'76 LES PAUL RECORDING Alpine White, original Gibson Low Impedance Pickups EXC code Gi88
Straight neck and original frets in good conditions come with original case
It was in 1971
Gibson introduced the Gibson Les Paul recording guitar. This guitar was designed
to be much like Paul's specially designed personal guitar which was equipped
with low impedance pickups. As you may know one of Les' inventions was multi
track recording. He incorporated this with sound-on-sound recording.
Dates of manufacture: 1971 to 1979
Les Paul's first low impedance guitar designs were the 1969 Les Paul Personal
and Les Paul Professional models. But these were superseded in 1971 when Gibson
introduced Les Paul's recording model. The Les Paul Recording looks very much
like a Les Paul Standard model but it has some key differences. The Recording
was so called because, by virtue of its low impedance humbucking pickups, it was
meant to be plugged straight into a low impedance mixing desk input. These low
impedance pickups had a clearer sound with a wider flatter frequency response
than high impedance pickups which tend to color the frequency spectrum. This
meant that the Recording had a versatile array of tones from Rickenbacker-like,
to Telecaster-twang to rounded jazz tones. To get the full range of tones
required mastery of the Les Paul Recordings complicated control panel. Controls
included Volume, Treble, Bass, Decade, Microphone Volume, Pickup Selector, Tone
Switch and Phase Switch. Also to get the best out of the Recording it needs to
be used with amplifiers, cables etc. designed for a low impedance signal. The
Recording was not a great commercial success with the average guitarist perhaps
because of these issues and was discontinued in 1979. Les Paul himself, however,
loved to use his Recording guitars and they remained his firm favorites until
the end.