Topic: MUSIK - on January 1, 2004 at 10:02:00 PM CET
The 100-Megabit Guitar
Gibson's maverick CEO wants to shove Ethernet up your ax and rock the music world.
Before rock and roll had a past, Les Paul shaped its future. In 1952, the Gibson guitar company worked with Paul to help design a solid-body electric guitar. What he gave them wasn't the world's first, but it was the best alternative to the hollow-body instrument that had become the industry standard. The 12 pounds or so of thick mahogany gave the revamped ax a chunky, rich tone that prefigured rock and roll. Dubbed the "Les Paul," the instrument would become the primary source of rock's power-chord crunch, a legacy that stretches from Jimmy Page and Neil Young through Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Guns N' Roses' Slash. The guitar's noise-canceling humbucker pickups provided a clarity that helped Jerry Garcia sculpt his solos when he wasn't playing custom guitars.
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