Epiphone Les Paul Jr SL

For guitars of the straight waisted variety (or reverse offset).
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Embenny
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Re: Epiphone Les Paul Jr SL

Post by Embenny » Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:51 am

I think the contrast of the pickups with the pickguard looks fantastic.
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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thenewromance
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Re: Epiphone Les Paul Jr SL

Post by thenewromance » Sun Mar 03, 2019 8:27 am

Looks real classy. Mine arrived on Wednesday. I like it, but of course for 99 € you can't expect everything to be top notch :)

The good: Playability is great, the guitar holds its tuning, the pickups sound nice, the finish options are funky. Out of the box it didn't need that much care to perform! I like to positioning of the volume knob. The bridge allows for comfortable palm muting. The guitar is super light, picking it up alone is fun :) It is also really loud acoustically and sustains very well.

The bad: You can tell the components are cheap. My toggle switch is installed at an angle, the transition from black to yellow finish on the neck and especially headstock looks cheesy, the strings are already digging into the bridge. Intonation is also not that easy to get right, but that might be me since I don't have much experience and wraparound bridges aren't exactly known for easy and precise intonation setup 8) I'm still working on it. After adjusting the bridge, however, the low E doesn't go over the pole pieces anymore. I feel the low end is missing a little oomph that humbuckers and/or Fender scale seem to provide. The volume and tone pot tapers could be better. It's a bit neck-divey, but not too bad since everything is quite light in weight, so you don't have to use a lot of force to keep the guitar in playing position.

All in all: this guitar is nice. I expected to unbox it, play it a few days and then send it back after discovering all the shortcomings. This is not too likely to happen now! The cheap components and overall feel are a somewhat sad, however. I wish you could get this guitar in a higher quality version (whether Gibson or Epiphone wouldn't really matter to me), because the overall model - Gibson scale with single coils, wraparound bridge and cool finish options - is super interesting and not really covered anywhere on the market.
Last edited by thenewromance on Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

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HNB
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Re: Epiphone Les Paul Jr SL

Post by HNB » Sun Mar 03, 2019 8:37 pm

I dig the thin and light wight aspect of it also. It has odd mixture of features, but that is what I think is cool. The price was a bonus. I got the pack version with the little amp and that little thing actually doesn't sound terrible. LOL
Christopher
Lilith Guitars

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