The Log

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The Log (German: "the block") is an experimental guitar - prototype , the American US about in 1941 by guitarist and recording engineer Les Paul (actually Lester William Polfus ) had been built. This prototype served the US guitar manufacturer Gibson as inspiration for its own guitar models, mainly for the solid -body electric guitar model Gibson Les Paul, which was first introduced in 1952 . This prototype was groundbreaking for the development of the electric guitar.

history

Polfus had been experimenting with ways to electrically amplify a guitar since the late 1920s. Initial attempts included perforating the top of a fully resonant guitar with a gramophone needle, which was connected to a tube radio via a cable and was powered by a car battery, to absorb vibrations . Moreover Polfus was looking for ways to Ausschwingdauer ( English : Sustain ) of the tires fitted to instruments strings extend. One of his later attempts involved a railroad track on which he strung guitar strings .

The guitarist Les Paul in 1947 with one of the Epiphone archtop guitars that he had modified himself . Photo by William P. Gottlieb

In 1941, Polfus finally built the prototype of a semi- resonant guitar in the workshop of the guitar manufacturer Epiphone , called The Log by its designer (probably not meant to be entirely serious) . It essentially consisted of parts of spruce top and sides of an Epiphone full resonance guitar sawn through from the base of the neck to the base of the body, the pole feet on the left and right with metal brackets to a suitably cut, 4 x 4  inch (10.2 x 10.2 cm) measuring solid wood beam. The plywood base of the instrument was also only fastened with screws. He mounted two self-made electromagnetic pickups , a steel dowel as a bridge , a tailpiece with vibrato unit and a Gibson guitar neck with headstock on the eponymous wooden block . His aim was to largely eliminate acoustic influences in the sound generation in order to avoid such unwelcome background noises as feedback and to be able to shape the sound of the instrument mainly through electrical amplification. After this first prototype, Polfus modified two other Epiphone guitars in a similar way, which he called his "Klunker".

Around 1946 Lester Polfus presented his “Klotz” prototype to the Gibson company, at that time the US market leader in the field of guitar construction. There, however, his model was initially rejected on the grounds that nobody would want to buy a "broomstick with strings". Quote from Polfus: “They laughed sick at my guitar.” According to Polfus, he was only bought by Gibson at the beginning of 1951, given the increased demand for solid -body guitars and the success that the competitor company Fender achieved with its solid-body electric guitar model Fender Telecaster hired to help design their first solid body guitar, later known as the Gibson Les Paul . Based on the construction principle of The Log , it is assumed that Polfus' prototype of the Gibson company also served as a template for the Gibson ES-335 semi-resonance guitar model introduced in 1958 ("semi-acoustic") .

Lester Polfus used his prototype regularly in the recording studio and during stage appearances until the 1950s. Today the original prototype The Log is in the instrument collection of the Museum of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville , Tennessee . A replica was shown in 2004 as part of the traveling exhibition Electric Guitars on the history of the electric guitar in the State Museum for Technology and Work in Mannheim and in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin .

literature

  • Tony Bacon, Paul Day: The Gibson Les Paul Book - A Complete History of Les Paul Guitars. German edition, Balafon Books, London 1994.
  • Tony Bacon: Guitar classics - all models and manufacturers . Premio-Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-86706-050-9
  • George Gruhn, Walter Carter: Electric Guitars & Basses . PPV Verlag, Bergkirchen 1999. ISBN 3-932275-04-7
  • Electric guitars; Special issue of the magazine Guitar & Bass on the history of the electric guitar. MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm 2004. ISSN  0934-7674

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Electric guitars, p. 78
  2. ↑ a b Helmuth Lemme: Electric guitars - technology and sound, p. 19. Elektor-Verlag, Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-895-76111-7
  3. ↑ a b Bacon: Guitar Classics, p. 58 f.
  4. ↑ a b c d The Gibson Les Paul Book, p. 8 f.
  5. ↑ Electric guitars , p. 23
  6. ↑ Electric guitars , p. 130
  7. ^ The Gibson Les Paul Book, p. 13.
  8. ^ Neville Marten: Guitar Heaven. Legendary guitarists - fascinating instruments, p. 94 f.
    German edition, Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2008. ISBN 978-3-86852-002-6
  9. ↑ Gruhn / Carter, p. 51. With a large-format illustration of the instrument.
  10. ↑ Electric guitars , p. 3