The Epiphone Les Paul Standard Provides Killer Tones at an Un-Killer Price
Written: Dec 23 '06 (Updated May 26 '08)
Product Rating:
Pros: Great construction, playability and tone for the price
Cons: Not a professional's guitar, but what did you expect?
The Bottom Line: This is a great buy for intermediate hard rock guitarists. Great tone and playability for $400 leaves you enough dough to buy a decent amp!
buffoonery's Full Review: Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus
Let’s cut to the chase: Who should buy this Les Paul Standard? For the $400 or so (plus tax) that this axe will cost you, this is best consumed by casual players who are looking for Gibson bite at a Epiphone price or high school hard rock garage band types. More generally, this is the guitar that a parent buys for a student who is advancing and has shown that he’s a) getting to be serious about the instrument and b) leaning in a rock and roll direction.
On the other hand, serious amateurs and professionals should look to the more expensive Gibson line for guitars that provide more quality and durability with better tone.
A little history: the Les Paul solid body electric guitar is among the two most important guitars in rock and roll history (the other being the equally important Fender Stratocaster). Designed by well-known guitarist and singer Les Paul (who cut many important records with his ex-wife, Mary Ford, back in the 40’s and 50’s), it sprung from the so-called “log” electric guitar that he designed in 1941. Gibson got a lot more interested in Paul’s product in the early 1950’s when it became obvious to the company that it had to compete with the solid body Telecasters and Stratocasters that Fender was producing. Except for a break between approximately 1961 and 1968 when, insanely, production was stopped while the company switched production to the SG model (a guitar that Paul disliked so much that he insisted his name be removed from it), the guitar has been among the most popular and highly desired rock and roll guitar due to its overdriven tones and great sustain.
However, a medium-priced Gibson Les Paul is going to cost over a grand, and reissues more in the $2500 to $4000 range. So what is the bargain-priced guitarist to do?
Answer: Look at the Epiphone line.
Epimanondas Stathopoulos founded the modern Epiphone company back in 1915, when he took over the family business after the family had emigrated to New York. He renamed the company Epiphone in 1923,manufacturing primarily banjos, then moving into archtop acoustic guitars. After his death of cancer, the company fell onto hard times and was finally purchased by Gibson in1957. Since then, the brand name has served as Gibson’s entry level line, manufacturing its guitars in Japan, generally with less expensive components. But unless you’re an expert (like the guys who write on epinions), most people aren’t going to know the difference and besides, they’re a lot cheaper.
The Les Paul Standard model under review here is a very competitively-priced product that will deliver the intermediate player a lot of value. As I said, it looks, tastes, and almost feels like a Gibson standard. The neck is 24 ¾” long constructed of rosewood on mahagony with 22 frets (of a little cheaper quality than the Gibson frets). Fret markers are trapezoid inlay.The body is mahagony/alder with a maple top. The Gibson LP is a notoriously heavy instrument but at eight pounds this Epiphone is a little lighter than the nine-pound Gibson Black Beauty I own so that’s actually an advantage. The body is in good shape but you can see some minor paint flaws here and there—you wouldn’t see these on the Gibson models. The neck played clean up and down the entire length without any fret buzz.
The guitar is equipped with two chrome pick-ups, an Alnico Classic humbucker in the neck and an Alnico Hot humbucker in the bridge. If you’re reading this review, you’re probably relatively new to guitars so I’ll explain briefly what a humbucker pick-up is. The pick-ups that were initially used in early electric guitars are known as single-coil, because they are made of one magnet with wiring wrapped around it. These pick-ups produce a characteristic 60-cycle hum when amplified that many guitarists think is undesirable. Humbucking pick-ups have two-coils that cancel out, or “buck” the hum, hence the name.
The pick-ups on this guitar produce a nice, fat, overdriven tone that is highly desirable for hard rock music. Sustain is nice, too, although as one might expect these are not as good as the pick-ups you will get on the Gibson varieties (usually either P.A.F.s, 57s, or Alnico 490 and 498, all of which are totally a$$-kicking pick-ups). The two volume and two tone knobs (slightly cheesy, I admit) control the pick-ups, and a three-way switch permits you to select the bridge, bridge and neck, or neck pick-ups.
Tuners are Grover and the bridge is a Tune-o-Matic with a stop tailpiece. The guitar is available in a sharp ebony with cream trim.
As I hope I’ve made clear, in my mind you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better quality guitar in this price range (although the Mexican-made Strat and some Ibanezs will give Epi a run for the money). For the intermediate student who just hasto start playing Led Zeppelin and needs that killer tone, this guitar is perfect for the money. I do want to make one thing clear about this and, indeed, all Les Paul guitars. These are heavy guitars that can become a chore to play. Frankly, I don’t find them to be very good practice instruments because of the weight and lack of body contour (which makes the Fender Strat such a fabulous practice guitar). Those concerns aside, the Epiphone Les Paul Standard is a terrific guitar for the bargain hunter who would like to have Les Paul tone and still have enough money to buy an amplifier through which to play his guitar.
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