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Engineer wrote:
On Aug 13, 3:41 pm, Mike Rivers wrote:
Tobiah wrote:
He says here that he invented what seems
to be a delay.
He didn't invent much of what he claimed he did (including the
multitrack recorder). But
what he did, and why he's so well respected, was for making
technological developments
an important and integral part of his music. He was an inventor, an
innovator, and a
wisecracker, but first and last, a musician.

He wasn't the first one to do overdubbing between two turntables, but he
took it further
than anyone else, and he figured out how to do it on one tape deck so
that he could
record on the road without having to carry two recorders.


IIRC, the "multitraking" he introduced required the re-recording each
time of all previously recorded tracks - so quality suffered as new
"tracks" were laid in.
Cheers,
Roger

From a book with some information on Les Paul:
In the early days recording was to records. Others were using
playback-to-new recording to add tracks but could only go to about 3
recordings because of noise. Les Paul's system could go quite a few more
levels. One way noise was controlled was to play just under the input
stage distortion point so signal to noise level was highest.
Consistently playing just under distortion level was reportedly not easy.

Early echo was done by adding a playback arm to the record cutter - the
sound was cut to a record and played back to create echo.

Later he had an 8 track tape recorder which made everything easier.

The Milwaukee Discovery Center (a science museum) has an interesting
display on Les Paul (or at least had one a month ago). Mostly about the
technical side.

(Apologies if this posts more than once)

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