SeriesEpiphone Zakk Wylde

Many people do not remember that Zakk had more guitars than the Bullseye Les Paul that everyone remembers. He played a few other designs in the 80s but the Bullseye was the only one that stuck around. Now Gibson has Zakk using other designs so they can sell more guitars. One of the new designs has an orange and black buzzsaw bullseye motif on it. This guitar is the Epiphone version of the Buzzsaw Zakk Wylde Gibson. The main difference with this guitar is the electronics and some of the wood selection. The guitar still has a mahogany body and a maple neck but the fretboard is made of rosewood instead of ebony. The electronics are still EMG pickups but they are not active EMG's. They are EMG's budget line of passive pickups which are pretty poor but better than what this guitar would have come with. The guitar has Zakks Buzzsaw motif and after all these mods it is your typical Epiphone Les Paul. Each pickup has its own tone and volume control and there is a 3 way switch for your pickup selecting. UTILIZATION This guitar has all the same playability enhancements as the other Epiphone Zakk Wylde guitars. The raw neck helps make the neck a bit faster because with a finished neck you can get a sticky feel. If you are use to modern guitars with thin necks the Les Paul neck will be very big for you. Because of the set neck design there is a large neck tenon and joint. This can make the upper frets hard for some people to reach because the body essentially joins the neck at the 17th fret. After the 17th fret you are reaching around the body to get to the frets. The tuning stability is good because there is no tremolo. The quality of hardware Epiphone uses is not that great. I have had problems with the input jack unscrewing itself and things like that. SOUNDS Being a budget copy the electronics are lower end versions of what the Gibson version has. The passive pickups are built to emulate the tone of the 81 and the 85 but it just doesnt quite get there. The bridge pickup is tight like an 81 but it doesnt quite have the same top end sizzle as a real 81. The neck pickup is closer to the active version than the bridge. The 85 naturally has a warmer more passive sound so the passive version does not differ much in the sound department. Since these pickups are EMG's they have the quick connect wiring system so you can easily swap these pickups out with a set of active EMG's when you get the chance and this guitar will really rip then and you will have the true Zakk Wylde sound. OVERALL OPINION This guitar is very reasonably priced with only a few differences. The Gibson version is thousands and thousands of dollars. With an expensive guitar like that you would almost be afraid to play it. With this guitar it is cheap enough that you can play it out anywhere you want and not be afraid something will happen to it. With a 200 dollar pickup swap you will have pretty much the same guitar as the Gibson for thousands less. If you are a Zakk Wylde fan and cant justify playing thousands of dollars for a Les Paul Custom this Epiphone is a good option.

Saw it in a shop window, just had to have one. AUS$349 - discounted 30%. Novelty and overall build quality/presentation. Still reading/learning how to tune it for the best results - includes perhaps putting on much heavier gauge strings... Construction and build quality are excellent. Comes with a stap, chord, 'gig case', and even a 9-volt battery. Yes - "batteries are included". Ready to go out of the box (nice touch). I saw this thing in a shop and I just had to buy one. I think the concept and build quality are excellent. As for playability - well let's just say it's a steep learning curve. I guess the hardest thing so far is to get the lil b*stard of a thing to stay in tune. I just assumed you tune it like a normal guitar, but from what I'm reading around the traps it sounds like you need to tune it up several semi-tones/tones. Kinda makes sense when you think about it really - the whole thing is about half-scale, so to use 'normal' guitar strings it seems quite logical that the overall string tension is going to be relatively low. And considering the overall small build style of guitar, any stress you put on the fretboard/strings/neck is going to be amplified a lot more than on a standard full-sized electric axe. Pitch bends are achieved by quite minimal bending of the strings - I'd say down to about a third as much as what you'd use on a Strat for example. It takes a whole new feel to get this lil baby to sound right. The secret is to appreciate it for what it is and use a really light touch. Don't expect to be able to play full or fancy chords. In general, two-string power chords work ok, and light-touch lead riffs come up ok too. Just remember that it's a small instrument - probably more suited to a child's touch and hand-span than that of a chord-hammering adult. I've just come off belting the daylights out of a full-sized bass guitar, so I can immediately hear/feel that this thing requires a much more delicate style. I'm interested to see what effect of tuning it up from E-A-D-G-B-E sounds like. That of course means frying my brain trying to work out the various chord inversions to use in place of 'normal' chords. If you've ever used a capo to play harmonies against a 'standard' chord structure you'll get my drift. From what I've read so far, I guess I've been lucky enough to score one that has a fully adjustable bridge - string height and harmonics are totally adjustable. Neck action is also adjustable. But I'm not going to play with any of that just yet. I reckon that trying different tuning combinations and experimenting with playing style might just pay off. It's not rocket-science when you think about it. Mandolins and Ukele's are small instruments that can produce phenomenal sounds in the right hands. I'm sure the Pee Wee has got something to offer there as well. It's too early for me to really give constructive criticism yet - and I don't want to unnecessarily bag it until I've exhausted a few possibilities. I think the Pee Wee is one of those kinds of instruments that you have to learn to play from scratch all over again. And I'm sure there's going to be someone turn up on, say, YouTube, that sets this thing on fire. I'm positive that there's some great sounds to come out of it - only we have to find the key to unlock it's potential. It's a pretty bold and brave move to try and produce a workable guitar on this 'bonsai' scale. I don't think a 300-buck mini-guitar can be expected to do what it's 10-grand cousins can. It might flop, but then again it might just take off if someone like Clapton or Sambora et al play something definitive on it. Along the same lines as the child's piano in Neil Diamond's 'Shilo'. Wouldn't it be great to see a 'Hendrix' figure grab hold of one of these things and ring it's neck until it screamed pure colour...? This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

The Epiphone Les Paul Zakk Wylde edition is meant to be a lower priced alternative to his famed Gibson signature model that sells for several thousand dollars new. It has a lot of the same (or very similar) appointments to his Gibson Custom Shop model. The most notable thing about it is its iconic bullseye white and black finish. This is something that Zakk popularized and it's fairly unique to his brand. Other than the cosmetics, it's basically your standard Les Paul Custom '70s reissue. It has a mahogany body, a maple neck with rosewood fretboard and 22 frets, Grover tuners, tune-o-matic bridge, EMG HZ pickups and a typical Les Paul layout as far as the controls go. They're made in one of Epi's various overseas factories depending on what year you have. UTILIZATION The guitar is really no more or less ergonomic than a standard Les Paul guitar. It's medium to heavy weight and somewhat clunky neck heel may be a turn off for some players who are used to superstrat type guitars. It's got reasonable upper fret access for a Les Paul, but it's still nowhere near the left of something like an Ibanez or Jackson in that department. Getting a good sound out of this guitar isn't difficult if you play metal styles. The EMG pickups aren't very versatile and the mahogany/maple wood combo really doesn't work for more vintage textures, so if you're doing the high gain thing like Zakk does, you're set. The pickups sound like a reasonable facsimile of EMGs, but they're a tad muddier and more compressed, which is a bit of a drag. SOUNDS This guitar unfortunately is a bit of a one trick pony as far as its sounds go. The clean and low gain tones are not really a strong point of this guitar. The pickups are too compressed and high output to really allow the subtle dynamics that make a good clean tone to come through on any level. The high gain tones delivered are decent for heavy metal - they're fairly tight and aggressive and work well for palm muted riffs, pinch harmonics or fast alternate picked lead passages. The pickups aren't quite as good sounding as real EMGs or Seymour Duncan Blackouts, but they do a decent enough job I suppose. It's not really versatile, but for the high octane metal thing it does a decent job. OVERALL OPINION All in all I think the Epi Zakk Wylde is a decent guitar for a younger player or someone looking for a decent Les Paul to play metal on for not a lot of money. If you aren't a fan of the bullseye white and black scheme Zakk has done a few other designs over the years with varying cosmetics. These run about $800 new which isn't too bad a deal for this guitar, but really it's only worth it if you're playing metal or you're a diehard ZW fan.

(Originally written by Shark-Food/translated from Audiofanzine FR) Guitar made in Korea. 22 frets Passive EMG HZ H4 pickups Tune-o-matic bridge Mahogany body with maple top Mahogany set neck with maple fingerboard 4 controls: 2 x volume and 2 x tone Grover machine heads Gold-plated hardware Nice body binding! Very good first impression, superb look A very nice looking guitar! UTILIZATION Quite thick neck compared to a 60's model, but still very pleasant! Same upper frets access as with every Les Paul, no surprises in this respect. The weight is ok. I find the guitar is well-balanced. The sound is a bit surprising, but still the passive pickups sound good (even if I recommend an active pickup set) SOUNDS Nobody buys a Zakk Wylde model to play chanson! I think anyone who buys it wants to play some sort of hard rock (or eventually blues). I use it with a Marshall 150H (hybrid) and this combination gives you very good results (I can't wait to buy active pickups to enhance the sound). I use a Wah Wylde (excellent) and a MXR ZW44 as well as a Marshall BB II. You'll have to tune your settings first to avoid a shrilling sound, but you'll find the right settings within minutes. OVERALL OPINION I've had it for only 2 days so I'll update this review later. When I saw it at the store I immediately thought it looked nice... but I hesitated to buy it because of its price. Afterwards I saw a better price on the web, including a case! I bought it... I also own a Gibson LP Studio and a Mexico Fender Strat. The Epiphone has a killer look and a superb finish (unlike other Epiphone products). Update from 07.18.08: With a bit more experience I can now confirm that this guitar rocks! It's price is decreasing so go for it. PS: I find the antique ivory finish looks awful! Edit from 12.13.2008 I replaced the passive pickups with a ZW kit two months ago. The sound is killer (the EMG85 is AWESOME).