RE: First Excursions into Frippertronics

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>]

Title: RE: First Excursions into Frippertronics

At 9:28 PM -0800 11/22/02, Kim Flint wrote:

> Les Paul was using looping in the late
> 50's (1956?), on tour and doing his radio shows with Mary Ford and the
> Les Paulverizer. Certainly they were much more commercial than Fripp,
> although probably not resulting in many people becoming loopers due to
> the prohibitive cost of the equipment at the time.
> speaking of which, someone recently
> pointed out how the looping history page on LD has no mention of Les
> Paul, which does seem like quite an oversight. Does anybody know
> enough about what he did to add something about that to the
> page?

I've been unable to find any solid references to Les Paul's rumored looping techniques (not that I dispute these rumors in the least!). His seminal work in multitrack recording is well documented, but the following are vague and speculative:

>
> During the 1940s Les Paul is alleged to have implemented
> the first live delay system using a disk cutter and a second playback
> tone arm.
>
> During the 1950s he is alleged to have used a loop-based
> tape echo system.
>
> Also at that time he is alleged to have used a tape loop
> system to do live overdubbing.
>
> The Les Paulverizer is a guitar-mounted controller for his
> backing tapes, but details on it have eluded me.
>

If anyone can get me a phone number for Les Paul I'll be happy to call him and get some details.

-- 

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Richard Zvonar, PhD      
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