Celebrating Les Paul: The Story of a Jersey Cop’s Unlikely Friendship with a Legend
As a young cop in the early '80s, Jim Wysocki had never even heard of the musical innovator, but a phone call at the station one winter night changed his life forever.
Les wired, wound, and soldered these pickups himself before dipping them in a durable plastic coating.
Jim Wysocki is a retired Mahwah, New Jersey, police officer and longtime friend of the late guitar legend, inventor, and musical innovator Les Paul. Their friendship began when Jim was just out of high school and grew into a relationship that lasted more than 29 years. Over the course of that friendship, Les presented Jim with a handful of vintage guitars, artifacts, and musical relics. Jim now displays many of these priceless mementos at a museum in Mahwah, and also shares his collection through the occasional Gibson bus tour—allowing anyone who is interested to touch, hold, and play Les’ gear.
Born Lester Polsfuss in 1915, Les Paul spent his life searching for the perfect sound, leading him to become one of the pioneers of the solidbody electric guitar and the multitrack tape recorder, as well as of rock ’n’ roll in general. A tinkerer and a firm believer in DIY, Les would make it if it wasn’t out there and he needed it—that’s just the kind of person he was. Les Paul died in 2009. He would have been 100 this year.
Jim was gracious enough to share with us some pictures of Les’ legendary gear, as well as some wonderful, heartwarming stories of their relationship. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.
Rain, Snow, and a Danelectro
“Put it under your bed for a rainy day.” That’s what Les Paul told Jim when he gave him his first guitar in 1981, back when Jim was just a kid. He’d hear the phrase quite a few more times over the years, often accompanied by another guitar. Back then, Jim wasn’t “a music guy.” In fact, he hadn’t even heard of Les Paul prior to their first encounter.
“I was just out of high school, working a desk job at the police department,” Jim recalls. One winter night during a snowstorm, Jim got a call at the station. “The voice on the other end said, ‘Howdy, this is Les Paul’ … I didn’t know Les Paul from the janitor down the hall!” Les was looking for help finding someone to plow his driveway so he could leave home early the next morning. Jim told him, “If it can wait till midnight, another hour, I’ll swing over and do your driveway.”
Thinking nothing of it, Jim plowed the driveway and thought nothing more of it. About a week later, Jim got a call from Arlene Palmer, Les’ girlfriend, saying Les would like to see him.
Jim made the trip to Les’ house, where Arlene greeted him and led him to the kitchen. He recalls seeing “a little old man sitting behind the counter with a guitar. He looked up and said, ‘Howdy you must be Jim.’”
Les—not “Mr. Paul” as Jim quickly learned—greeted him with a smile, a handshake (using his left hand), and a thank-you. He wanted to offer something as payment. Jim insisted it wasn’t necessary, but Les was not one to take no for an answer. He went behind the counter and picked up a few cassette tapes. “This is my music and I want you to listen to it.” He asked Jim—who still had no clue who he was dealing with—“Do you play guitar?”
When Jim answered that he didn’t, Les decided to fix the problem: He handed him a thin, odd-shaped guitar with a little silver tube across its soundhole, then gave him a receipt with three chords—E, A, and D—scribbled on the back. He then demonstrated how to play the chords and told Jim to come back in a week.
Before Jim left, Les gave him one other gift, a bottle of Krug champagne whose back label read, “Especially selected by British Airways.” On the front, Les had written in gold marker, “To my pal Jim, from Les Paul.”Les’ only request was that Jim save it for a special day.
When Jim asked about the bottle, Les’ answer was the first hint that he wasn’t dealing with just any elderly gentleman. “A bunch of years ago I got a phone call from the airline,” Jim remembers Les explaining. “They wanted me to go on a plane ride. They said everyone was going to go—Eric, Jeff, Paul.”
Perplexed, Jim asked, “Who?”
“You know—Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Paul McCartney.”
Needless to say, that got Jim’s attention. On his way home he stopped at the library, opened a few encyclopedias, and was shocked to see pictures of the man he’d just met.
When he went back the following week, the first thing Les said was, “Jimmy, did you learn those chords?” Jim bashed out the chords fast as he could, and Les said, “Good—[but] too fast. Slow down. Everything’s too fast.” He then took the guitar, went behind the counter, and turned his back on Jim, apparently busy with something.
While he waited for Les to finish what he was doing, Jim said, “I read about you—everything about you is Gibson. You designed their guitars back in the ’30s and ’40s, you were signed by them to endorse their guitars—so what’s with this Danny Electro guitar?”
“It’s pronounced ‘Dan-electro,’ Les corrected him. “Nathaniel Daniels, the owner of Danelectro, gave it to me as a present. It was a prototype, and I want to give it to you now … Put it under your bed for a rainy day.” When Jim said he couldn’t accept it, Les turned around, marker in hand, “It’s too late—because I already got your name on it.”
Watch an interview with Jim Wysocki:
It’s Not “Shit”—It’s Stuff
Les Paul was so famous that people were always giving him things—gifts, trinkets, gadgets. His house was full of them. Boxes, guitars, speakers, electronics, and all sorts of things were literally everywhere. “Three-hundred-sixty-five days a year he’d get something in the mail from somebody around the world,” says Jim, “and he would not throw it away. One day I asked him, ‘Hey, what are you doing with all this shit?’”
“It’s not shit,” Les replied. “It’s stuff, Jim. It’s stuff.”
Over time, Jim helped Les manage the build up of gifts in order to keep the house habitable. “One of the most interesting things I ever came across—I guess it was late in the ’80s—was an old, broken guitar sitting in a Seagram’s Seven box in a corner of Les’ basement.”
Les had called Jim and another friend over late one night to give him a hand fixing the furnace. As they were finishing up, Les asked Jim to bring the box over. “I told him it was junk,” remembers Jim. “But he said, ‘No, no. Bring it over.’” Jim retrieved the box and opened it. There was a dead mouse inside. “This right here,” said Les of the old Gibson archtop, “this breaks my heart. Do me a favor, take this guitar and do the right thing—put it under your bed for a rainy day when you fix it.”
It wasn’t until after Les had passed away that the proverbial “rainy day” finally arrived and Jim shipped the guitar to Gibson to have it restored. A year later the guitar was ready.
“I flew down to pick it up, and when they presented it to me I was expecting some brand-new guitar,” he recalls, “but here was this guitar that was rustic and old. It still had holes in the body—from bugs, as far as I could tell!”
The Gibson employees laughed at how appalled Jim looked. He clearly didn’t know how special the instrument was. “Turns out,” says Jim of the circa-1936 instrument, “it was one of Les Paul’s first attempts at an electric guitar. What I thought were bug holes actually turned out to be where he took a record-player needle and jammed it in the body.”
Jim took the guitar to vintage-guitar expert George Gruhn in Nashville to have it appraised and was laughed at yet again. He recalls George telling him, “You’ve got to be kidding me—I can’t even think about putting a price on this!”
Les’ Shocking Developments (Literally) As Jim understands it, Les’ interest in electronics started at a very early age. He says the guitar legend told him he was just five years old when he saw his brother Ralph flip a light switch and immediately wanted to know how and why the light turned on. “Back then you didn’t have breakers and you didn’t have safeguards on electrical lines,” says Jim. “As a result, Les was shocked many times—but he learned to respect it.”
Electricity apparently almost killed Les three times. The last incident occurred at his studio in 1941 when he was practicing with his bass player. With his guitar in one hand, Les reached into an audio stack and inadvertently touched a live wire.
“He fell to the ground and, at first, the bass player thought he was fooling around—because Les was a joker,” says Jim, “but when he noticed Les’ eyes start to flutter he realized something was really wrong and turned off the circuit.”
Les was so badly burned that the muscles were separated from the tendons in his right arm. The injury forced him to take a year off from playing, and during that time he found unusual new ways to study guitar. It was during that period that Les invented two of the world’s earliest solidbody electric-guitar prototypes, which are now known as “the Clunker” and “the Log.”
An Agreement Among Friends
One night in 2006 Jim received a phone call from Les asking if he and another friend who often helped around the house would come over. It wasn’t out of character for Les to call late at night, but it was unusual for Les to answer the door. Usually it was Arlene.
Les guided them through different rooms, pointing at various things and shaking his head. When they wound up in his guitar room, Les asked, “What do you think?” But Jim wasn’t sure what he was getting at and merely replied, “I don’t know.” Les told them to follow him downstairs, where they went out onto the patio and sat on a couch.
“I got a lot of pressure,” Jim remembers Les confiding. “A lot of people want a lot of my things, but I don’t want to give things to people that are just going to take them and go sell them for a yacht. So what are we going to do with this stuff?”
The other friend interrupted, “What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“You two have been a part of this with me for a long time. I need help. What are we going to do with all of it?”
Jim remembers the look on Les’ face—he was stressed. Genuinely worried. He and the other friend turned to Les and came up with a plan. “How about this deal: Everything you gave us over the course of 20, 25 years, we’re going to make sure people get to see, touch, and play after you pass away.”
Les reportedly looked at them, took his glasses off, smiled, and said, “That’s a deal—let’s go have a drink.”
Today, Jim is keeping his word on that agreement. “That’s why we travel around and we let people play his things,” he explains. “Some people think we’re nuts for letting just anyone touch these million-dollar guitars, but like Les always said, ‘It’s only a piece of wood. Gibson can fix it.’”For more information:
American Music Supply
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Click here for more videos of Les Paul's historic guitars with Richie Castellano
Lutefish, the real-time music collaboration device and platform, is excited to announce a suite of new features designed to simplify setup, streamline collaboration, and offer more flexible subscription options for Lutefish Stream users. These latest updates, Audio Presets, Automatic Session Recall, Improved Scheduling with Contact Visibility, and a new Yearly Subscription Plan, are all about making it easier than ever for musicians to jam together, no matter where they’re based.
Save Time and Stay in the Flow with Audio Presets & Session Recall
Musicians can now save and reuse their exact audio settings, reducing setup time and ensuring every session sounds exactly as they want.
- Automatic Session Recall: When users leave a session, their current audio levels are automatically saved and restored when they rejoin.
- User-Defined Audio Presets: Each user can create and name up to five custom presets, like “Band Practice,” “Studio Mic Setup,” or “Quick Jam,” making it effortless to jump back in with the perfect sound.
“These tools are all about saving time and hassle,” said Patrick Finn, Business Manager at Lutefish. “Musicians want to make music, not spend time rebalancing levels every session. With presets and recall, we’re giving them time back and helping them sound their best, every time.”
Smarter Scheduling and Contact Visibility
The latest update to Lutefish also made it easier to find collaborators and book sessions. Users can now:- View all their contacts at a glance when scheduling a session.
- Instantly identify which contacts own a Lutefish Stream device—so they will always know who’s ready to jam.
Go Yearly and Save 20%
Lutefish now offers a Yearly Subscription Plan, providing users with the same great access as the monthly plan at a 20% discount.
This option is now available within the Lutefish app and web platform, and current monthly users are eligible for a discount with an upgrade to a yearly subscription.
Lutefish’s mission has always been to empower musicians to connect and collaborate without boundaries. With these new updates, Lutefish Stream continues to break down barriers—whether you’re jamming with a friend across town or collaborating with a bandmate 500 miles away.
For more information and to start jamming today, visitlutefish.com.
Empress Effects is proud to announce the release of the Bass ParaEq, a bass-specific parametric EQ pedal.
Building on the success of their acclaimed ParaEq MKII series, which has already gained popularity with bassists, the Bass ParaEq offers the same studio-grade precision but with features tailored for bass instruments.
Basses of all types – including electric and upright basses with active and passive electronics – can benefit from the Bass ParaEq’s tone-sculpting capabilities.
The new pedal follows the success of the Empress Bass Compressor and ParaEq MKII Deluxe, which have become some of the company’s best-reviewed and top-selling products. The Bass Compressor’s popularity confirmed what Empress had long suspected: bassists are eager for tools built with their needs in mind, not just adaptations of guitar gear.
The Bass ParaEq retains the line’s powerful 3-band parametric EQ and studio-style features while introducing a bass-optimized frequency layout, a selectable 10MΩ Hi-Z input for piezo-equipped instruments, a dynamically-adjusted low shelf, and automatic balanced output detection—perfect for live and studio use alike.
The Bass ParaEq also offers an output boost, adjustable by a dedicated top-mounted knob and activated by its own footswitch, capable of delivering up to 30dB of boost. It’s perfect for helping your bass punch through during key moments in live performance.
Whether dialing in clarity for a dense mix or compensating for an unfamiliar venue, the Bass ParaEq offers precise tonal control in a compact, road-ready form. With 27V of internal headroom to prevent clipping from even the hottest active pickups, the Bass ParaEq is the ultimate studio-style EQ designed to travel.
Key features of the Bass ParaEq include:
- Adjustable frequency bands tailored for bass instruments
- Selectable 10MΩ Hi-Z input for upright basses and piezo pickups
- Auto-detecting balanced output for long cable runs and direct recording
- Three sweepable parametric bands with variable Q
- High-pass, low-pass, low shelf, and high shelf filters
- Transparent analog signal path with 27V of internal headroom
- Buffered bypass switching
- Powered by standard 9V external supply, 300mA (no battery compartment)
The Bass ParaEq is now shipping worldwide. It can be purchased from the Empress Effects website for $374 USD and through authorized Empress dealers globally.
Few musical acts did more to put their fame and fortune to good use than punk rock icon Wayne Kramer. Known for his enduring commitment to activism, especially in justice reform, his life story embodies the defiant, DIY ethos of punk, directly inspiring generations of bands and musicians who followed. Now, fans and fellow musicians alike can attempt to emulate Kramer’s incendiary sound with the new, limited-edition pedal.
Designed before his death in February 2024, Wayne Kramer—together with friend Jimi Dunlop (Dunlop CEO) and Daredevil Pedals owner Johnny Wator —the pedal features artwork from artist and activist Shepard Fairey (Obey Clothing founder). A majority of profits from the sale of the pedal goes directly to Kramer’s charity supporting the rehabilitation of incarcerated people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds.
In honor of his close friend, Tom Morello—the innovative guitarist behind Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, the Nightwatchman, and more—demoed the pedal, showcasing its sound and shining light on Wayne Kramer’s incredible legacy.
Tom Morello Introduces MC5 Wayne Kramer-Inspired Pedal For Charity: MXR Jail Guitar Doors Drive
"What they've tried to bake into the MXR® Jail Guitar Doors Drive distortion pedal is not just Wayne's sound but Wayne's attitude, and the grit and the rawness of Detroit and of the MC5," said Morello, one of Kramer’s best friends, during his demo of the pedal. "This is the guitar pedal that was used on the song 'Heavy Lifting' that I recorded with Wayne for the last MC5 record.
"Named after the late rocker's charity—which provides instruments and art workshops to incarcerated individuals as rehabilitation tools—the MXR® Jail Guitar Doors Drive pedal aims to capture all of the high-voltage energy of Wayne Kramer's sound. It features two uniquely voiced gain circuits cascaded together with a singular pot controlling both the output level of each circuit and the overall saturation level of the distortion.
Music makers looking to capture Kramer’s raw, fiery sound can pick up the new MXR® Jail Guitar Doors Drive pedal, exclusively on Reverb via The Official MXR Jail Guitar Doors Drive Reverb Shop for $199, here: https://reverb.com/shop/the-official-mxr-jail-guitar-doors-reverb-shop.
The veteran Florida-born metalcore outfit proves that you don’t need humbuckers to pull off high gain.
Last August, metalcore giants Poison the Well gave the world a gift: They announced they were working on their first studio album in 15 years. They unleashed the first taste, single “Trembling Level,” back in January, and set off on a spring North American tour during which they played their debut record, The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation, in full every night.
PG’s Perry Bean caught up with guitarists Ryan Primack and Vadim Taver, and bassist Noah Harmon, ahead of the band’s show at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl for this new Rig Rundown.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Not-So-Quiet As a Mouse
Primack started his playing career on Telecasters, then switched to Les Pauls, but when his prized LPs were stolen, he jumped back to Teles, and now owns nine of them.
His No. 1 is this white one (left). Seymour Duncan made him a JB Model pickup in a single-coil size for the bridge position, while the neck is a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Staggered. He ripped out all the electronics, added a Gibson-style toggle switch, flipped the control plate orientation thanks to an obsession with Danny Gatton, and included just one steel knob to control tone. Primack also installed string trees with foam to control extra noise.
This one has Ernie Ball Papa Het’s Hardwired strings, .011–.050.
Here, Kitty, Kitty
Primack runs both a PRS Archon and a Bad Cat Lynx at the same time, covering both 6L6 and EL34 territories. The Lynx goes into a Friedman 4x12 cab that’s been rebadged in honor of its nickname, “Donkey,” while the Archon, which is like a “refined 5150,” runs through an Orange 4x12.
Ryan Primack’s Pedalboard
Primack’s board sports a Saturnworks True Bypass Multi Looper, plus two Saturnworks boost pedals. The rest includes a Boss TU-3w, DOD Bifet Boost 410, Caroline Electronics Hawaiian Pizza, Fortin ZUUL +, MXR Phase 100, JHS Series 3 Tremolo, Boss DM-2w, DOD Rubberneck, MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Walrus Slo, and SolidGoldFX Surf Rider III.
Taver’s Teles
Vadim Taver’s go-to is this cherryburst Fender Telecaster, which he scored in the early 2000s and has been upgraded to Seymour Duncan pickups on Primack’s recommendation. His white Balaguer T-style has been treated to the same upgrade. The Balaguer is tuned to drop C, and the Fender stays in D standard. Both have D’Addario strings, with a slightly heavier gauge on the Balaguer.
Dual-Channel Chugger
Taver loves his 2-channel Orange Rockerverb 100s, one of which lives in a case made right in Nashville.
Vadim Taver’s Pedalboard
Taver’s board includes an MXR Joshua, MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Empress Tremolo, Walrus ARP-87, Old Blood Noise Endeavors Reflector, MXR Phase 90, Boss CE-2w, and Sonic Research Turbo Tuner ST-200, all powered by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus.
Big Duff
Harmon’s favorite these days is this Fender Duff McKagan Deluxe Precision Bass, which he’s outfitted with a Leo Quan Badass bridge. His backup is a Mexico-made Fender Classic Series ’70s Jazz Bass. This one also sports Primack-picked pickups.
Rental Rockers
Harmon rented this Orange AD200B MK III head, which runs through a 1x15 cab on top and a 4x10 on the bottom.
Noah Harmon’s Pedalboard
Harmon’s board carries a Boss TU-2, Boss ODB-3, MXR Dyna Comp, Darkglass Electronics Vintage Ultra, and a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus. His signal from the Vintage Ultra runs right to the front-of-house, and Harmon estimates that that signal accounts for about half of what people hear on any given night.