NGD: It's my birthday and I'll buy if I want to [Pink Les Paul Muse]

[Embenny]

That's funny- I recently bought a bunch of marked down dress shirts in various shades of pink for $15 apiece because I guess men won't consider pink guitars or pink shirts. I like the color pink and will happily take advantage of whatever bias saves me money.

Nice guitar. I never thought you would have a Les Paul.

I have a lot of purple shirts, but not pink, though that's mostly because I find purple goes better with my skin tone.

But I'm also happy to take advantage of the anti-pink bias here.

And I agree. I never thought I'd have a Les Paul, either. I always found them tubby-sounding, but I've now learned that Gibson used to use linear taper 300k pots on everything pre-bankruptcy (or maybe until shortly before that), so not only did most models have way hotter pickups than I like - even the 57 Classics and whatnot were getting treble shaved off in a big way by their pots.

Then there was the issue of their weight, which I always found unpleasant on a strap. And their boring, limited colour selection. The general online/forum culture surrounding them, the frenzy over collectible versions like the egregious recent $50k "Greenie" reissues, and the way people like Trogly will make excuses for the Gibson Custom Shop messing up finishes on $5k guitars (I distinctly recall him saying that Gibson only does white finishes on the Les Paul Custom because "it's so hard to get a white nitro finish perfect" as though Fender and PRS don't do that every day on cheaper guitars than that!). And all the associations I made with music, and musicians, like this:



But this one ticked all the boxes. Lightweight. Bright. Awesome colour. As far from image-related baggage as possible. And it cost "Squier money." The finish flaw wasn't excused, it was a $650 CAD guitar that the shop admitted still shouldn't have been that way, so it became a $565 guitar instead.

I'm a happy camper. This is "my" Les Paul. I have no need for any others.

A1 thread, 11/10 , and happy birthday.

Not helping the GAS (which I haven't had a problem with for a decade or so) either, was just thinking yesterday "man I used to love the result I got double tracking complementary parts with a humbucker/hardtail guitar along with a Jazzmaster in a mix"...

Thanks!

Sorry for inflaming the GAS. If it helps, my experience definitely underscored why you shouldn't buy any Les Paul sight unseen. The Gibson ones I've played have been just as inconsistent as these two Muses were. Some were great. Some just kinda sucked. I had one Les Paul Classic pass through as a trade that sounded good and had a sublime neck, but it was still too heavy on a strap for me, and a little too boring looking, so I moved it on.

But if you happen to have a shop with some of these nearby and you're able to go test some out, give them a shot. The weight, fretboard, and overall vibe seems to vary a fair bit. This one had the nicest fretboard out of the four Muses there (two LPs, two SGs), was the lightest weight, and felt the nicest to play. Of course, it was the only one with loose knobs and a finish blemish, so none were perfect in any way. But I chose the one that felt right.

So either try before you buy, or buy from somewhere with a totally painless return policy. I'd have been disappointed in it if it played and sounded like the green one, and had its fretboard and weight.

Yeah, I should probably just rewire it with some CTS pots and put some nice knobs on it. After all, I'm not going to spend money on pickups, so maybe I have to mod something just for the sake of modding.

But I think I might have some better knobs sitting around in the parts drawer, I'll see how those fit before rushing to any conclusions. Don't think I'll go with traditional gold speed knobs on this one. I want to keep it as far from anything "traditional" as far as Les Pauls go.

[Embenny]

Oh, and one other observation:

Even with the crappy, corroded stock strings that feel super high-friction, I did some aggressive bends on it in the shop that didn't even pull any of the strings flat.

I'm not lying, I've never played a US Gibson with a 3+3 headstock that could do that with the stock nut. Every single one catches on the nut as it shifts angles toward the tuners, and goes flat with bends. I've had some that had replacement nuts from good techs who angled the slots and got things working as they should, but all the others were exactly why the "String Butler" was invented.

And this flippin' Epiphone doesn't do that. It stays in tune, because the nut was slotted correctly by the factory. Something that none of the fairly numerous, fairly expensive stock Gibsons I own or have owned have done. The ES-335 went flat. Both Les Paul Classics went flat. My black Flying V goes flat. My white Flying V had the nut replaced by the previous owner because it was doing that, but now doesn't. The 90s ES-335 I had two summers ago did it. The '86 '61 LP/SG Custom I briefly traded for did it, too.

And this little pink Epiphone doesn't.

Like...JFC, Gibson. File your nuts with the string path in mind. It's not rocket surgery. Your Chinese factory figured it out, apparently. You can too.

[tammyw]

That's a good color, congratulations on your birthday.

[BoringPostcards]

Happy birthday and good score!

[Embenny]

That's a good color, congratulations on your birthday.

Thanks! I thought you might like this one.

Happy birthday and good score!

Thanks! I'm very pleased with this one.

[PapaB]

Happy birthday! And congratulations on the pink guitar.
(I don't know why, but thinking about this pink guitar brings back memories of going to the movies with my father, to watch the old Pink Panther films. Lol.)

[shigginpit]

So much nuclear awesome right here. Happy birthday, great score.
Doth she bear a name? Or shall we leave naming to the blues dads?

[Embenny]

Happy birthday! And congratulations on the pink guitar.
(I don't know why, but thinking about this pink guitar brings back memories of going to the movies with my father, to watch the old Pink Panther films. Lol.)

Thanks! I loved those movies when I was a kid. Huge fan of Peter Sellers in general.

So much nuclear awesome right here. Happy birthday, great score.
Doth she bear a name? Or shall we leave naming to the blues dads?

Thanks!

I've never named a guitar. I occasionally give them nicknames, like how I call my sparkleburst T-bird my "sparklebird," but I don't really consider those to be names.

This one is just "my pink Les Paul."

[JSett]

Doth she bear a name?

Eww

[shigginpit]

I was just looking for an excuse to say blues dads, I usually only refer to my guitars by a scale of how visually unattractive they are.

Although I've had one or two that could be aptly named "moneypit"

[efiug]

But I wasn't crazy about the clear knobs to begin with, nor am I crazy about the split and OOP tones, so all in all I don't care that much. I'm currently either thinking of black knobs and black pickup rings to match the black back and neck, or cream knobs to match the cream pickup rings and binding. Nothing else on the guitar is clear so the knobs just kind of seemed out of place to me, though they're fun in that late 90's/early 2000s "let's make Game Boys and N64s and iMacs out of translucent plastic" kind of way.

definitely agree with the clear knobs feeling out of place, I don't know why but they just seem cheaper to me too.

No idea why Gibson/Epiphone always does splits and OOP, I feel like those aren't very usable tones though I do find it fun to split the bridge and put in OOP, makes the tone really chewy.

And the pickups! My goodness, has Epiphone ever stepped up their game. These are "Alnico Classic Pro" pickups, which apparently mean they're based on 57 Classics but with a brighter/hotter A5 magnet instead of A2. Demos online seem to clock them around 7.8k in the bridge and 7.3k in the neck - nice and low output.

specs wise these look a lot like the T-Type pickups they put in the 335s nowadays, and I think those sound great. Much better than most other Gibson pickups I've heard, sounds like you've got a winner there.

[ThePearDream]

I love the clear knobs

[Embenny]

definitely agree with the clear knobs feeling out of place, I don't know why but they just seem cheaper to me too.

No idea why Gibson/Epiphone always does splits and OOP, I feel like those aren't very usable tones though I do find it fun to split the bridge and put in OOP, makes the tone really chewy.

specs wise these look a lot like the T-Type pickups they put in the 335s nowadays, and I think those sound great. Much better than most other Gibson pickups I've heard, sounds like you've got a winner there.

Coil splits make a ton of sense to me on high-output humbuckers. My 70s Flying V came with 16K ceramic flamethrowers in both positions. A coil split would have basically yielded "8k strat-sized P90s" which would be a totally usable tone, but of course that is a model where Gibson doesn't think to include a split.

Meanwhile they put it on these Epiphones with 7.5k PAFs, as though a strat-sized bobbin with 3.75k worth of 42 AWG yields a usable tone.

The one thing I'll say about OOP is that a Les Paul with coil taps is the only place it kinda makes sense. Being able to roll down individual volume and tone knobs (+/- a split on the quieter pickup) lets you temper the degree to which the signals cancel out, so you're not stuck with "all the way quacky" like on a Fender.

I'll probably find something usable with the OOP option eventually, it'll just take some trial and error.

I'll measure my own pickups soon and post the results. This is kind of reminding me of how I stuck MIJ Fender Dragster pickups in one of my Flying Vs and was shocked by how good they sounded. Those were 7.5k in both positions, and I suspect A5 magnets as well. They always had a kinda crappy reputation in Fenders, but in the all-mahogany 24.75" scale V, they were great. The bridge pickup in particular was sharp and biting in a very appealing way.

I love the clear knobs

They have a certain charm, especially since I was a kid when clear Game Boys, N64s and Tamagotchis were all the rage.

I doubt I'd have even thought about replacing them if they actually fit the guitar securely like they did on the green one. But the only way for me to even use the push-pulls on this guitar is to pull off the knob, pull the pot up, then place the knob back on it

I just take that as a sign that I ought to replace them with something that has a set screw. I haven't heard any taper or signal-related reasons to jump to replacing the whole wiring harness, and frankly, I'm super into the idea of a guitar I don't have to modify for once.

I like everything on this guitar. Even the nut is cut right. If the knobs didn't pull off, I'd have left them just for the sake of not needing to replace a single part on a new guitar.

It looks amazing. It sounds amazing. It plays amazing(ly well). Somehow, a "budget" Les Paul of all things has managed to be the first guitar I've ever wanted to keep fully stock. I would not have ever seen that coming in a million years.

The only thing I want to do to it, other than get some knobs that can handle operating the push-pulls, is to add some shielding to the control cavities.

[JSett]

I also like the clear knobs, but see how they need to go. If you can find something with a set screw in the same colour as the pickup surrounds/binding then I think that'll look sharp

[ThePearDream]

Yeah, if the knobs are loose, then that's no good. I must have missed that detail. I have a pretty low tolerance ( ) for split shaft pots anymore. I've busted a few too many pots open when trying to push on a supposedly correct spec knob.