dismalswamp Posted September 12, 2009 Report Share Posted September 12, 2009 After hankering for one of these in my youth I have just been lucky enough to pick up a 1998 model at a reasonable price (£300). It's in great shape and nice guitar overall, solid medium weight. Basically it seems to be a pretty bog standard Epi Les Paul, nowhere near the quality of the old (late 80's - early 90's) Epiphone Customs/Standards and nowhere near the ridiculously high priced current Slash models. The finish and snake decal are gorgeous but the components and hardware are pretty poor. I'm going to get to work replacing the junk hardware - plastic naff tuners, 'orrible bridge, speed knobs and truly awful black plastic nut. On top of that it will get a proper 50's rewire with switchcraft/CTS/Vitamin caps etc and some Duncan Alnico II's to boot. My question is whether you guys think I should stay with the black hardware color scheme and upgrade the parts to Grover/Gotoh etc or to bin the black and replace with the chrome versions, swapping the black rings for the cream to bring it inline with the Gibson model? I want to upgrade the quality but not lose the collectability - I cannot decide if the black is cool or was just a cheap way of making the guitar different. What are your thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 12, 2009 Report Share Posted September 12, 2009 i did mine with gotoh nickel (not a chrome fan) acoustically seems to ring a bit better possibly harmonics would be better as well? went with RS superpots 50s wiring and luxe PIO caps SD AlNiCo IIs as well very happy so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lpfan Posted September 12, 2009 Report Share Posted September 12, 2009 Hey Iamusician, how do you like the Ibanez? I just got one of the SA series guitars and I am pretty happy with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dismalswamp Posted September 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 12, 2009 i did mine with gotoh nickel (not a chrome fan) acoustically seems to ring a bit better possibly harmonics would be better as well?went with RS superpots 50s wiring and luxe PIO caps SD AlNiCo IIs as well very happy so far Yeah looks good with the cream and nickel - that looks like one of those "exclusive" chinese gibsons rather that the epi though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 13, 2009 Report Share Posted September 13, 2009 Hey Lamusician' date=' how do you like the Ibanez? I just got one of the SA series guitars and I am pretty happy with it. [/quote']Dude it rocks The orig EDGE trems are phenomenal beasts.. mine is a 91 took a while to get used to the thinner flatter neck but it sheds for sure I put EVO in neck and EVO2 in the bridge had 10-46 tuned down 1/2 step for teh longest time but just set it up again and did 9-46 in 440 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 13, 2009 Report Share Posted September 13, 2009 Yeah looks good with the cream and nickel - that looks like one of those "exclusive" chinese gibsons rather that the epi though! what ever it is... its one of my favorite guitars at the moment plays really nice.. in fact the black epi quilt top is now for sale Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigvin Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 What did you decide on? I picked one of these up a couple of months ago and am going to start replacing parts soon, so it would be great if you could post some pics up of the mods as you do them. I was thinking about keeping with the black, just so I could retain the original look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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