Les Paul Seeburg 'E' Nickelodeon
By Paul Manganaro
Don Teach asked what ever happened to the Seeburg E From Les Paul's
Studio. I saw the E in my good friend Keith Taylor's home when we
both lived in New Jersey. Keith explained that the piano had been
gutted and tacks were pushed into the hammers to give it a tinny sound.
It was one of the cleanest originals that I had seen and I really
admired it.
Keith had rounded up a good number of parts for it. I think the
pump had been made by my old friend Adam Lowjewski of Seawaren NJ.
Keith moved out to Pennsylvania about fifteen years ago and told me
what great value you were able to get in the real estate out there,
and so I then moved out here about thirteen years ago. Somewhere
along the way I traded Keith out of the piano and rounded up the rest
of the parts.
I completed the machine and it has been working here for about three
years now. I have yet to put a reproduction stack in it (I have it
in kit form) but I do have a standard player stack that Adam Lojewski
adapted to an E thirty years ago.
Keith ended up moving all the way up to Maine a few years ago and he
took with him a Seeburg E with pipes that I sold to him. It's an all
original machine apart from some control pneumatics that I recovered
and it's still playing strong.
So now every time I hear the name of Les Paul, my ears pick up and
I feel I have some very distant connection to him.
Paul Manganaro
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(Message sent Fri 28 Jul 2000, 03:26:25 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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