Gibson with 1,716 Les Paul Model guitars shipped that year and another 2,245 shipped in 1953. After refinements in neck angle, fingerboard and bridge design, as well as custom wiring and control configurations required by Les Paul, these “Goldtop” Les Paul Models can be seen in multiple performances by Les and Mary from 1952 through 1954.
1954 AND THE LES PAUL CUSTOM
By 1955 the original Les Paul gold top guitars were seen less in the hands of Les and Mary, having been replaced by Gibson's Les Paul Custom. The narrative surrounding the creation of Gibson’s Les Paul Custom is as fraught with controversy as the first Les Paul Model guitars released in 1952. Again, collaboration is evident in the final product released by Gibson in 1954, when compared to how Les Paul utilized the new instrument himself. The competitive market forces at work demanded that Gibson expand the product line to both compete with Fender’s continuing success and to widen the spectrum of price points they could offer. On the budget end, the slab mahogany bodied, one pickup Les Paul Junior followed by the double pickup Les Paul Special helped to flood that lower price zone. But Gibson always branded itself as producing guitars of the highest quality. In the effort to reach for a higher value point, they developed the Les Paul Custom. Architecturally it was in many respects built on the preceding Les Paul Model platform, with some important additions, alternations, and improvements: the carved top mahogany body would no longer have a book matched maple top, giving the instrument a warmer tone equated better to the jazz market; the fingerboard would be ebony with pearl block inlay like that on the Gibson L-5 archtop; and the headstock would appropriate both the size and five-piece split block pearl inlay seen on their top-of-the-line jazz archtop, the Super 400. We can only speculate that the team at Gibson might have envisioned returning to their famous Cremona Brown sunburst finish, but it is known that Les Paul preferred a finish in all black.
With its gold-plated hardware, white pearl inlay and multi-bound body against a stunning black finish, the Les Paul Custom appeared to be a guitar dressed in formal attire with gold cufflinks. Amongst many other monikers, the guitar would be marketed as the “Black Beauty”.
This guitar was camera ready and showcased the exceptional quality produced in Gibson's workshops. Les Paul, a keen observer of the visuals in entertaining, quickly jettisoned the earlier Les Paul Model for the eye-catching Custom.
Beyond the visual aesthetics, the Les Paul Custom introduced significant improvements to Gibson’s solid-body electric that enhanced both playability and tonal quality. Retaining Gibson’s famed single-coil P90 pickup at the bridge, the rhythm neck pickup was a redesigned single-coil with exposed Alnico V magnets. Already in use on Super 400s, the LP Custom was fitted with Gibson’s Tune-O-Matic, ABR-1 bridge. With separate adjustable saddles for each string, intonation could be perfectly dialed in. Mounted with adjustable studs deep into the body and paired with a stud-mounted tailpiece, string vibration would be transferred into the solid mahogany body, increasing sustain. The ABR-1 bridge and stud tailpiece combination would later become standard on most Gibson electrics and the industry standard for other manufacturers. Ease of playing with the exceptionally low frets was celebrated by Les Paul and many other players, earning the LP Custom the name “Fretless Wonder”.
It can be assumed that Les Paul and Mary Ford would have received their first prototypes in about 1953. As with all of Les’s guitars the electronics and control layout would have been bespoke, fitting his requirements. Earliest images show the input jack on the face with three controls and a toggle switch. The guitar would be used for recording and performance but more importantly as a test platform for all of Les Paul’s electronics experimenting.
It was not long before Les dispensed with the stud tailpiece and replaced it first with a Kauffmann Vib-Rola vibrato tailpiece and then later with a Bigsby. The Alnico V neck pickup disappeared and would be rewrapped and hidden along with another coil under the enlarged pickguard cover plate. Before it was an industry standard, Les Paul and his brother-law Wally Kamin had been experimenting with double-coil technology to obtain a cleaner sound. Using Arnold Lesti’s ideas from 1935, they would wrap a second coil with reversed polarity and mount them internally in the enlarged cavity on the guitar. Referred to as ‘phantom coils’ they would “buck the hum” just as Seth Lover’s later Humbucker did for Gibson electrics.
By 1973 the prototype Les Paul Custom would be retired, but not before Les Paul had exhausted its potential as a platform for his tonal experiments. He had by then fully changed the electronics and altered the bridge multiple times, before giving the guitar to Tom Doyle. Doyle recalls the constant alterations he made to his instruments to achieve that special sound that only he could hear. Les Paul is often remembered with a Gibson Les Paul, the control panel removed, screwdriver and soldering iron in hand, making a final adjustment before entering the recording studio.
TOM DOYLE
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1942, Tom Doyle grew up in Rockland County, New York. Starting to play guitar at age eight, Doyle passionately took to the instrument as many of his generation would. His guitar heroes were the celebrated virtuoso players of the mid 1950s like Chet Atkins and Les Paul. By high school Doyle was performing with other members of his family, before launching a brother-sister act with his sister Susan Doyle. Landing a residency at New York’s West Village club the Bitter End, they would open for visiting booked acts as varied as Richie Havens and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. It was at one of these performances that Les Paul caught their act and they met for the first time.
By 1966 Doyle had transferred his talent and passion for the guitar into guitar making and repair, opening his own shop in 1970. Les Paul would become one of his early customers, along with the likes of other celebrated guitarists like George Benson, Bucky Pizzarelli and Tony Matolla, to name a few. The relationship with Les Paul quickly converted into a friendship, where they developed a close working rapport. With an equally inquisitive mind regarding electric guitar tone, Tom Doyle began working closely with Les Paul on his tonal experiments and innovations and along with being Paul’s go to luthier, Tom Doyle became his trusted audio engineer. For those lucky enough to attend a Les Paul performance at New York’s Fat Tuesday’s or The Iridium Club, you were sure to see Tom Doyle overseeing the stage audio set-up, sound check and then sitting at the board, mixing the sound for both the audience and performers.
Tom Doyle has related that Les Paul could be insufferably thrifty and would barter guitars in lieu of payment for his luthier services. He stated that in 1976 Les Paul traded this Les Paul Custom along with a collection of experimental parts in exchange for various repair jobs.
Doyle recalled that the guitar came to him unplayable, with a broken neck and none of its hardware. In exchange for a repair on a D’Angelico, Les delivered all the pickups and hardware with which the guitar had previously been fitted. Included where the early experimental pickups and controls utilized by Les. After the structural repairs were completed, Tom Doyle set about returning the guitar to playability. With Les Paul’s guidance and the many parts supplied, Tom Doyle was able to return the guitar to the previous iterations and setups used by Les Paul. Today it is presented in one of the more utilized configurations, with low impedance pickups much preferred by Les Paul and accompanied by additional electronic components representing his earlier experimentations.
Guitarist, author and journalist Robb Lawrence described this guitar best when he wrote in 2015, The "Black Beauty" guitar, brain child of Ted McCarty and built in Kalamazoo with the spirit of Orville Gibson embued, played by the great Les Paul, modified by Wally Kamin and owned by Tommy Doyle, is an icon of Americana and will forever be cherished as a pivotal instrument that graced our lives with amazing music, class and pure tonality. Les, Ted and Orville would be proud!