The Birth of Loud - Leo and Les

[repoman]

I'm about halfway into a good read on the development of the solid body electric guitar "The Birth of Loud" by Ian Port.


A couple of things so far have really stood out to me.

When Leo first put out the Telecaster some of the initial feedback was used to develop the follow up guitar. The Strat included 3 thing that were considered shortcomings:
body contours for comfort, vibrato (Bigsby add-on was popular with F and G), 6 individual string bridges.
According to the book, some early Tele players even took hacksaws to mod Tele bridges to make separate bridges for better intonation.
If Leo and Co. felt the 3 piece Tele bridge was an issue why didn't he change that years ago. Why wait until G&L to make that mod? (side note: when the Strat came out they initially expected to phase out the Tele!)


The book also brings up how really radical an idea the first electric bass was. Up until then the bass was a big monster upright. To make it louder you had to slap the strings harder. And of course they were fretless. For smaller traveling bands it was a major hassle. Sometimes the bass player had to travel in a separate car just to travel from town to town. Leo turned the bass 90 degrees from upright to horizontal, gave it frets, AND electrified it! He claims the name "Precision" was because it was more precise than the fretless. Made it easier for almost any guitar player to play bass.


Highly recommended. It's a fun, easy read and includes lots of short stories about the musicians that paved the way for R-n-R that used those newfangled electric guitars.

-Jeff

[sam]

Thanks Jeff,

Sounds like a book loaded with cool tidbits, now on my next read list.

So glad the telecaster wasn’t “phased out”, the world would be a different place for sure.

[john o]

i got this one for my birthday recently. so far quite good!

[yowhatsshakin]

The book also brings up how really radical an idea the first electric bass was. Up until then the bass was a big monster upright. To make it louder you had to slap the strings harder. And of course they were fretless. For smaller traveling bands it was a major hassle. Sometimes the bass player had to travel in a separate car just to travel from town to town. Leo turned the bass 90 degrees from upright to horizontal, gave it frets, AND electrified it! He claims the name "Precision" was because it was more precise than the fretless. Made it easier for almost any guitar player to play bass.

Leo made great contributions to the electric bass but just like with the electric guitar he was neither the only one nor the first. As far as the electric bass goes, the honor of having built and played the first goes to Paul Tutmarc and his Audiovox #476. But Leo definitely built a much better mousetrap!

- Jos

[repoman]

Thats a very cool article about the Audiovox! Never heard about that before.

The book makes no bones about the fact the Leo was neither the first or the only. There seems to have been a lot of competition among a rather close group of builders, some of it friendly, some not so friendly. Also sounded like there was a lot of "borrowing" of ideas going on.

-Jeff

[yowhatsshakin]

Jeff, I just got my own copy of the book. Look forward to read it!

- Jos

[skibum]

I'm reading it. It's fun to read a book without advertisements flashing all over the place trying for my attention. Interesting read, it's holding my attention.

[john o]

I thought this was a great book, Ian Port weaved a little story line into it to make the history lesson more interesting. He's not a player himself, but he did 4 years of research and interviews that led to the integration of many important bricks in the wall of a very well told story.

Last year, I also read this one, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-revi ... y-it-loud/
A similar work, also well done, by the former editor in chief of Guitar World, and one of their regular contributors, with a little more emphasis on the history of the guitar, the resonator, the pickup, the Fender and Gibson stories, and many others. Check it out...