Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541612
44 W I N T E R 2 0 2 6 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y So, Tom, what is all of this and what's your organization's aim? It's all put together by the Les Paul Foundation, which was put together by Les before he passed away. Essentially, the goal of the foundation was to keep his music alive, keep his name alive, and let a new generation of kids know that he did all this stuff [gestures to the studio around us] and wasn't just a guitar maker. He really had a huge impact on how we record today—including hearing aids! He hated the way hearing aids sounded, so we donated to hearing-aid research. After Les died, the Foundation took all his recordings and brought them to the Library of Congress to digitize. Les had kept everything, so there are about 33,000 recordings! Whoa! Yeah, so they went down to the Library, transferred everything, and when that was done, that's when I came on board. And while we were looking through it all, just making a database of everything, we started seeing these stem trees of songs. Let me explain the evolution of Les getting to that machine [points to "The Octopus" recorder]. There are three phases. The first is that sound-on-sound machine—I don't know if you've ever seen that one. No, never. Basically, Bing Crosby gave Les a mono Ampex machine and Les took that machine and added an extra playback head before all the other heads! [Note: Professional tape machines have three heads in this order: Erase, Record, Playback.] And he records himself like playing a rhythm guitar, rewinds it, and goes back into record! This playback head picks it off before it gets to the record head, sends it to a mixer where he's got a microphone and a guitar plugged in. The output of the mixer comes to the record head… He's re-recording! Yes, exactly! So, that's really the Holy Grail. And that's the original Ampex [pointing]. Amazing… [Looking closely] And, the tape tension is the same? Nothing else has changed? He just figured out how to… He just added the playback head to the right place! So he does his first couple hits on this, like "How High the Moon." I think there were maybe 14 hits that he made with this. Also, it was a portable! He could put it in his car and move around. At one point, he was recording right down the street on Curson and Sunset and at home in his garage. I didn't know he was recording that close to here. Les Paul's custom Ampex 8-track known as "The Octopus."