The Les Paul Recording Guitar Users The Forum
(Part of Dave Gould's Guitar Pages)

This page is a knowledge base for all users of Gibson's Low Impedance guitars manufactured in the late 1960's and 1970's. If you own a Gibson Guitar equipped with Low Impedance Pickups you are invited to participate with stories, photographs of your guitar(s) and any advice regarding the use of these instruments.

Hi Dave,

I thought mabe it was time for me to get in touch with you about some of the low impedance stuff.My name is Charles Tracy Burge, I am the guitar designer who designed all that new stuff that came out of Gibson from the mid seventies to the early eighties.

I am personal friends with Les Paul, Les still is building prototype pickups and a while back he asked me about covers for the LP Recording's/personal's, etc. When Gibson moved, they left the mold for these at the mold shop and it got tossed. This mold was origionally made to run on the pre-WW2 injection molding machines and would NOT work on the newer machines. I got this information first hand from the two guys who went to the mold shop at the time and collected the molds that were useable. So I had a mold maker make a new mold to injection mold these covers, not cheap !  I have so far just run off a little over 300 of them. They have plain flat tops (NO script Gibson), they have the same brass threaded incerts molded in to the feet. They are black. I sent some samples to Les, he likes them, and now I am milling out some bobbins like the origionals, from Les measuring an old bobbin he has.

Now, I am likely the only person on the planet with this tooling and a stock of brand new pickup covers. I have some for sale if anyone is interested. I also do a lot of pickup prototyping and I like to use my LPR to test pickups so these covers are really handy for me. I have a shop in Kalamazoo and design and build guitars and pickups. So hi man, you have my e-mail address now. (You can put this new information on your page if you wish.

Chuck

I asked Chuck if my ideas regarding the placing of the transformer and use of the internal t/f were correct:

Hi Dave,

Yes I had that impression, that the transformer was best put at the input of the amp. For one thing, low impedance all the way to the amp will pickup far less ambient noise and keep those clear highs. I am playing with a full differential pre-amp with a center ground pickup and then a balanced XLR line to the amp with phantom power coming back on the XLR line, to run things. More on-board stuff with no battery, like digital delay, etc.

I asked Les one time if he was going to put out the low impedance stuff again. He said he did that once, showed the way, they didn't get it and he is not going to wear a cow bell arround his neck for the rest of his life so they can follow him. I will carefully read through your stuff at some point, to see if you are right about everything you say.

Help - I am looking for a LPR case for a customer. This is the guy who just bought the LPR on e-bay, the one with the broken head. I have a special fix for those and do it for 4 other guitar repairmen, did one for Les as well. There are a lot of broken heads on LP's out there. I'll tell you more about that fix, later.

I'm sure we'll talk more... Later - chuck

From Glenn Arnold (7/02/04):

Hi Dave, 

I received my new Clarus amp head the other day and have had a chance to use it with my ......... LPR. And yes, the 2 and 2R models both support the LPR lo-z pu's through the XLR input on the mic channel. I can run direct to the amp using the "Lo" setting and a 1/4 inch to XLR cable - no "prostetic devices" needed anymore!

The tone of these amps is wonderful. Very flat response overall. Nice eq filtering, too. And the reverb models (the Clarus 1R and 2R heads) have a really great digital reverb bank of about six different reverb types.

With a decent cab I like the Clarus head much better than my Polytone Mini Brute II. That's the amp I have been using for straight ahead jazz gigs. For acoustic formats I used either the Polytone w/some "soft" floor effects, or else a Fender Acoustisonic Jr. I can now replace both the Polytone and the Fender amps with this one head. 

The Clarus weighs less than 10 lbs, and comes with it's own gig bag. You can literally carry it over your shoulder. The footprint is less than 1 foot square, and it's only about 3 or 4 inches high. Looks more like a small mixing console than an amplifier!

I highly recommend the Clarus 2 or 2R models, which have the second mic channel, for anyone playing an LPR or other model guitar w/the lo-z pu's, and looking to get away from having to use an inline or other type of external transformer device; especially if they're looking for a very flat and true reproduction of their instrument. I thought the price was reasonable and competive. The Clarus 1 and 1R models start at around $700 USD, and the 2R models are typically running at $809 USD with most dealers here in the states. Don't know how they fare, or if they are available overseas at this point.

Let me know if you'd like some pics of the amp, and I'll be happy to send some. Just thought I'd drop a line and give you some "low down" on if and how it works with the LPR, as it may be of some interest to other LPR, Personal, and Professional owners as well.

Hope you are well.

Best wishes,

Glenn Arnold

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