What did Les Paul think of Telecasters?

See thread title. Did Les Paul (the person) ever play / record on / say what he though of Telecasters? This question seems impossible to google. You get zillions of comparisons / videos of the the two instruments’ pluses and minuses, nothing about Les Paul (the person) and his opinions on Teles.

My guess is Les Paul thought Teles were too simple / not enough options. See the Les Paul Recording Model (yeesh!) for something Les thought was a proper guitar. :eek:

It’d be cool if there was a video of Les Paul playing a Telecaster!

Les Paul should do Les complaining and more working

I have nothing to add to the actual question, but I will mention that the display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the history of the development of the electric guitar is, in my opinion, the only reason to ever visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

When his personal collection was auctioned some years ago it included:

The repairs may indicate that he had played it.

don’t ask: nice find!

There is a picture here @ number 38 of The 60 most valuable guitars ever sold at auction, not that you need one to know what it looks like. Full of great guitars though.

Wow, that is an amazing article, don’t ask. It took me like 30 minutes to read past the first 2 dozen entries and just skip to the LP Tele we were discussing. The top entries were predictable, but the writer had good info on almost all of them.

Les decomposing and more composing.

If you liked that I wonder do you have copies of Strat in the Attic: Thrilling Stories of Guitar Archaeology and The Strat in the Attic 2: More Thrilling Stories of Guitar Archaeology. I loved both of them.

Um… Les Paul didn’t have that much to do with the design of the LP guitar. He was brought in during the prototype stage with the hopes that he would let them put his name on it, help market it, and play them. I strongly suspect if Fender was willing to pay Les a royalty on every broad/no/telecaster with his name on it Les would have been elated to play a Fender guitar.

A new article on Reverb examines this question: