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.
Jim’s basement is nearly a museum in itself, featuring a number of artifacts, memorabilia, and photos passed along from Les Paul.
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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Very diverse slate of tones. Capable of great focus and power. Potentially killer studio tool.
Sculpting tones in a reliably reproducible way can be challenging. Midrange emphasis may be a deal breaker for some.
$199 street
Bold-voiced, super-tunable distortion that excels in contexts from filtered boost to total belligerence.
Whitman Audio calls the Wave Collapse a fuzz—and what a very cool fuzz it is. But classifying it strictly as such undersells the breadth of its sounds. The Seattle, Washington-built Wave Collapse has personality at low gain levels and super crunchy ones. It’s responsive and sensitive enough to input and touch dynamics to move from light overdrive to low-gain distortion and degenerate fuzz with a change in picking intensity or guitar volume. And from the pedal’s own very interactive controls, one can summon big, ringing, near-clean tones, desert sludge, or snorkel-y wah buzz.
The Wave Collapse speaks many languages, but it has an accent—usually an almost wah-like midrange lilt that shows up as faint or super-pronounced. It’s not everyone’s creamy distortion ideal. But with the right guitar pairings and a dynamic approach, the Wave Collapse’s midrange foundation can still span sparkly and savage extremes that stand tall and distinctive in a mix. There’s much that sounds and feels familiar in the Wave Collapse, but the many surprises it keeps in store are the real fun.
Heavy Surf, Changing Waves
The absence of a single fundamental influence makes it tricky to get your bearings with the Wave Collapse at first. Depending on where you park the controls to start, you might hear traces of RAT in the midrange-forward, growly distortion, or the Boss SD-1 in many heavy overdrive settings. At its fuzziest, it howls and spits like aFuzz Face orTone Bender and can generate compressed, super-focused, direct-to-desk rasp. And in its darker corners, weighty doom tones abound.
The many personalities are intentional. Whitman Dewey-Smith’s design brief was, in his own words, “a wide palette ranging from dirty boost to almost square-wave fuzz and textures that could be smooth or sputtery.” A parallel goal, he says, was to encourage tone discoveries in less-obvious spaces. Many such gems live in the complex interrelationships between the EQ, filter, and bias controls. They also live in the circuit mash-up at the heart of the Wave Collapse. The two most prominent fixtures on the circuit are the BC108 transistor (best known as a go-to in Fuzz Face builds) and twin red LED clipping diodes (associated, in the minds of many, with clipping in the Turbo RAT and Marshall Jubilee amplifier). That’s not exactly a classic combination of amplifier and clipping section components, but it’s a big part of the Wave Collapse’s sonic identity.
The BC108 drives one of two core gain stages in the Wave Collapse. The first stage takes inspiration from early, simple fuzz topologies like the Tone Bender and Fuzz Face, but with a focus on what Dewey-Smith calls “exploiting the odd edges and interactivity in a two-transistor gain stage.” The BC108 contributes significant character to this stage. The second, post-EQ gain stage is JFET-based. It’s set up to interact like a tube guitar amp input stage and is followed by the clipping LEDs. Dewey-Smith says you can think of the whole as a “fairly” symmetric hard-clipping scheme.
“The magic of the circuit is that those gain stages are very complimentary. When stage one is running clean, it still passes a large, unclipped signal that hits the second stage, making those classic early distortion sounds. Conversely, when the first stage is running hot, it clips hard and the second stage takes a back seat—mostly smoothing out the rough edges of the first stage.” Factor in the modified Jack Orman pickup simulator-style section in the front end, and you start to understand the pedal’s propensity for surprise and expressive latitude.
Searchin’ Safari
The Wave Collapse’s many identities aren’t always easy to wrangle at the granular-detail level. The control set—knobs for bias, filter color, input level, and output level, plus switches for “mass” (gain,) “range”(bass content at the input), and “center” (shifts the filter’s mid emphasis from flat)—are interdependent in such a way that small adjustments can shift a tone’s character significantly, and it can be challenging to find your way back to a tone that sounded just right five minutes ago. Practice goes a long way toward mastering these sensitivities. One path to reliably reproducible sounds is to establish a ballpark tone focus with the filter first, dial in the input gain to an appropriately energetic zone, then shape the distortion color and response more specifically with the bias.
As you get a feel for these interactions, you’ll be knocked out by the sounds and ideas you bump into along the way. In addition to obvious vintage fuzz and distortion touchstones I crafted evocations of blistering, compressed tweed amps, jangly Marshalls, and many shades of recording console preamp overdrive. The Wave Collapse responds in cool ways to just about any instrument you situate out front. But while your results may vary, I preferred the greater headroom and detail that comes with single-coil pickup pairings. Humbuckers, predictably conjure a more compressed and, to my ears, less varied set of sounds. I also found black-panel Fender amps a more adaptable pairing than Vox- and Marshall-style voices. But just about any guitar or pickup type can yield magnificent results.
The Verdict
Though it’s hard to avoid its filtered midrange signature entirely, the Wave Collapse is a pedal of many masks. Once you master the twitchy interactivity between its controls, you can tailor the pedal to weave innocuously but energetically into a mix or completely dominate it. These capabilities are invaluable in ensemble performances, but it’s super enticing to consider how the Wave Collapse would work in a studio situation, where its focus and potency can fill gaps and nooks in color and vitality or turn a tune on its head. Pedals that stimulate the inner arranger, producer, and punk simultaneously are valuable tools. And while the Wave Collapse won’t suit every taste, when you factor together the pedal’s sub-$200 cost, thoughtful design, high-quality execution, and malleability, it adds up to a lot of utility for a very fair price.
Paul Reed Smith also continues to evolve as a guitarist, and delivered a compelling take on Jeff Beck’s interpretation of “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” at the PRS 40th Anniversary Celebration during this year’s NAMM.
After 40 years at the helm of PRS Guitars, our columnist reflects on the nature of evolution in artistry—of all kinds.
Reflecting on four decades in business, I don’t find myself wishing I “knew then what I know now.” Instead, I’m grateful to still have the curiosity and environment to keep learning and to be in an art that has a nonstop learning curve. There’s a quote attributed to artist Kiki Smith that resonates deeply with me: “I can barely control my kitchen sink.” That simple truth has been a guiding principle in my life. We can’t control the timing of knowledge or discovery. If profound learning comes late in life, so be it. The important thing is to remain open to it when it arrives.
I look at what’s happened at PRS Guitars over the last 40 years with real pride. I love what we’ve built—not just in terms of instruments but in the culture of innovation and craftsmanship that defines our company. The guitar industry as a whole has evolved in extraordinary ways, and I’m fortunate to be part of a world filled with passionate, talented, and good-hearted people.
I love learning. It may sound odd, but there’s something almost spiritual about it. Learning isn’t constant; it comes in stages. Sometimes, there are long dry spells where you can even struggle to hold onto what you already know. Other times, learning is sporadic, with nuggets of understanding appearing here and there that are treasured for their poignancy. And then there are those remarkable moments when the proverbial floodgates open, and the lessons come so fast that you can barely keep up. I’ve heard songwriters and musicians describe this same pattern. Sometimes, no new songs emerge; sometimes, they trickle out one by one; and sometimes, they arrive so quickly it’s impossible to capture them all. I believe it’s the same for all creatives, including athletes, engineers, and everyone invested in their art.
Looking back over 40 years in business and a decade of preparation before that, I recognize these distinct phases of learning. Right now, I’m in one of those high-gain learning periods. I’ve taken on a teacher who is introducing me to concepts I never imagined, ideas I didn’t think anyone could explain—things I wasn’t even sure I was worthy of understanding. But when he calls and says, “Have you thought about this?” I lean in, eager to absorb, not just to learn something new for myself, but because I want him to feel his teaching is appreciated, making it more likely that the teaching continues.
“Learning isn’t just about accumulating knowledge; it’s about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it.”
Beyond structured teaching, learning also comes through experience, discovery, and problem solving. We recently got our hands on some old, magical guitars, vintage pickups, microphones, and mic preamps. These aren’t just relics; they’re windows into a deeper understanding of how things work and what the engineers who invented them knew. By studying the schematics of tube-mic preamps, we’re uncovering insights that directly influence how we wire guitar pickups and their electronics. It may seem like an unrelated field, but the many parallels in audio engineering are there if you look. Knowledge in one area has a ripple effect, unlocking new possibilities in another.
Even as I continue learning, I recognize that our entire team at PRS is on this journey with me. We have people whose sole job is to push the boundaries of what we understand about pickups, spending every day refining and applying that knowledge so that when you pick up a PRS guitar, it sounds better. More than 400 people work here, each contributing to the collective advancement of our craft. I am grateful to be surrounded by such a dedicated and smart team.
One of my favorite memories at PRS was at a time we were deep into investigating scale lengths on vintage guitars, and some unique pickup characteristics, when one of our engineering leaders walked into my office. He had just uncovered something astonishing and said, “You’re not going to believe this one.” That excitement and back-and-forth exchange of ideas is what keeps this work so rewarding.
As I reflect on my journey, I see that learning isn’t just about accumulating knowledge; it’s about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it. I get very excited when something we’ve learned ends up on a new product. Whether lessons come early or late, whether they arrive in waves or trickles, there is always good work to be done. And that is something I just adore.
The country artist and session weapon packed a range of acoustics for some recent studio time.
Charlie Worsham was just wrapping up some tracking down at Sony Studios in Nashville when PG’s John Bohlinger caught up with him for a look at what tools he packs for a recording gig. Worsham had with him some of his most treasured acoustics, electrics, mandolins, banjos, and more, plus a collection of primo picks for all applications. Check out the highlights below.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Guitar So Nice, He Bought It Twice
This 1963 Martin D-28, gifted to him from his parents, was Worsham’s first serious vintage guitar. Around 12 years ago, he took it into a shop for a refret, and after a freak in-store accident left it in pieces, Worsham accepted a check for the guitar’s value, and walked away.
A while later, he noticed it hanging on the wall of the same store—reassembled and fit for service again. Worsham couldn’t help himself; he bought it back, making it “the guitar so nice, [he] acquired it twice.”
He runs it with D’Addario XS strings and likes bluegrass gauges: mediums for the E, A, and D strings, and lights for the G, B, and high E strings. It’s kitted out with an LR Baggs HiFi pickup. And the scratches around the soundhole and pickguard? Those came courtesy of John Osborne’s heavy picking hand.
Check, Please
Worsham reckons he’s probably played this treasured Gibson J-50 on more records than any other guitar he owns. After he took the check from the busted Martin D-28, he used it to buy this one.
Family Jewel
This Parker mando used to belong to John Osborne, Worsham’s former bandmate. Worsham was always borrowing this mandolin, so when Osborne decided to sell it, Worsham picked it up to keep it in the family.
Burkett from ’Bama
This mini Burkett was built by luthier James Burkett in Alabama. Its nut is equivalent to a capo on the third fret of a regular acoustic.
Tune in to the full video to see Worsham’s Ohm open-back banjo, P-90-equipped Gibson mandolin, an Osborne-owned Strat, and a super-special wedding-gift ES-335 from Vince Gill.
Tweed Fit for a Prince(ton)
Worsham took Tom Bukovac’s wisdom and got himself a Fender Princeton Reverb, which he still loves, and he runs it alongside a Nashville Amp Works clone of a golden-era tweed Fender Deluxe.
Charlie Worsham’s Pedalboard
At his feet, Worsham runs a pedalboard with a Sonic Research ST-300 tuner, Browne Amplification Protein, Mythos Mjolnir, Guyatone ST2, Electro-Harmonix Canyon, Neunaber Immerse, Strymon El Capistan, and Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl HiFi.
PG contributor Tom Butwin demos seven direct boxes — active and passive — showing off sound samples, features, and real-world advice. Options from Radial, Telefunken, Hosa, Grace Design, and Palmer offer solutions for any input, setting, and budget.
Grace Design m303 Active Truly Isolated Direct Box
The Grace Design m303 is an active, fully isolated DI box, delivering gorgeous audio performance for the stage and studio. Our advanced power supply design provides unbeatable headroom and dynamic range, while the premium Lundahl transformer delivers amazing low-end clarity and high frequency detail. True elegance, built to last.
Rupert Neve Designs RNDI-M Active Transformer Direct Interface
Compact design, giant tone. The RNDI-M brings the stunning tone & clarity of its award-winning counterparts to an even more compact and pedalboard-friendly format, with the exact same custom Rupert Neve Designs transformers and discrete FET input stage as the best-selling RNDI, RNDI-S and RNDI-8.
Telefunken TDA-1 1-channel Active Instrument Direct Box
The TDA-1 phantom powered direct box uses high-quality components and classic circuitry for rich, natural sound. With discrete Class-A FET, a European-made transformer, and a rugged metal enclosure, it delivers low distortion and a broad frequency response. Assembled and tested in Connecticut, USA, for reliable performance and superior sound.
Hosa SideKick Active Direct Box
The Hosa SideKick DIB-445 Active DI delivers clear, strong signals for live and studio use. Ideal for guitars, basses, and keyboards, it minimizes interference over long runs. Features include a pad switch, ground lift, and polarity flip. With a flat frequency response and low noise, it ensures pristine audio.
Radial JDI Jensen-equipped 1-channel Passive Instrument Direct Box
The Radial JDI preserves your instrument’s natural tone with absolute clarity and zero distortion. Its Jensen transformer delivers warm, vintage sound, while its passive design eliminates hum and buzz. With a ruler-flat response (10Hz–40kHz) and no phase shift, the JDI ensures pristine sound in any setup.
Radial J48 1-channel Active 48v Direct Box
The Radial J48 delivers exceptional clarity and dynamic range, making it the go-to active DI for professionals. Its 48V phantom-powered design ensures clean, powerful signal handling without distortion. With high headroom, low noise, and innovative power optimization, the J48 captures your instrument’s true tone—perfect for studio and stage.
Palmer River Series - Ilm
The Palmer ilm, an upgraded version of the legendary Palmer The Junction, delivers studio-quality, consistent guitar tones anywhere. This passive DI box features three analog speaker simulations, ensuring authentic sound reproduction. Its advanced filter switching mimics real guitar speaker behavior, making it perfect for stage, home, or studio recording sessions.