There is a strange paradox at the heart of Jimmy Page’s legend.
He is worshipped as a mystic.
Yet his most radical guitar was pure engineering.
No crystals.
No active electronics.
No magic pickups.
Just passive wiring. A lot of it.
This is the story of Les Paul “Number Two”, the guitar that could produce 21 distinct electrical states and, depending on who you ask, either expanded what an electric guitar could be… or proved that too much choice kills tone.
And if you are a guitarist, you will almost certainly have an opinion by the end of this. 👇
The myth starts wrong
Let’s clear something up immediately.
Most of Led Zeppelin’s studio guitar tones did not come from the infamous modded Les Paul.
“Stairway to Heaven”?
Telecaster.
“Whole Lotta Love”?
Mostly stock Les Pauls, studio tricks, and amps.
The guitar with the switches came later.
By the mid-1970s, Page was facing a very specific problem:
He wanted maximum tonal coverage on stage, without hauling a rack of guitars behind him.
So he turned one Les Paul into many.
The patient: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul (Number Two)
Gibson built it as a perfectly normal late-’50s sunburst.
Page did the rest.
Between 1973 and 1975, with technician Steve Hoyland, the guitar was quietly transformed into what might be the most complex passive Les Paul ever wired.
No batteries. No preamps. Just switches, coils, and physics.
What was actually installed (no mythology)
Here is the real configuration, stripped of legend.
Four push-pull pots
Each humbucker could be coil-split independently.
Not “vintage split” marketing fluff.
Real single-coil operation.
Result:
- Lower output,
- Higher resonant peak,
- Less midrange compression
This is how a Les Paul starts pretending it is a Fender.Series / parallel pickup switching
A hidden mini-toggle allowed the two pickups together to be wired:
– Parallel (standard Les Paul middle position)
– Series (both pickups acting as one giant pickup)
Series mode is crucial to understand: It does not just get louder. It shifts the resonant frequency down and increases inductance.
Translation:
Thicker mids, more amp push, earlier breakup.
It is effectively a built-in boost pedal made of copper.Phase reverse on the bridge pickup
Another concealed toggle flipped the bridge pickup out of phase.
This is the sound that divides guitarists instantly.
– Partial frequency cancellation
– Hollow midrange
– Nasal, vocal “honk”
Think Peter Green, but with more control.
This tone is unmistakable live in “Since I’ve Been Loving You”.
You either love it… or think it sounds broken.Neck carve and tuners (the boring but important bits)
Page also:
– Shaved the neck to match his beloved “Number One”
– Replaced Klusons with Grover Rotomatics
These did not change tone.
They changed confidence.
Page’s extreme bends and violin-style phrasing demand tuning stability. The mods enabled the playing, not the sound.
Why people call it “21 tones” (and why that number is misleading)
If you count:
Each pickup split or full
Pickups together or alone
Series vs parallel
Phase normal or reversed
You can mathematically arrive at 21 distinct wiring states.
But here is the part guitar forums rarely admit:
Many of those states are musically redundant.
Some are:
Too thin
Too quiet
Too similar to each other in a live mix
And Page knew this.
The uncomfortable truth: Page barely used most of them
This is where the legend gets interesting.
By Page’s own admission, he relied on only a small subset:
Standard humbuckers
Out-of-phase middle position
Occasional coil-split for texture
The rest existed as optionality, not necessity.
Which raises an uncomfortable question:
If Jimmy Page did not use 18 of the 21 tones…
why do modern guitarists obsess over recreating them?
The tonal physics most people miss
The “21-tone” system is often discussed emotionally.
Let’s talk physics.
Coil splitting
Reduces inductance → raises resonant peak
Result: more perceived clarity, less sustain
Series wiring
Doubles inductance → lowers resonant peak
Result: thickness, compression, amp saturation
Phase reversal
Creates frequency notches via cancellation
Result: articulation through a dense mix
None of this is mystical.
It is electrical engineering applied to musical taste.
The cultural impact: why this mod refuses to die
In the 1990s, Page finally revealed the wiring publicly.
Suddenly, the “mystery switches” had a schematic.
What happened next was inevitable:
Aftermarket harnesses
Boutique push-pull kits
Signature Les Paul reissues
“Jimmy Page wiring” became a product category.
And here is the irony:
Most players who install it:
→ set it once
→ never touch it again
The real lesson hiding in plain sight
Page’s Number Two teaches a lesson that is still uncomfortable for guitar culture.
More tonal options do not automatically create better tone.
They create:
Cognitive load
Decision paralysis
More things to second-guess
Page built the system to avoid switching guitars, not to audition sounds mid-solo.
Modern players often do the opposite.
A question worth arguing about
If you had one guitar:
Perfectly set up
Electrically flexible
Sonically familiar
Would you rather have:
Three tones you deeply understand
or
Twenty-one tones you barely explore?
Jimmy Page quietly answered that question on stage.
Now it is your turn.
If you enjoyed this kind of deep-dive into the engineering and culture of guitar tone, follow the trail further. These instruments are not just wood and wire. They are decision-making machines.
What would you strip out of the Jimmy Page wiring?
And what would you keep?
