Chet Atkins Out-classes Les Paul on Today Show

[dgallent]

"Head Cutting" is a musicians term for trying to outplay someone else onstage (conscience upstaging)....you hit a run and they play a better one....kind of like what Tommy Emmanuel does every time he plays with someone else.

Only time I ever saw Chet do that was with Les....

[bill_h]

Too bad they couldn't have put Les on the show by himself, or even better, just given him his own show.

Does anyone know if he really did invent the "Les Paulverizer?"

[Mike Nye]

From what I'd been told by people who'd known Les he came up with the concepts, but brought engineers & technicians in to work out the technical details of his inventions . . .

[Norm]

There are different takes on different things concerning Les Paul.

The Les Paul guitar wasn't "invented" by Les. It was designed by Gibson to try to recoup market share it was losing to Bigsby and Fender, Fender in particular. Gibson brought the prototype of the guitar to Les to make a signature guitar and they all worked on it to get it to its final form. The understanding I have is hs main contribution was the original trapeze tailpiece which was soon dropped.

The neat thing about all that was it inspired Jimmie Webster to sign Chet up with Gretsch.

There are those at Ampex who say the stacked head machine was in operation as a data transcribing device and one of their guys was listening to Les and Mary and thought... "Hmm... if I were to do that I would modify our stacked head machine for audio..." It cost them a fortune to get it to work. They made three units and sold one to Les who had it tweaked to taste.

The "Paulverizor" I'm not sure what it actually does beside simply switch playback heads on and off. I can't swear to it but I think a lot of the stuff during the Paulverizor demos is already pre-recorded and he essentially 'lip sychs' it.

Oddly, when Amepex finally got the stacked head machine to work right Les never had a hit using it. He opined in made him lazy because in the old way it was easy to mess up a recording so you had to be on your toes and sharper.

Ampex sold one of the other units to a French film company and another to, I think, Atlantic records and once they got to using it the word spread about stacked heads and the race was on....

[Mike Nye]

Here's the facts from the horse's mouth . . .

http://recordist.com/ampex/mp3/index.html

[Norm]

From what I'd been told by people who'd known Les he came up with the concepts, but brought engineers & technicians in to work out the technical details of his inventions . . .

That makes more sense. Les was a genius, no denying that. His original disk lathes using cadillac flywheels and making them go faster than the competiton is one of the reasons his pre-tape records sound so hot even today. That alone makes me respect his mind.

He did invent the log but I think Rickenbacker or someone made a solid electric guitar that went nowhere. We'll never know for sure exactly what Les invented totally on his own or by using outside minds. No shame in that, either. Chet did it all the time hoping to create something patentable to make some money on,

A tremendous number of innovations burst on the scene from the fifties onward. Solid guitars, anti hum pickups, the bigsby, split pickups tapedeck refinement.

Very busy bit musical historical time.

[Norm]

...talking about solid guitars.

He made one out of aluminium but it would expand and contract under hot stage lights enough to go out of tune so he scrapped it.

He also invented a headless guitar. Tuners were on the other side of the bridge but just what they looked like I have forgotten