No Wait.. The LesPaulVerizer?? Is it the First On Board Loop Station Ever?

A very detailed interview from 1977 is archived here:
http://www.keyboardmag.com/article/les-paul-jon/jan-00/6590

is the Les Paulverizer?

It's a remote control box for a tape recorder, and it's mounted right in the guitar. Let me back up and tell you where the idea started. Making the multiple recordings -- first disc and then on tape -- and doing the echo delay and sped-up sounds, it rapidly dawned on me that people would want to hear a sound like the records when performed live. You walk out there with just one voice and one guitar, and you've got a problem. If they yell out, "How High The Moon," you've got to give them something close as possible. So I came up with the bright idea of taking Mary's sister and hiding her offstage in a john or up in an attic -- wherever -- with a long microphone. Whatever Mary did onstage, she did offstage. If Marry sniffled, she sniffled. It just stopped everyone dead. People couldn't believe it or figure it out. There was no tape then, so when this came around, it was highly different and shocking. One night I hear the mayor of Buffalo sitting in the front row tell his wife, "Oh, it's simple. It's radar." So a couple years after playing with the extra voice and an orchestra and everything, they began to think that they heard all kinds of things. They put things in there that weren't there. But I felt the real solution was to make it sound just like the record, as close as possible, and eventually I came up with the idea of the remote tape control unit, and I built the first box. I used it for the very first time in a performance for President Eisenhower.

Did you modify the equipment after that?

Yes, as time went on it got more sophisticated, more condensed. When I came out of retirement ( in 1965) , I looked around and found that all that equipment weighed 1,100 lbs. So I told my engineers that I wanted it down to 120 lbs, and they said it couldn't be done. I said it could be done, and it would be done, and it was. And it does much more than it ever did before. Now when we go out on a job, we throw it in the back seat of the car or under the seat of a plane, and we're gone. It takes us maybe 15 minutes to set up. And you look at the other guys -- five 18-wheelers pulling up with all their gear.

And all signals come out of one line?

All out of one line. I have my microphone mounted right on the guitar, and it comes out of the same line as the Paulverizer. Some of the stuff is so simple. I believe simplicity is the greatest, but it's the toughest thing to get sometimes. They'll make it complicated, the public will. The mayor says. "It's radar." You know who figured out the trick with Mary's sister? Nobody could figure it out. Life Magazine couldn't. We wouldn't tell anybody; it was a secret for years. Then one night, a man came backstage with his little girl and says, "If I tell you how you're getting that sound, will you give me a yes or no?" I said, "Sure" and the little girl says, "Where's the other lady?" It took a little kid who didn't have a complicated mind. Everybody saw machines, turntables, radar -- everything but the simplest thing.

Which Les Paul guitar is your favorite model?

I would have to say the Recording. It's an excellent box, although the guy playing with a rock group who wants to drive the daylights out of a Marshall may want to use a regular Les Paul, because he can get more power out of it. The Recording has low-impedance pickups, and I feel it strikes the best balance of any guitar ever made.

Which model are you playing now?

I'm playing one of the low-impedance prototypes. It's got the same body size and shape but doesn't have an arched top. It also has my own pickups on it and a steel bar running through it. All my guitars have that steel bar. Improves sustain.

Very cool video, and interesting article as well. Thanks guys!

I've seen this before, but great refresher course on the inner workings of Les Paul

Les wasn't just a great guitar player and designer of the guitar that bears his name. He was an even more amazing inventor. Double tracking? Echo?