Using a Gibson Les Paul for Jazz

[hthiew]

Look who hopped onto my car last night? An old beaten up Greco Les Paul Custom. It has a pancake and chambered body without Pickups, Bridge & Tailpiece for only 100 SGD (approx 80 USD).

I'm going to make it a Jazz Girl.

Question is what should I get for Pickups, Strings, Bridge and Tailpiece?

[coolvinny]

For $100 that looks like a great deal! I'm really digging my chambered Les Paul and I'm pretty it's not just the honeymoon talking here: the chambering makes it a little better for jazz.

Regarding pickups, strings, bridge and tailpiece, I would think that pup and strings will make the biggest difference. I can't see the tailpiece being all that significant, although a jazzy one would look cool. I'm really happy with the Gibson neck Burstbucker in my LP...not sure which model precisely the bucker is, but I have the 2008 LP so you could look it up.

Someone suggested I get a wooden bridge made and I may do that, but I suspect the pup and strings are the main players.

Something I've noticed is that my high E sounds thin, especially on pick upstrokes. Call me crazy, but I think it's not aligned properly with the pole piece. I'm running a 14 E string and it sounds way weaker than my 17 B string even with the E pole jacked up especially on upstrokes. So, when you get it set up, make sure you have your strings centered above your Neck pup poles to avoid thinness in tone depending on pick stroke.

[anothersixstringer]

My band played in a community concert last saturday, and I thought it would be interesting for you, oh LP pursuers, to show some vids here:

This is Fly me to the Moon with a '52 Goldtop (60th anniversary) / Strings Gibson brites 10 / Jazz III pick. Here I like how the guitar responds to the change in picking with the plectrum and then darkening it out when comping with the thumb

This is Sunny, go to the end to hear the melody in octaves, played with the thumb. The pick made a somewhat treblier sound. I could not find the thick pick, so this is what happens when you hit the TI 12s Flats with a Jazz III. This is a Custom '54

No pedals are involved at all, all sound comes from the Roland 80x, Black Face setting

Cheers

[hthiew]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I have finally fully restored it. Picked a used pair of lollar imperial PAF set but went with a 10" round wound first as this is my first LP.

Really loving it. I wouldn't say I prefer the sound compared to an archtop or even a Tele but the playability is unmatched.

[Hammertone]

Younger players may not realise forget that the Les Paul was originally regarded as a Jazz Guitar…..

I just watched the "Les Paul - Chasing Sound" documentary, that has been around for a few years.

While it's deeply flawed and loaded with mis-direction, it's still a wonderful peek into the life of Les Paul, and certainly captures the essence of his very long and extremely successful career.
It's easy to find on the internet.

Les really patterned his jazz playing after that of Django Reinhardt and held his playing in the highest regard. Les' interactions with a variety of jazz legends are amazing - he really did get to meet and play with many of the legends. And his humility regarding players like Charlie Christian is nice to hear.

[SuperFour00]

Since Les Paul was something of a Jazz guitarist, and he designed the Les Paul to overcome feedback associated with amplified guitar, I suppose his Les Paul would be the very definition of a solidbody Jazz guitar. While the first models were fitted with one or another kind of single coil pickup, his final designs featured Low Impedance pickups. I had a Les Paul Personal (that required an impedance transformer in line to the amp) and it sounded nothing like a P-90 or Humbucker equipped instrument. On recordings, it was hard to pin down even as a solidbody.

[Hammertone]

I personally don't think Les was a jazz guitarist, although he could certainly play jazz.
I think of him much more a pop guitarist and an entertainer.
And he didn't design the Les Paul.

I think his lo-Z pickups were a solution to how to get the best possible sound for himself, epitomized by his incredibly successful multi-tracked recordings in the 1950s as instrumentals and with Mary Ford. Unfortunately, he was too late with it, and his sound was utterly irrelevant by 1965, which is when he effectively disappeared.

[anothersixstringer]

I might be blinded by being such a fan of Les Paul the player, but I can't help to feel a bit touched when his name is dismissed as a Jazz player. It is correct that his 50's playing was "popish" at the time, but c'mon, jazz vibes were the pop music before Rock came out (kinda like dismissing Benny Goodman because he played "dance" music )
His earlier Trio work is an amazing testament at how much he idolized Django, and it is great to follow his musical evolution through the years. I have a Les Paul tab book and for the life of me, that stuff ranks among the Satriani/Vai transcriptions that I went through in my shredder-wanna-be years

if you guys haven't heard Mr. Lester backing Bing Crosby, check this video link

If that doesn't qualify as jazzy, then I'm in the wrong forum

btw, always loved the anecdote of Les Paul and Django, read all about it here:
http://jazztimes.com/articles/25674-les-paul

[Al Br.]

Who? Al Dimeola, John Mclaughlin (sp?). A couple that come to mind that I did not see mentioned.

[yebdox]

Wow, that Benson clip is fantastic. He really does sound like Benson, still some burble to his tone. Playing over the neck pup helps, but then it's probably the medium gauge pick with heavy flats, roll a lot of bass off the amp. I wish I knew what his actual setup for that gig was, though. That's amazingly close to his regular sound, and I would not have guessed it would come that close.

Thanks for posting!

[KennyY]

I have a three pickup Les Paul Custom and it has a great jazz sound to me. I believe the all mahogony constructution has to do with it.

I believe Les had some input in the design, however Gibson started things off by presenting a prototype that was based off the ES-140 (a 3/4 sized ES-175). Les didn't like the sharp cutaway and asked to be rounded off and use his trapeze tailpiece. There are some photos of the early prototype in the Early Years of the Les Paul Legacy book.

There are disputes between the accounts between Ted McCarty and Les on the genesis of the LP model. I've seen interviews with Les and I feel sometimes he kinda embelishes the story a bit so I wouldn't take all his words as gospel.

[Chazmo]

Personally, I wish everyone who posts on this forum about feedback problems with a hollow body guitar would just go get a Les Paul and forget about it! :-)

[Hammertone]

It's really pretty simple.
The information is all out there.
McCarty ran the business and made major decisions with the approval of Maurice Berlin.

The overall design of the Les Paul guitar was a given for anyone with a brain - it needed to clearly be a Gibson in appearance. And Gibson NEEDED a solid-body guitar to compete. That meant
- glued-in neck;
- arched top;
- sunburst finish;
- features, construction and trim that was consistent with the rest of the Gibson line-up and could be well-integrated into Gibson's production processes.
McCartney, who had a brain, proposed the idea, Berlin approved the decision to go ahead, an McCarty developed specifications.

The situation at the time:
- Paul Bigsby's guitars already existed;
- the ES-140 already existed (although the thinlne version didn't come out until '56);
- Fender Telecasters already existed.

Gibson took these things and the logical and inevitable design was the Les Paul guitar, which essentially copies/combines the shapes of the Bigsby guitar and the ES-140.
The design itself came from:
- Larry Allers, Assistant Superintendent and Chief Engineer of Woodworking, probably with some input from John Huis, VP of Manufacturing
- a couple of Gibson's pattern-makers, whose names I need to find.
These are the people who designed the Les Paul guitar.

The only reason it wasn't introduced as a sunburst guitar was because Les Paul got to select the finish colours. Rounding the cutaway was a minor change as well. It meant using one continuous piece of binding instead of needing to join two pieces at a sharp cutaway. Better design from a production and QC POV, IMO. The original tailpiece was probably a way for Les to make some money, since I believe he owned the patent on it (same deal with the Hofner "Compensator" tailpiece - specified by Selmer on many guitars it commissioned from Hofner, but with a design acquired from Dick Knight and owned by Selmer - gotta love business, eh?).

My guess is that Gibson saw pictures of the Bigsby guitar but never handled one in the factory. It took them from 1950 until 1993, with the introduction of the Les Paul Bantam (renamed the Les Paul Florentine) to decide to make the instrument lighter by hollowing out or chambering the insides, something Paul Bigsby did from day one. Paul Barth over at Rickenbacker was also hollowing out solid-body guitars in the 1950s, but that's another story.

[Randooley]

I own a early '70's Les Paul Custom and a less than 5 yrs. old ES175 and when I plug either of them in a Fender Twin Reverb,they both have an incredible warm tone.So the LPCustom would work fine.IMHO

[GNAPPI]

Did you need to do anything special because of the low impedance pickups?

Were they, in fact, quieter than regular pickups?

I believe the original Gibson L5-S had these same pickups:



(Ugliest pickups ever!)

I read somewhere a long time ago that Les thought high impedance pups were a mistake because they had cable length and noise issues which lo imp pups have far less of.

[Stringswinger]

Any Les Paul with heavy strings is a fine jazz guitar. Jazz was the original purpose for that guitar in the first place. I have played many jazz gigs on a Les Paul.

I have owned:

1975 Les Paul Custom
1977 Les Paul Deluxe
1978 Les Paul Standard
1982 Les Paul Artisan
Recent Epiphone Les Paul.

All sounded fine for jazz with 12 or 13 Flatwounds.

I currently Own:

2002 57 Black Beauty Historic reissue.

It has Thomastic 12 Flats on it and sounds great for jazz.

[Doctor Jeff]

I just watched a YouTube video today with Jack McDuff and a young George Benson playing a Les Paul. He rocks that thing, of course.

I also incidentally saw one of the Synanon sessions with a young Joe Pass. He plays the crap out of a Jazzmaster--plays more beboppy than I've ever noticed before.

The point is it's mainly in the style and fingers of the players.

[Max405]

I am actually surprised that more Jazz Guitar isn't played on Les Paul. I had a steady coffee shop job and that's all I brought with me. It would have been cool to show off a nice Archtop but why? I was doing a lot of Benson stuff with backing tracks (Breezin, Affirmation, This Masquarade..) and the Les Paul was perfect for the task. No feedback, easy to play, cuts like a knife. The only thing better would have been a 335, a Midtown Custom or an Epi Sheraton II with Gibson Classic 57's, which I didn't have at the time..
JD

[goldenwave77]

Any Les Paul with heavy strings is a fine jazz guitar. Jazz was the original purpose for that guitar in the first place. I have played many jazz gigs on a Les Paul.

I have owned:

1975 Les Paul Custom
1977 Les Paul Deluxe
1978 Les Paul Standard
1982 Les Paul Artisan
Recent Epiphone Les Paul.

All sounded fine for jazz with 12 or 13 Flatwounds.

I currently Own:

2002 57 Black Beauty Historic reissue.

It has Thomastic 12 Flats on it and sounds great for jazz.

Anybody ever play that special Les Paul model that had all the switches and dials on it?

I read an interview with Les P where he claimed that his guitar had special pickups...very low impedance, I think, which he said was superior but which would have required an expensive extra amplification stage....therefore making it not suitable for mass production. (That model I'm talking about may have had some of the same features.)

He had a mixed relationship, I think, with Gibson.

[entresz]

You're referring to the Les Paul Recording I believe... not played one personally but I think it would make a fine jazz guitar. The low impedance pickups were intended to be run straight to a desk, and unlike regular pickups, there was very little in the way of noise. To use a regular guitar amp a transformer had to be used to get the impedance to match. I've been wanting to get one of these guitars for yonks now... here in Australia there are very few of them.

A local guitarist, he use a 50's Les Paul Junior which had a neck P-90 added somewhere along the way. He's a fantastic player too, he sometimes uses that guitar for jazz and blues and the sound is fantastic. He has a Fender Super Reverb that's been chopped to be a 2x10'', the combination of that guitar and that amp is great.

[999369]

This one ~~~



Ha Ha

[GNAPPI]

I think all of the Gibson semi hollow smaller / thinner bodied Les Paul type guitars are very flexible and adaptable to most any style of playing. The ES- Les Pauls, Florentine, Midtowns, Blues hawks, Pat Martino's etc. have a special vibe and once you play one they can get the hooks in you.

[ESCC]

This thread is inspiring me to put some flatwounds on my 68 Goldtop!

[999369]

This is one too (1987 is heavy )




Beautiful and warm " Tone "

[GNAPPI]

hi there, please, let me in in your LP fun club

here is my recorded little example of LP experience (Deluxe 69, but moded with full-sized humbuckers) played directly into a mixing console.
While my ears like that sound, my back doesn't like the weight of the instrument (4 kg, or approx.8,8 lb) and my ribs don't like the ergonomics of the guitar body.

I hear you, but 8.8 lbs. is light for a LP, my Gold top is 9.5 lbs.

The Les Paul ES, and Pat Martino Custom would fix that as they're ~2 lbs lighter than Les Pauls, and a pound lighter and smaller than an ES-335. The Pat Martino has a sculpted back too it's VERY easy to play.