Preconceptions can be deceiving.

Fabio KTG

Fabio KTG

Fractal Fanatic
A way back, I chimed in on a conversation on Epiphone Vs Gibson and asked wether the cheaper model could hold a candle to the real deal. To cut the long story short, Clive (UnsungHeroGuitars) contacted me and asked if I wanted to try an Epiphone Les Paul for myself and evaluate it without pressure. I was like "Nobody has ever asked me to try out a guitar, at least not for free"! So I humbly thanked him for his generosity and accepted his amazing offer.

A little background before I begin....

I started playing Les Pauls, back when I was 13, after my uncle left me his '77 tobacco sunburst to me. I was in love, as I had recently discovered Slash (Who, coincidentally i saw last night on tour). I learnt some rock n roll and expanded my listening taste, before being swept away by the Nu-Metal scene in my mid teens. At that point SCIENCE by Incubus had been on constant repeat, then bands like Linkin Park and Papa Roach got my attention. After much deliberation (and I regret my decision to this day) I decided to sell that guitar for a PRS Custom 24 and a Mesa Boogie combo. (I added cash). From that day, I became known as "The PRS guy" in my local music scene. Over the years I amassed quite the collection (11 and counting) and even visited the factory to gush at the guitar porn in the Private Stock room. I played in many rock bands with my CU24's and then Dual Rec's. Thing went relatively unchanged until I discovered the Axe and its capabilities. The more I listened to other players, the more I went back to my roots and bought eventually bought a Strat. It wasn't until I had the conversation with Clive that I realised that I've been missing out for the last 13 years.

So the guitar arrived, I opened it and had the familiar warmth flow over me that is provoked by NGD. I plugged in and "meh, this doesn't have the mho that my PRS's have, maybe this was a bad idea". Now this guitar had been fitted with Gibson BurstBuckers, so I was confident that it was probably me and not the guitar. I had to take a little break from playing, as i have a son who is incredibly poorly atm. This poor guitar sat in a case for a month or so. A few FW revisions have passed by this point and I tell Clive that i'm undecided about the guitar and he tell me not to worry, "no pressure" and "it's just to challenge your belief about that Gibson is automatically better" OK, well I don't feel as bad now. I mean it wasn't a bad guitar, it plays like butter and feels reassuringly heavy. So what was the issue?

The issue was me, entirely. Last week, in preparation for this Slash concert, I thought I'd bust out some G 'n' R chops. I was still frustrated that this LP didn't sound like my PRS's, then it hit me.

It's not supposed to sound like a PRS, it is, dummy?

I had to start from scratch, ditch my usual amps and tweaking methods and use a few Slash recording as a point of reference for how a LP should sound, not how i thought it should sound (make sense?)

Anyway, here are the results of 5 minutes of tweaks.




So my final conclusion?

In addition to Clive single handedly bringing me back to Les Pauls and a new appreciation of why i picked up guitar in the first place, I had to get over my elitist guitar snobbery and learn to NOT to use my ears, but somebody else's. I still don't know if it sounds as a LP should, but it's totally rocking my world atm and I've been buttering up the wife so I finally buy the bloody guitar and not have it on permanent loan.

If you are in the least bit curious about Clive's wares and outstanding humanity, go check out his website and drop him a line. I wish I've have done it sooner. Sorry, no photos of this guitar, my phone ended up having a bath when my son got hold of it. I'm sure Clive will have some.


TL;DR Epiphone Les Paul's are the biz and I was a snob. Lesson learned. Sorry for the ramble.
 
Clive is a class act all the way! I had many conversations via email with him regarding my Allen & Heath QU24 purchase and then my recent acoustic to electric drum conversion project. He's very informative and always gracious. He' coming over to this side of the pond in January and we are going to hook up at NAMM if he finds the time. I hope to see some pics of the guitar. Sounds great in the clip. Congrats if you choose to keep it!
 
Fabio
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Nice appraisal that
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I'm pleased to hear that it grabbed you in the appropriate manner - even if it did require Slash's direct influence to actually switch the light on!
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It's always extremely useful for me to get someone else's perspective, hence the reason for sending you one after you expressed a curiosity... it's all well and good me loving these things, but what if I'm the only one..?
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts and kind words - it's genuinely appreciated.

As for photos..? Me..? Post piccys of Les Pauls..?
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Oh go on then, if I have to... here's a 2007 Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus Top
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cobbler said:
Clive is a class act all the way! I had many conversations via email with him regarding my Allen & Heath QU24 purchase and then my recent acoustic to electric drum conversion project. He's very informative and always gracious. He' coming over to this side of the pond in January and we are going to hook up at NAMM if he finds the time. I hope to see some pics of the guitar. Sounds great in the clip. Congrats if you choose to keep it!
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Aww shucks Craig... now you're making me
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I do indeed hope to get to NAMM still - maybe I should bring a long coat with a load of Les Pauls hanging inside..?!?!?
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This reminds me, I'll answer your email regarding MIDI Mapping shortly! Hope the build is still going well
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I had a similar experience - buying a 12 string.

Revelation RJT60 12. I was astonished to discover this to be better than the many Rickenbackers I tried, but cost just £225 including a free gig bag.
 
So I ran over to GC one more Saturday morning just to burn some time. I check out the used rack and most of the time it's pretty disappointing because there just aren't any great deals on used stuff and nobody has a 59 LP that they don't know what it's worth if you know what I mean.

After skimming the rack I noticed a Les Paul copy, it was an Agile. Now I used to hang out on Harmony Central and heard all of the talk about how great they were for the price and I had a really nice Les Paul at the house, but I decided to pick it up and see what they were about. I didn't even plug the damn thing in; it was pretty grimy, but the neck and action were great. It resonated really nicely so I figured I'd throw some new pickups in it and swap out the hardware and stuff because it looked like the tail piece was ready to rot off or something.

I get it home, start pulling it apart with the plan being to rewire it and put in some 57 Classics. I pull the tailpiece; it's an aluminum Gotoh set. I pull the pickups; they were a set Seymour Duncans (a 59 and a jazz). I look at the nut; it's bone. The top is solid maple damn near 1/2" thick. The pots are high end CTS and the wiring is immaculate. I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on because I only paid like $150 for the damn thing expecting it to be a project. I clean it up and put it back together, plug it in and am blown away. By the way the grime and crap wiped right off and it looked new.

So I get on the internet and start looking for info on the model. Sure enough it was one of their higher end guitars and was going for about $630 at the time new. Now it's no vintage Les Paul, but about 5 years later now I still have it, won't part with and the Les Paul has been long since sold. Now is every Agile a Les Paul killer? Well I ran across another one at the same store about a year later and it was a complete basketcase with some pretty crappy parts on it and it would have required a ton of work to salvage it to just being mediocre.

My point is that the guys at GC had used their preconceived idea of what this guitar was worth because it was a relatively off brand model. If they had looked harder they would have found out that it was actually a nice guitar and was worth a lot more just based on it's own merits.

The funniest part is that the guys that worked there and played the thing actually came up to me as I was walking out as if to see who had bought it. Everyone of them said that they were blown away by it. I've bought probably ten other guitars in there and not one person has ever looked at me twice except for on that day.

I actually still have the link saved: Agile AL-3500 Prestige HSB Duncan at Home

It'll never be worth anything if I sold it, but I've been through a lot of other guitars before and since I bought this and it's one of the ones that I won't ever part with.

Preconceived notions kick ass sometimes. :)
 
shasha said:
So I ran over to GC one more Saturday morning just to burn some time. I check out the used rack and most of the time it's pretty disappointing because there just aren't any great deals on used stuff and nobody has a 59 LP that they don't know what it's worth if you know what I mean.

After skimming the rack I noticed a Les Paul copy, it was an Agile. Now I used to hang out on Harmony Central and heard all of the talk about how great they were for the price and I had a really nice Les Paul at the house, but I decided to pick it up and see what they were about. I didn't even plug the damn thing in; it was pretty grimy, but the neck and action were great. It resonated really nicely so I figured I'd throw some new pickups in it and swap out the hardware and stuff because it looked like the tail piece was ready to rot off or something.

I get it home, start pulling it apart with the plan being to rewire it and put in some 57 Classics. I pull the tailpiece; it's an aluminum Gotoh set. I pull the pickups; they were a set Seymour Duncans (a 59 and a jazz). I look at the nut; it's bone. The top is solid maple damn near 1/2" thick. The pots are high end CTS and the wiring is immaculate. I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on because I only paid like $150 for the damn thing expecting it to be a project. I clean it up and put it back together, plug it in and am blown away. By the way the grime and crap wiped right off and it looked new.

So I get on the internet and start looking for info on the model. Sure enough it was one of their higher end guitars and was going for about $630 at the time new. Now it's no vintage Les Paul, but about 5 years later now I still have it, won't part with and the Les Paul has been long since sold. Now is every Agile a Les Paul killer? Well I ran across another one at the same store about a year later and it was a complete basketcase with some pretty crappy parts on it and it would have required a ton of work to salvage it to just being mediocre.

My point is that the guys at GC had used their preconceived idea of what this guitar was worth because it was a relatively off brand model. If they had looked harder they would have found out that it was actually a nice guitar and was worth a lot more just based on it's own merits.

The funniest part is that the guys that worked there and played the thing actually came up to me as I was walking out as if to see who had bought it. Everyone of them said that they were blown away by it. I've bought probably ten other guitars in there and not one person has ever looked at me twice except for on that day.

I actually still have the link saved: Agile AL-3500 Prestige HSB Duncan at Home

It'll never be worth anything if I sold it, but I've been through a lot of other guitars before and since I bought this and it's one of the ones that I won't ever part with.

Preconceived notions kick ass sometimes. :)
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That's a nice looking guitar. I've played a few Agiles over the years. The higher end ones are def a great bargain for feel/playability/tone/features vs price. Never owned one though.:encouragement:
 
Got an old Ibby SZ720FM that I picked up from a mom & pop shop going out of business for a hellova' bargain, think I paid somewhere in the ballpark of $400 with HSC (originally listed for just under a grand).
Dropped in some Lollars, PIO cap, replaced the nut & mounted straplocks. It's now one of the lightest, most comfortable, great low action playing, and SUPER resonant guitars I've ever come across...

...but I've been trying to sell it locally to help fund a custom build, and I'm not even getting nibbles (asking $700 OBO, basically half the new cost plus a bump for the Lollars).

These kinda' "preconceived notions" can work against you too, when you're on the selling end. I'm sure that had a lot to do with GC's $150 tag on that Agile, and why every employee there knew it was worth more. Try to sell it for what it's worth, and it'll sit collecting dust on a wall hanger forever.
 
Nice looking guitar... However..the way that it is strung can't be that great...to me it looks as though the wound strings (E,A,D.) look like the winds are cracked where they come over the tailpiece, not to mention the wear on that nice shiny chrome tailpiece. Do you pop a lot of strings like that ???
 
axel said:
OK, never mind, this explains some aspects...

There's More Than One Way To String An Axe
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Thanks for that! I was due up for a string change last night and thought about this. I ended up doing my 5th & 6th the normal way and went over the top of the tail piece on the others. Lows are tight & chuggy as always, and I think I also feel a little more "give" in the other strings now.
Not to derail the thread, but this is an aspect of guitar playing that really interests me, that is scale length, string gauge, and tension all affecting the feel. I'm sure there's some science in there that backs up the over-wrap-to-get-slinky-feel concept.
 
It changes the downward pressure on the bridge saddles. A lot of people started doing it that way so they could screw the tailpiece posts all the way down tight to the body. If you have the strings straight through the tailpiece, they will often hit the back of the bridge because the angle is then too sharp. Wrapping them over the top flattens the string angle back out. Tonal benefits are up for debate. The different downward pressure does seem to give the strings a slightly different feel to me.
 
mr_fender said:
It changes the downward pressure on the bridge saddles. A lot of people started doing it that way so they could screw the tailpiece posts all the way down tight to the body. If you have the strings straight through the tailpiece, they will often hit the back of the bridge because the angle is then too sharp. Wrapping them over the top flattens the string angle back out. Tonal benefits are up for debate. The different downward pressure does seem to give the strings a slightly different feel to me.
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I can't say I noticed any difference tonally, but I've only done it this way for one night :D
I suppose, if the tension is somehow decreased to get that slinky feel, it would make sense for it to sound a little less snappy. That's just a guess though, not something I've personally noticed.
 
The 'reduced tension' thing which some people perceive to be there is something which baffles me... I mean, in order to get a string tensioned up to standard pitch for example, the overall tension between the tailpiece and the tuning head has to be the same whether top-wrapped or threaded through, surely..? If not, it's going to be flat.

The reduced downward pressure on the bridge, not that I can understand yes - and it's primarily why I swapped my personal Les Paul to that and have done a few like it since. Not only that, I dig the way it looks!
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Gourdo said:
Nice looking guitar... However..the way that it is strung can't be that great...to me it looks as though the wound strings (E,A,D.) look like the winds are cracked where they come over the tailpiece, not to mention the wear on that nice shiny chrome tailpiece. Do you pop a lot of strings like that ???
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No break in the windings as such Gourdo. That's probably how the extra windings around the ball end area sit once turned over that you're seeing.

As for the wear on the bridge..? Well yes, there'll likely be some marks, but if those marks are always covered by strings, they're never going to be seen
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Popping a lot of strings..? Nope, not one in something like 50 gigs
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Gourdo said:
not to mention the wear on that nice shiny chrome tailpiece. Do you pop a lot of strings like that ???
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Just to chime in here:

I've never cared about the wear on a tailpiece, so that's never been an issue but I actually started top-wrapping when I was a kid on the advice of one of the old guys who were around. I was never taught much about right hand technique and beat the hell out of strings so I was always popping em. Top-wrapping, whether by any actual difference or just some mental thing on my part completely (well, to the point that I was happy for many years until I learned how to pick properly) resolved the issue.

I do it to this day because, well, it's just what I do.
 
If you think about the straight line distance differences between the bridge & tail piece when over-wrapped or standard, the over-wrapped seems to be shorter. I (somewhat) verified this by strumming those short string sections, and the differences in pitch from string to string were atypical between my normally strung and over-wrapped strings (compared to the constant increase in pitch when plucking from the 6th to 1st string in the same area if all strings were strung the same way... you get the idea).

So, I think it's kinda' like going from a 25.5" scale guitar with a lot of snap and harder feel to a sweeter/warmer/looser 24.75" scale... not nearly as pronounced, but the same effect is present.
 
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