In this, the concluding part of our series on the genius Les Paul, we are going to be looking at his contribution to the world of effects. For a modern guitarist, effects pedals are an integral part of their sound. There are a dizzying array of boxes available to feed the contemporary guitar slinger’s G.A.S. (“Gear Aquision Syndrome”), but in Les Paul’s day an amplifier was a pretty far out concept, let alone tone-bending stomp boxes! As usual Les broke out his tool kit and did some inventing…

We’re going to see how Les moved from capturing sounds to creating new ones, with Delay Effects, Vari-Speed, Special Vocal Effects – and a distinctive playing style to boot.

Les Paul’s Delay Effects

The effects most commonly associated with Les Paul are ‘delay’ or ‘echo’ effects. Many Les Paul recordings feature some kind of echo on the main guitar.

In the previous part we talked about Les’ involvement in the development of tape recording. Tape recorders have:

• a record head, which copies the sound onto the tape, and
• a play head which plays the sound back again

Les realised that if you position the play head after the record head and feed the signal coming from the play head back into the record head it creates a repeat or echo on the tape.

At first it might be confusing to understand why this works, but it’s much easier to get your head around it if you consider an example:

(For more on tape delay, see Hearing Effects: Echo… (echo… echo…))

The most common type of delay you will hear on Les’ records is a short delay often referred to as a “slapback”. This slapback delay has become synonymous with the rockabilly guitar sound.

Les Paul & Mary Ford – How High The Moon

How High The Moon (in 26 parts!)

Soon guitarists wanted to produce these amazing sounds when playing live, and Click to read the rest…

Last time around we were talking ear training for echo effects, all those wonderful ways to make many repeating sounds from one… Now for a slightly different effect (but definitely staying in the same family as echo):

On to reverb we go!

The story here is not much different. It was pretty much the same quest to produce that “spacious ambient” sound so common in halls, caverns, or caves that led this particular sonic safari.

Sure, the mechanics used are different for producing reverb sounds, but the evolution was parallel to the echo/delay story from last time.

• In place of tapes there are plates.
• In place of delay chips there are springs.
• In place of an echo sound there is the sound of halls, and large auditoriums.

Early Days: Physical Reverbs

You know the song and dance by now. All beginnings are humble, and this was no different.
Instrument amplifiers had springs placed in a “tank” with an electronic transducer feeding a portion of the amp signal to the reverb tank. The vibration and electronic stimulation of the springs caused the reverb we all know as “Spring reverb”. Listen to anything produced from the 1950’s and 60’s and chances are you’ll hear springs doing their thing.

A modern spring reverb unit (Image: Accutronics)

Studios on the other hand used larger versions of the same idea. Plate reverbs were and still are also very common in studios.

With plate reverb, usually a giant metal plate was suspended in an anechoic (meaning devoid of any natural echo) chamber, and driven with an electronic transducer – much like its little brother, the spring reverb. Plate reverbs were used on drums and vocals due to their inherent “bright” and slightly metallic sound. Actually, they were used on everything – for a while especially in the ‘70s and early ‘80s you could hear that “plate” on all the harder rock of the day.

In short, reverb, was produced in a mechanical way.
Click to read the rest…

Bonus Question answer

Last time around, our bonus question was this:

Where was the first echo (or delay) effect first manufactured?

If you have been following the Hearing Effects series so far, then you’ll know by now that nothing has a clear-cut answer. There is always too much debate about who really did what, and who really did what when; and this is even among the official records’ archivists!

However, regardless of who first “pioneered” the echo effect; the first to commercially manufacture it was Ray Butts in the early 1950s, who designed and built his wire-based echo machine into guitar amplifiers. (There might be someone out there to dispute that, but most fingers point to Ray.) It is a common mistake that the “echoplex” distributed by Maestro was the first, but that mix up is understandable since the “echoplex” holds the popularity award, and is still certainly regarded as the “Holy Grail” of echo effects.

This leads us straight into our next topic of echo/delay/reverb effects. Smooth, aren’t I?

Inspired by Nature

Alright, let’s dive right in. Everyone knows the sound characteristics of, say, yelling in a giant stadium or a cavern, or even out in the open high mountain ranges (for those who have actually experienced the wonder of something like the Grand Canyon).

Nature has built-in reverberation. For each different environment, sounds behave accordingly. The larger, more open and unobstructed spaces produce a longer delay between the sound and the bouncing around of that sound that reaches back to your ears. Those reflections can take a few milliseconds or up to a second or two to reach back to you. Once they do: Click to read the rest…