Les Paul Standard Plus Top Review (long)

[Cassady]

This is a review of my Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus Top that I originally posted on another board that I thought people might like to see. I bought this guitar used a few weeks ago and I'm still enjoying it very much:

 

First, I'm REALLY impressed with the quality of this guitar--in almost every way it's as good as or better than any of my other guitars.

 

I'll start off by addressing what are usually noted as the major faults of Epiphones--the tuners and electronics. On this guitar, made in June 2005 in the Daewon factory in China, these issues seem to have been addressed. The tuners are Grovers and after I tightened up the buttons, they work as well as any other set of Grovers that I've used. Next, the pots are full sized Alphas and they are dead quiet and work smoothly. The pickup selector switch is all-metal and appears to be a Chinese copy of a Switchcraft; at first, it was a little scratchy, but after some use it's very quiet.

 

I was a bit worried about the pickups that came with this guitar--they're what Epiphone terms Alnico Classics with a normal output pickup in the neck position and a high output one in the bridge. I usually prefer low-output pickups and and was worried about "hot" pickups.

 

My fears were for naught and the pickups suit me just fine. I played this guitar back to back with my Sheraton II that has High Order pickups wound to my specifications (vintage PAF) and while the High Orders might have a slight edge in harmonic content, they held up really well.

 

My Sheraton was made in Korea in 1999 and it showed all of the faults that Epiphones are famous for--poor pickups, scratchy dime-sized pots and a wonky pickup selector switch. I changed all of these on the Sheraton, but don't think this will be necessary on the Les Paul.

 

The finish of this guitar is really good. It's a high-gloss poly, as is usual these days, and is very well done The only problem with the finish is a small spot on the headstock where the black paint wasn't perfectly applied and a bit of the amber stain used on the guitar shows through. It isn't noticeable when the guitar has strings on it and doesn't really bother me, but it is a flaw.

 

It's a beautiful "transparent amber" color that looks quite a bit like a faded "unburst" sunburst finish. It's slightly darker around the edges. I even thought about turning the neck pickup around too make it a Peter Green Les Paul look alike, but decided against it

 

The construction quality is very good as well. The only problems that I can find are that the binding on the body isn't perfectly even with the wood at all points--you can feel, but not see, a very slight bump where the binding meets the body in places. Again, not something I'm worried about, especially at this price point.

 

It's even pretty well done inside. Sure there are spots of polishing compund, but it's generally well done. It even has shielding paint in the pickup and electronic cavities (making it a dead quiet guitar when not playing).

 

The body itself is three pieces of wood (Epiphone says it's mahogany and it DOES look like mahogany) with a bookmatched flame maple veneer on the top and a mahogany veneer on the back. The neck has a scarf (I think that's the right term) joined headstock and a glued on heel.

 

The fretwork is perfect--no sharp edges and the frets are nicely finished. All of the acrylic pearl inlays on the neck are well done without noticeable gaps. The neck profile itself is pretty close to my MIM 60's classic Stratocaster.

 

The action is very low and the intonation spot on. At first, I thought that the guitar must be strung with 9's because it plays so easily and I didn't recognize the color codes on what I knew to be D'Addario strings. I put a set of 10's on the guitar and didn't notice any difference.

 

This latter fact made me a bit curious and I took the old strings into the music store yesterday to find out what gauge they were and it turns out that they are 10's--D'Addario just changed the color coding on their ball ends since the last time I bought strings.

 

All in all, this is a great guitar, especially for the $350 I paid (including a nice hardshell case) and the only thing I've changed so far is replacing the pickup height adjustment springs with surgical tubing--something I do on all of my guitars.

 

Cassady