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29th June at 7pm - The BluTone Band Plays Oakington Village Day

 
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Blutone reviews the Epiphone Les Paul Modern in Pelham Blue.

 

Picture of Blutone playing the Epiphone Les Paul Modern in Faded Pelham Blue


Can I share a secret with you?  I have never tried a Gibson Les Paul!  I love the look of them and some of my favourite artists use them but I simply haven't really felt inspired enough to do the Gibson thing at all having opted in the past for Fender or Squire products.

Well the closest I got to one was this week was when I made a cheeky visit to GuitarGuitar in Camden on the way to a conference I was attending.

With doors opening at 10am I thought that I would have just enough time to have a play and then go onto the meeting.

To be honest with you I was really hoping to have another play on the Epiphone Emperor Swingster as it looks like I am getting one from my family for my birthday, but there wasn't one in stock but there was an Epiphone Les Paul Modern in Pelham Blue!  I simply couldn't help myself!

The video below shows some tones:


Specifications of the Les Paul Modern.

Body

Body Shape: Les Paul Modern Figured

Body Material: Mahogany

Binding: Single Ply White

Weight Relief: Ultra Modern

Finish: Gloss

Neck

Material: Mahogany

Profile: Asymetrical Slim Taper with Contoured Heel

Scale Length: 24.72" / 628mm

Fingerboard Material: Ebony

Fingerboard Radius: 12"

Number Of Frets: 22

Frets: Medium Jumbo

Nut Material: Graph Tech® NuBone™

Inlays: Les Paul Standard Trapezoid

Joint: Glued in

Hardware

Finish: Nickel

Tuner Plating: Nickel

Bridge: LockTone™ ABR

Tailpiece: Stopbar

Tuning Machines: Grover® Locking Rotomatic tuners with Tulip Buttons with an 18:1 ratio

TrussRod: Adjustable

Truss Rod Cover: Bell-Shape (black)

Control Knobs: Clear Top Hats

Switch Tip: Black

Electronics

Neck Pickup: ProBucker-2™ humbucker w/coil-splitting

Bridge Pickup: ProBucker-3™ humbucker w/coil-splitting

Controls: 2 Volume w/coil splitting and treble bleed, 2-Tone with phase switching

Pickup Selector: 3-way Epiphone toggle

Output Jack: 1/4" Heavy-Duty Epiphone

Note that these specifications have been taken from the Andertons Website.  Click here for full details.


My thoughts.

This is a nice guitar.  It has a lovely range of tones in the usual Les Paul format with the two ProBucker pickups.  I tried all the switching features and too be honest they seemed too subtle for my preference.  I didn't really hear a nice single coil tone with the split and the out of phase switching (yes I did have it set to the middle position) didn't really give me the cocked wah that I was hoping for.

I really liked the chambered body that brought some weight relief to the instrument and the workmanship was really good.

With the scale length being 24.72" I felt that the strings didn't give me enough resistance for my style of playing but that is subjective even though it had a stock set of 10 gauge strings on it.  I still enjoyed playing it but I would probably pop some higher gauge strings on it if I ever had one.

It stayed in tune and I could easily use this guitar in my set with the Blutone Band.  It had a slightly darker sound to that of my own LP style guitar the PRS SE Starla and so would complement that in a band setting but it wasn't so different and so, for me, this is not a guitar that I need right now.

So on balance, a great guitar that I would totally recommend that sits affordably within the style of the established Gibson Les Paul.  Dare I say that it could be worth getting to upgrade the pickups so that you could get a very similar guitar to that of the Gibson version for much less money, but I guess that it still wouldn't be a Gibson and they are cool!


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