Epiphone Les Paul Modern - Faded Pelham Blue Review

Epiphone Rocks!

I can't say enough good things about this guitar. It's visually stunningly beautiful. The fit and finish is excellent. The frets are smooth and polished with no grit. It has so many nice features for the price - locking (Grover) tuners, graph tech nut, ebony fingerboard, push/pull pots, and a metal jack plate. The set up out of the box was perfect. This is the third of the Epiphone… read more "inspired by Gibson" guitars I've gotten and they've all been of superb quality. I also have the Firebird and the single P90 LP jr. and the quality control on every one of them has been excellent. You can really tell that Epiphone is a company that cares about their quality, customers and brand reputation!

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Sharpen This Axe!

This is a great guitar to make your own. I considered getting the Gibson version of this, but I really wanted a guitar that I didn't feel badly about modding. I wanted Seymour Duncan P-Rails so I could get both P-90 AND humbluckers sounds. I wanted a satin neck. I wanted a more uniform taper on the pots. I don't like treble bleeds. I wanted locking strap buttons. I've even… read more tried a piezo bridge on it and experimented with nylon strings. I currently have a Gotoh 510 bridge on it, but mounted on the original Epi bottomless inserts. This lets me drive the bridge's vertical locking bolt into the core wood for a "faux ABR" effect.This guitar had great "bones" to work with. The chambered body is very resonant. The guitar is exceptionally loud when unplugged. Love the locking tuners. Fit and finish were excellent. Fret levels were decent. Fret ends were finished well and the polish was good. I had to deepen the nut slots. They were right to spec, which, for me, is way too high. After that, with a straight neck, the frets were buzz-free for my preferred action - 1.5mm @ 12th fret using .011s. If you want super low shredder action you could consider getting Sweetwater to Plek it.So I've had the fun of modding, and gotten a guitar that's really my own. I've had it for several months now and the honeymoon is definitely not over.And speaking of Sweetwater, big shout out! The first one arrived with the slightest cracks (possibly just finish-deep) where the neck meets the headstock (common Gibson weak point). Sweetwater insisted on replacing it and delivered in 2 days. I would not hesitate to buy a guitar from Sweetwater again.

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This guitar is awesome!!!

Guitar plays beautifully and looks stunning in person! Sweetwater did an awesome job getting my guitar waaaaay before the initially said I would, 2 weeks early to be exact! I just took ot out of the box and it just fits perfectly in my hands! I'm really excited to jam with this guitar!!

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Thumbs up 2020 Epi...

Bought my 202 Epi LP Modern in PELHAM BLUE and is very satisfied with the guitar with a few minor cosmetics in neck joint areas where the body finish had some overspray to it but overall well made guitar. If there were to be changes to be made, they'd be having the pots with PUSH/PUSH pots instead of PUSH/PULL because you have sweaty fingers, the push/pull pots are not friendly… read more unlike the push/push. My made a few mods to my tastes as I would do with most of guitars. I replaced the pickup rings screw with black flat headed screws, added a poker chips for toggle switch, replaced the bridge stock bridge with FABER ABR-1 bridge(the guitar sings ever better), replaced stoptail with Gibson TP6, accented the knobs with black tubings and a few other areas. I already had my order in for 1959 Epiphone in Aged Dark Cherry.

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Sweet Epiphone Les Paul Modern!

I ordered my Epiphone Les Paul Modern as soon as it was announced at NAMM. Sweetwater didn't have any information on it initially. Had to wait 3+ months to receive it, but it was certainly worth the wait. I've been playing/practicing for a year. This LP is to replace my Squire Classic Vibe Stratocaster so my thoughts are relative to that guitar. My new LP is in the faded Pelham… read more blue color. It's very attractive and the on-line photos don't do it justice. The color shifts a bit in different lighting ranging from a metallic blue to almost a green color. I've crawled all over this guitar and cannot find a cosmetic flaw anywhere. Compared to my Squire Strat, the LP has a much richer tone. I suppose this is due to the humbucker pickups vs the P90's in the Squire and partially due to the slightly heavier strings. The LP's have 10's while the Strat has 9's. The Modern LP has an asymmetrical neck, putting a bit more "meat" on the bass side of things. I like it. The neck seems a bit stiffer than on the Strat – something that I like. The Modern version of this guitar includes push/pull knobs that change the pickups, phase, etc. I can't say that I have fully explored these options yet. Complaints? Only minor. First, the "Gibson" strings on the Epiphone started losing their plating (?) right away. After a month, the E-A-G strings started looking like they were copper plated. The plating even seems to have rubbed off where my right hand brushes against the bridge. See photo. I practice quite a bit every day, but I've never seen guitar strings do this. But that's easy enough to fix. Also the jack was a bit difficult to insert the cable into. This seems to be loosening up a bit after a couple of months. It's a beautiful guitar and sounds as good as it looks. I would highly recommend that you consider this guitar, Sweetwater of course, and my sales engineer Jake Hershaw.

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