Devon Allman and Duane Betts recently got together with Guitar Center to film a First Impressions video about the Gibson Les Paul Traditional Pro V.
The new electric guitar sports an asymmetrical neck and compound-radius fingerboard, along with Gibson Tradbucker pickups and advanced electronics offering coil-split, coil-tap and out-of-phase sounds.
“All the little tricks, the out-of-phase, the coil tap, it’s a really versatile guitar,” Allman says. “You can get the real woody, violin-y kind of Les Paul thing, but then you can get kind of a throaty Tele thing but without really dropping the resonance and sustain.”
“And if you just want to go pure Les Paul you can do that, too,” Betts adds.
The two players also discuss the long road to forming their current act, the Allman Betts Band.
“We met as kids on the Allman Brothers reunion tour in ’89,” says Allman, the son of the late Gregg Allman. “So we’ve known each other 30 years. And we kind of always had the idea of working together in our back pocket.”
Adds Betts, whose father is Dickey Betts, “We’re proud of the band we’ve put together, too. We play differently every night, [and] the same song will just go to a completely different place.”
Says Allman, “I think there’s a sincerity in what we now call classic rock. It’s pretty timeless.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if 100 years from now there’s still cats like us playing Les Pauls, playing rock ‘n’ roll. And I certainly hope so.”
