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Hatsubai « Solid guitar for the money »
Published on 07/07/11 at 16:06The Epiphone Les Paul Classic is one of the more popular guitars that Epiphone has in their lineup. The guitar features a mahogany body with a mahogany neck, chrome hardware, 24.75'' scale length, carved maple top, optional pickguard, rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, trapezoid inlays, tune-o-matic bridge, binding, two humbuckers, two volumes, two tones and a three way switch.
UTILIZATION
The guitar itself is put together decently. You can tell it's one of the lower models because of some fretwork issues. For one, the frets weren't perfectly level. You could tell this once you start lowering the action. It wasn't bad, but there were some frets that wouldn't perfectly ring a note because they were low. The ends themselves weren't too bad on this one. The nut needed to be recut, however. It would cause some tuning issues, and this was particularly noticeable once you start bending. You could hear a slight ping every time you tuned up, so it's obvious it was binding. A new nut should fix that issue, but again, these are fairly standard problems on these guitars.
SOUNDS
The pickups in this are pretty bland, I've found. The bridge itself is muddy and undefined. It has some bite to it, but I find it's not enough to help cut through the mix for what I'm looking for. The neck pickup is decent, but I find that it's not thick and smooth enough for me. I like super powerful and thick sounding neck pickups, and the only way I could get that tone was by rolling down the tone knob. Even then, it wasn't the same. The clean tones were half way decent on the neck pickup, but they sounded pretty bad on the bridge.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're going to get one of these, be sure to play through a bunch to find one that is setup nicely. These tend to have issues with fretwork and nuts, so pay close attention to those. Once you get one you like, spend some money and invest in some nice sounding pickups for it. That'll make it rival any Gibson out there.
UTILIZATION
The guitar itself is put together decently. You can tell it's one of the lower models because of some fretwork issues. For one, the frets weren't perfectly level. You could tell this once you start lowering the action. It wasn't bad, but there were some frets that wouldn't perfectly ring a note because they were low. The ends themselves weren't too bad on this one. The nut needed to be recut, however. It would cause some tuning issues, and this was particularly noticeable once you start bending. You could hear a slight ping every time you tuned up, so it's obvious it was binding. A new nut should fix that issue, but again, these are fairly standard problems on these guitars.
SOUNDS
The pickups in this are pretty bland, I've found. The bridge itself is muddy and undefined. It has some bite to it, but I find it's not enough to help cut through the mix for what I'm looking for. The neck pickup is decent, but I find that it's not thick and smooth enough for me. I like super powerful and thick sounding neck pickups, and the only way I could get that tone was by rolling down the tone knob. Even then, it wasn't the same. The clean tones were half way decent on the neck pickup, but they sounded pretty bad on the bridge.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're going to get one of these, be sure to play through a bunch to find one that is setup nicely. These tend to have issues with fretwork and nuts, so pay close attention to those. Once you get one you like, spend some money and invest in some nice sounding pickups for it. That'll make it rival any Gibson out there.