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tjon901 « Epiphone Prophecy Les Paul with passive pickups »
Published on 06/23/11 at 13:23Gibsons budget line of guitars is Epiphone. Recently Epiphone has been putting out their own unique guitar models. One of these lines is the Prophecy guitar line. The Prophecy line has a few guitars of different shapes but they all pretty much have the same basic features.The Epiphone Prophecy series is a really nice line of guitars from Epiphone. These guitars have a real metal attitude to them. All the guitars in the Prophecy series feature 24 fret ebony fretboards on special satin finished necks with EMG or super hot passive pickups. The necks are nicely bound like on custom models They all have cool quilt maple tops and special inlays. This guitar is the Les Paul GX model of the Prophecy line. GX means it comes with the super hot passive pickups. This guitar comes with a set of Gibson Dirty Fingers pickups. This guitar comes with a push pull volume pot so you can split the coils in the pickups and it has a master tone and volume control. The switching is done with a 3 way switch.
UTILIZATION
With the 24 fret neck on this guitar it does not do any favors with the upper fret access. The body still joins the neck at the 17th fret on this guitar so the upper frets are even harder to get to. The speed taper satin neck is nice and is a good alternative to a completely raw neck like you would get on a Zakk Wylde signature guitar. The ebony fretboard with the jumbo frets is really nice under you fingers and provides a good action once setup. The tune-o-matic bridge is locking so it will not fall off when you are changing strings. This is something that many Gibsons do not have.
SOUNDS
The Gibson Dirty Fingers pickups provide a unique sound. When I think of the Dirty Fingers pickup I think of old 80s John Sykes tone. These pickups are popular today with punk rockers. The guy from Blink 182 used these pickups in his Gibson and Epiphone signature guitars. These pickups are really hot for a Gibson passive and they were pretty bright. In the bright position this brightness is good. It will really cut through any heavy mix. In the neck position I dont think it is a great pickup. You cant really get a smooth neck position tone with the brightness of the Dirty Fingers. With the coil splitting ability you can get some single coil tones with these pickups and since they are so bright and hot they can get a good emulation of a real single coil sound.
OVERALL OPINION
Epiphone is putting out some good original models now. I would recommend the EMG version over this one but some people do not like active pickups. The red quilt and gold hardware give it a look a lot different that you see on most metal guitars. The coil tap gives you more versatility than you would get with the active pickup version also. If you dont mine the horrible upper fret access this is a good metal Epiphone.
UTILIZATION
With the 24 fret neck on this guitar it does not do any favors with the upper fret access. The body still joins the neck at the 17th fret on this guitar so the upper frets are even harder to get to. The speed taper satin neck is nice and is a good alternative to a completely raw neck like you would get on a Zakk Wylde signature guitar. The ebony fretboard with the jumbo frets is really nice under you fingers and provides a good action once setup. The tune-o-matic bridge is locking so it will not fall off when you are changing strings. This is something that many Gibsons do not have.
SOUNDS
The Gibson Dirty Fingers pickups provide a unique sound. When I think of the Dirty Fingers pickup I think of old 80s John Sykes tone. These pickups are popular today with punk rockers. The guy from Blink 182 used these pickups in his Gibson and Epiphone signature guitars. These pickups are really hot for a Gibson passive and they were pretty bright. In the bright position this brightness is good. It will really cut through any heavy mix. In the neck position I dont think it is a great pickup. You cant really get a smooth neck position tone with the brightness of the Dirty Fingers. With the coil splitting ability you can get some single coil tones with these pickups and since they are so bright and hot they can get a good emulation of a real single coil sound.
OVERALL OPINION
Epiphone is putting out some good original models now. I would recommend the EMG version over this one but some people do not like active pickups. The red quilt and gold hardware give it a look a lot different that you see on most metal guitars. The coil tap gives you more versatility than you would get with the active pickup version also. If you dont mine the horrible upper fret access this is a good metal Epiphone.