IN HIS OWN WORDS
“I took a length of 4 x 4 pine, put an Epiphone neck on it, wound a couple of homemade pickups and mounted them on the wood. Then I added a bridge and a Vibrola tailpiece, strung it up, and I had the Log. It was crude, but when I plugged it into an amp, it worked.
On a Saturday night, I took it to The Sheik, a little club in Sunnyside, where I played the same songs (on the Log) with the same trio I often jammed with, and nobody gave much notice to it. I was getting a very cool, unusual sound with this electric Log … A piece of lumber being played as an electric guitar was something nobody had ever seen before, or even thought of, but it didn’t seem to make a big impression.
So I went back to the Epiphone factory, took the sound box of an old Epiphone archtop, and sawed it in half right down the middle. Then I braced up the halves so they could be
attached to the sides… With wings attached, I took the Log
back to the same club, and jammed again with the same trio.
And to my surprise, there was a great reaction. Everyone
started talking about the unusual sound and asking questions about the guitar and my amplifier. There was a positive reaction to the sound I got that night, which was the same sound the same people had heard before. So I came to the conclusion that people hear with their eyes.” –Les Paul
