Ongoing History Daily: A fascinating electric guitar story

Les Paul, one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, tells a story about how he came up with some early ideas for electrifying an acoustic guitar.

In the late 20s, he was working at a hamburger stand in Wisconsin. When tips were light, he played the guitar. But he realized that his playing was too quiet. He needed some kind of amplification. To solve the problem, he took his mother’s radio, converted it into an amp, and used the mouthpiece from a telephone. Then he took a phonograph pickup and jammed it into the guitar. It was very primitive—there was a lot of feedback—but it worked. Tips went up immediately.

This led to experiments with a railroad track with strings and a pickup using radio parts. That was a bit big, so Les began using a 4 by 4. That became know as “The Log” and over the next 15 years, it morphed into a solid body electric guitar.

The famous Gibson Les Paul is the result, proving that there’s always money in the hamburger stand.