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RE: First Excursions into Frippertronics



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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