Question for PMN (Electric Guitars)

Santana’s tone has gone god awful… probably because of all the jamming with people like Michelle Branch. 😀

Have you guys checked out the new song from Slash’s upcoming solo record? 1988 luthiered Gibson Les Paul Copy with Alnico Pro II pick ups into a JCM 800 modded with Celestion Greenback/V30 combo. It sounds HUGE! A must check out.

This reminds me i just got Dunlop jumbo frets fitted on my Yamaha Pacifica Strat copy… planning to change my EMG SA pups on the strat to Suhr V60s maybe.

Heretic! 😡

Just a shame he makes most of the guitars he’s played in recent years sound utterly crap by massive amounts of processing! 🙂

Carlos Santana played a Yamaha SG copy for years.

Kabir, absolutely. Hence me saying if it feels right then it generally is. 🙂

It depends from piece to piece of you ask me…. sometimes even a 400 quid guitar would also sound fantastic through the correct equipment. Every mass produced guitar series needs to be looked at one piece at a time. Even if you buy a Gibson Les Paul Standard its not necessary that the guitar is going to be great.

I have 2 Les Pauls, one is a custom shop 50s re-issue and one is a off the line 07 Standard. The 07 Standard i played over 2 months at a guitar store in Melbourne before i picked it up. I ran it through various combos like Marshall, Vox, Laney and even a modded Twin Reverb ‘Chicago Blues Box’ replica before i took it home. I even have a Yamaha Strat copy which sounds as good as any other off the line Strat.

I think at your sons age Peter go with an Epiphone, they are certainly good guitars and good products for the money you pay.

Yep, Epiphone are part of the same company and again there’ll probably just be a difference in the woods, manufacturing process and possibly electronics. For example my main bass is a G&L L2500 (thank you Leo Fender!) which I think has a RRP of around £1350, but there’s a cheaper version of it called the G&L Tribute series. They use the same American-made electronics but all the woodwork is done by machine in Korea, whereas mine was hand made in the States. That said, the Tribute version of mine still retails at around £650 but it’s considerably cheaper for essentially the same instrument.

You usually find it’s differences like that between the ‘main’ and ‘secondary’ lines manufacturers have, but the differences aren’t necessarily all that noticeable when you play the actual instrument. Whatever feels right usually is right. 🙂

Paul

Thanks for the input Paul and Ben,

as Ben mentioned the Epiphone apparently their “Elitist”-series also includes a very good Les Paul. As Epiphone is part of the Gibson company they can’t be too far off from the original.
I’ll keep you posted.

Regards
Peter

Hi Peter,

I’m not actually familiar with the two names you mention but the quality of cheaper instruments has improved dramatically since I started playing around 12 years ago. Back then a 150 quid cheap guitar really was pretty much a plank (although you could still get some planks that felt quite nice if set up properly). Now there are all kinds of companies like Shine and Stagg who produce some remarkably good instruments incredibly cheaply. They’re not as good as more expensive instruments obviously, but there probably isn’t the ‘need’ to spend over a grand, and in fact in some ways I’d actually recommend not getting someone quite that young such an expensive instrument because he probably won’t be able to fully appreciate it. If he’s passionate about playing then he’ll play anything you shove in his hands, so I imagine you could find something considerably cheaper than £1000 that he’d be perfectly happy with. Personally I’m a big believer in working your way up to playing expensive instruments, and if he plays a cheaper (but still nice) instrument for maybe another year or two then by the time he gets something more expensive it will mean more to him and he’ll appreciate the quality more.

I imagine there will be differences between the Orville Les Pauls and an original; probably things like the kind of woods used, where it’s made, etc, but it isn’t necessarily going to feel much different, so maybe take your son to a few shops, see if you can find a Greco or Orville and just see how he gets on with them. Bear in mind that things like high action can usually be fixed, but I’ve generally found the best instruments to be the ones that you pick up in a shop and feel pretty much ‘right’ the first time you pick it up, so try a few and try find the one that feels the best.

Sorry I can’t give more specific advice on the two models you mention but hopefully that helps somehow. Let me know what you end up getting and what it’s like. 🙂

Paul

From my experience, the Vintage les paul replicas are excellent, especially the newer ones with wilkinson hardware, you get a lot for your money, The ESP LTD replicas are pretty good too, but you have to spend more to get a good one! Nothing much wrong with a high end Epiphone either?

I had a “Vintage” les paul for 3 years, never once let me down/sounded rubbish
🙂

Id also take him to have a play with one to feel what the Neck is like, as i always found the neck on mine to be too chunky for my small hands, I now have a Jackson DK2 which has a neck about as thick as a credit card :diablo:

Just my ten penneth

Cheers

Ben