The original circuit bender

Les Paul will always be remembered for the guitar that carries his name, but his most pervasive musical legacy lies in his enthusiasm for modifying electronics. Born Lester Polfuss in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the late Les Paul started his practice of engineering cannibalism at an early age. He was taking apart telephones and radios by seven, ultimately rebuilding them into rudimentary amplifiers for his guitar playing. Several people can take credit for understanding how a guitar could be amplified electrically. But as a skilled guitar player himself, he quickly found their limitations and worked on ways to overcome them. Today, musicians around the world follow in his footsteps by taking electronic devices and "circuit bending" them to tease, and sometimes torture, new sounds out of them.