Upon Les Paul’s return to Gibson in 1968, he designed two models that featured his personal preferences.

In 1971, Gibson combined the Les Paul Personal and Professional into one model – the Les Paul Recording. Like the Personal and Professional, the Recording was spec’d with low-impedance pickups, along with a switch to change the pickups to out-of-phase alignment, and it had an extra tone control not found on other Gibsons. The Recording got it’s name because low-impedance pickups were better-suited for the way Paul worked in a recording studio – bypassing an amplifier and plugging his guitar directly into a recording console.

To accomodate guitarists who plugged into amplifiers – which were the overwhelming majority of guitarists – a transformer was added to the Les Paul Recording, allowing the player to switch between high- or low-impedance output.

The Recording faded in the late 70’s due to guitarists desire for the original Les Paul Standard.