Les Paul Standard '60s Left-handed Electric Guitar - Bourbon Burst Review

Excellent alternative to a $2400 Gibson

Thank you Epiphone! They finally made a Les Paul that's not in clown burst colors, or black. This is a really nice guitar. The Bourbon Burst is beautiful. We know its a maple flame veneer but it looks spectacular. There is a real maple cap under the veneer, and a mahogany body and neck. Overall this is a 4.5 star guitar. Out of the box the guitar was great and easily playable.… read more The Les Paul shape is great. This guitar is 9lb 2oz which is pretty good, not too light, not too heavy. The fit and finish are excellent. There are minor nit pick issues such as a small scratch at the toggle switch, and some color bleeding on the binding by the neck joint. The guitar itself is well polished and there's no finish runs, no buffing burn through, none of that stuff. Nice smooth poly finish that has a great look. Doesn't look like the finish is piled on, and thus, doesn't look like its got a thick plastic cover on it. The flames look 3D and have a nice color and pattern change when seen in daylight. Great job on the top flames. The back has a veneer as well, but it looks pretty good and has some nice figuring to it. The neck is very nice. Epiphone has stepped up the game with the neck finishing. The binding is well scraped, and the fret ends are almost perfect. Usually with an Epiphone the frets need dressing. Not on this guitar. I did dress the fret ends on a few frets however. A little less fret work was needed compared to say a Gibson Faded or LPJ model. The neck felt smooth and even, not like previous Epiphone necks where you can feel bumps along the neck where they didn't sand it well enough. The neck is thin but not too thin - I'd say it is thicker with a more C shape compared to my SG Standard which has a thin Slim Taper neck. Headstock looks big to me, even compared to my Gibson - the headstock design looks nice, but I didn't care about the style before. The Epiphone name is inlayed into the head stock and its not a sticker or silk screen. I presume its acrylic. Looks nice anyway. Grover tuners work just fine, and don't feel like imitation ones, nor do they feel cheap. The nut is Graphtech, I think that's what they call it. It works fine and I just make some small filing adjustments to it. No string binding thus far. The plastics all look nice and match well. If you didn't know, lefty Epiphones (like lefty Fenders) have reverse pots and knobs. This one does too, and they use real CTS pots. On this model (maybe others as well), the CTS pots are 500k linear. And they're wired reverse.. So, even though they are wired 'lefty', they have the same taper in either direction. Problem is, for tone pots, you generally want log (audio) pots. On this guitar the tone controls are all or nothing. The volume pots worked fine, but remember for linear taper, you'll be turning down to 3 to get a noticeable change in volume. Just a quick flick of the finger won't get you a big volume change. They are hand wired and use 2-pin quick connects, and real caps (not cheap ceramic disks). The knobs they use are reverse, so 0-10 on the knob is really 0-10. Except one knob was misaligned and literally went from 4-14 I suppose. Easy fix. Knob pointers are a nice touch. The rest of the hardware is great. Epiphone uses locking bridge and tail pieces which are a nice function (they're called LockTone or something like that). All that means is when you change strings you don't also have to chase the tail piece sliding off your guitar. All chrome looks good. The pickups are the real deal. Hard to tell the difference between the ProBucker 2/3 and a Gibson Burstbucker 2/3 combo. They are bright but not ice pick, and have a nice breakup when under moderate gain. I don't know what they would sound like with massive gain, but for rock, classic rock, etc they are perfect. Definitely vintage tone. Uneven bobbins and Alnico II magnets under the chrome covers. Bridge output was 8.5k ohm, neck 7.87k ohm. That would be my ideal vintage pickup output. They sound good under mild to moderate gain and clean. You can really roll the volumes back and get a nice clean sound, and then dial it up to get your crunch. Over all this is a excellent guitar, one I will be proud to own. It looks really really good. I mean that. I doesn't look like a lefty left over Epiphone. The burst on the top and the red back really look sharp. The pickups are the real deal, they have the vintage Gibson tone most people are looking for. I have done the following on this guitar shortly after setting it up for myself: 1) New pots and wiring. Why? I don't want reversed controls. I'm a lefty but I'm used to 'righty' control layout (that is, clockwise is louder, like, basically, ever other knob in existence). So I rewired it using some CTS pots that I had. I even kept the quick connects :) 2) New knobs. I needed correctly numbered knobs. Had some lying around. Problem fixed. That's it, other than a restring with my Ernie Ball 10-48s and some adjustment to the action. Why is it s 4.5 star guitar? Out of the box it was playable and pretty close to being in tune. Intonation was fine. Nut was cut correctly and was a quality piece. The features of the guitar make it a great value. Excellent pickups. Sweet looking flame top. Fit and finish excellent. Almost perfect frets. Neck is slim but not too thin, and well sanded (i.e.: even from headstock to heel). Here are the negatives that detract from a 5 star rating: --It came with regular (albeit quality Grover) tuners. I think any new model should come with locking tuners unless its a vintage or historic reissue. --Also, I don't like left handed controls. I think at this point most lefties have got used to typical right-handed control orientation. If Epiphone used the same pots and wiring scheme as any new Gibson then it would be fine, and the controls would work more appropriately. --Finally, the guitar didn't come with a case. Not that I expected an expensive hard shell case, but even a padded gig bag would be nice for Epiphone's top of the line model. Epiphone really hit it out of the park with this new model lineup. The excellent look and better quality hardware really set this apart from, well, every other Epiphone I have ever owned. Rather than feeling like a low end guitar, this Epiphone really feels like a quality instrument. Add in the great model and color selection for left handed players, this is a real winner. Now just those awesome SG models in left handed!

---

Cancel Comment