Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Howdy folks. I played a 1970 Les Paul Professional in a store yesterday.

I had a thing for them ever since seeing Les Paul play in NYC about a year before he died. His rhythm guitarist played one. I swear, it soudned like an acoustic with a piezo. After the set, I asked him how he got those tones. He said, it's a Les Paul Professional with Lo-Z pickups.

Fast forward to yesterday when I realize a shop I frequent has one. So I go play it. It sounded neat, but not quite the tones I seem to remember from that night.

Anyone else familiar with this model's sound? compare notes? Thanks, J

I've seen a few. One hung in a local pawn shop for years; no one knew what to make of it. Les Paul was a real champion of low impedance pickups. I think the Les Paul Professional (and the similar Les Paul Recording) came with some kind of box to convert the signal to high impedance so you could use it through a regular amp.

Steve Howe's used one on a couple of his solo records. To me they're the Les Paul sound (the man, not the guitar). Full, clear, clean and chimy...sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The Professional is the middle of the three LP low impedance models. I've got one right now, and I have also been fortunate enough to score 3 sets of NOS pickups. The one Les himself played was a LP Personal, which has different features from the Professional and Recording, including gold plated hardware, multiple binding, a bound headstock, and a microphone jack on the upper bout with is own volume control, into which plugs a gold-plated gooseneck microphone. Only 146 of the Personals were ever sold. I once owned one of the two made in '73. Of course I regret selling it! The low end of the low-impedance LPs is the Recording model, which was also in production the longest.

These are the most versatile-sounding of any guitar with passive electronics, that you'll ever hear. You can get acoustic tones through single-coil Fender to Aerosmith crunch, all without any other effects. It helps to have the low-impedance LP amplifier, too.

Al Di Meola played a low-impedance LP for awhile, and Terry Kath from Chicago also played one live in the mid '70s.

If the guitar store's price is reasonable (<$2K) and the guitar is unmolested with a nice original case, it's worth pursuing.