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Hey all!
I'm selling my 2001 MIK Les Paul Standard with LOTS of upgrades
Here's a quick video of a couple of the mods:
I've cut and pasted my Reverb description below, but here's a link to the Reverb post if you just want to follow that: https://rvrb.io/2001-les-paul-stan-w9v6pt
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I'm selling my 2001 Epiphone Les Paul Standard, which I babied for years and have modified top to bottom, along with a form-fitting hardshell case.
If you're reading this, you probably know that the late 90s / early 2000s made in Korea Epiphones are known to be very high quality guitars. This example is no exception. This was my first "real" guitar, the first guitar I saved to buy after spending more than a year on an old beater I found in my grandparents' basement. Because of that, I babied it, and modded / upgraded it like no ones business. I now have a collection that's bigger than it should be, and it this point, I think this axe deserves to find a new home. Here's what I'm offering:
Electronics:
I have done a TON of wiring tricks to the electronics, allowing you to have an insane number of different tones at your fingertips. Here's the gist.
-Bridge Pickup: Dragonfire Phat Screamer Humbucker, modded with AlNiCo 8 magnet. The Phat Screamer is, as the name suggests, a very hot and thick sounding pickup, wound to about 16k. I then modded it to hone in its tone even further. Stock, the pickup comes with a double-thick ceramic magnet, like most pickups wound this hot would, in order to maintain a solid midrange and enough treble to keep from getting muddy. I ended up swapping out the ceramic magnet, and after a bit of experimentation, ended up keeping a roughcast Alnico 8 I bought from AddicitonFx. Alnico 8 is very rarely used in production pickups, but happens to be a perfect match for the Phat Screamer, offering a very muscular midrange and enough treble bite to be as rude as you want to, while also offering the sweeter character that comes with the Alnico family of magnets.
-Neck Pickup: Dragonfire Gatesbucker Alnico II Bridge Humbucker: Again, yes, you read that right – I put a bridge humbucker in the neck position, as its wound a little bit hotter and offers a little more quick than a typical neck humbucker would, balancing very well with the Phat Screamer in the bridge.
-Peter Green Mod (neck and bridge magnets are out of phase with respect to one another in the middle position). When I swapped the bridge pickup magnet, I flipped its polarity so that the humbuckers are out of phase with respect to one another, giving you that very bright, upper-midrange heavy, biting out-of-phase tone made famous by the Greenie Les Paul. That vintage 1959 Les Paul was out-of-phase by complete accident, but ended up producing some unique and wonderful tones, as the instrument was passed on from Peter Green, to Gary Moore, and eventually to Kirk Hammett of Metallica. Very few guitars have ever been used to record so many different best-selling records! But, maybe you don't see yourself using the out of phase tone very much. No worries... I'll get to that in a minute....
-Toggle switch: Freeway switch 6-way toggle. That's right, 6 ways. Rather than a typical 3-way switch (bridge/both/neck), this switch allows you to toggle between the 3 standard humbucking sounds, as well as 3 separate coil split combinations (bridge/both/neck). This allows you to switch between humbucker and single coil sounds without reaching for push/pull switches.
-I used partial coil splitting on all of the humbuckers. As you may know, a coil split humbucker often sounds a bit weak and thin, because the pickup manufacturer designs the humbucker to make music with both coils engaged at the same time. The solution to this issue is to beef up the coil split by partially incorporating part of the coil you're not using, i.e., you use all of one coil and part of the second coil, to keep your tone from getting too thin. The result is that you get a wonderful single coil tone with this humbuckers split!
-Neck volume knob: 1M audio taper pot with TREBLE BLEED, and a TAP function for a momentary kill switch. If you're not familiar, treble bleed circuits allow you to turn down the volume of your guitar without your tone getting too dark and muddy, which would otherwise happen because high frequencies roll off more quickly than low frequencies. There is also kill switch built into the pot that is activated with just a quick tap, allowing you to do rapid-fire stuttering sounds.
-Bridge Volume Knob: 1M push/pull phase switch with treble bleed. I mentioned above that I did the "Peter Green Mod" to allow for out-of-phase tones in the middle position. But, just in case you want to use the standard middle position Les Paul sound (a la Jimmy Page, for example), you can pull out this push/pull pot to set the humbuckers back in phase again!
-Tone knobs: While standard tones knobs usually just roll off treble frequencies to warm up your tone, I modded both tones knobs to have both BASS CUT AND TREBLE CUT. I accomplished this by modifying a Fender TBX tone control. It has a "center detent," i.e., it kind of clicks into place in the middle position, which acts the way a tone pot typically would if it were on 10. If you rotate it counter clockwise, you roll the treble off like a normal tone pot. On the other hand, if you roll the knob clockwise, you instead cut the BASS frequencies, causing the tone to get brighter and more cutting! Also, this works really well with the out-of-phase humbuckers. By using these tone controls to cut bass or cut treble, you can control which frequencies are cancelled out by the pase difference, unlocking tons more tones you didn't even know you could get!
Between the 6-way switch, the phase control, and the bidirectional tone controls, you have a wealth of tones at your fingertips, plus the ultra cool killswitch effect!
Hardware
All of the original nickel hardware has been replaced with gold.
The bridge is Wilkinson SOLID BRASS bridge for extra warmth and sustain.
She also has an ADJUSTABLE BRASS NUT, which allows you to dial in the action from either end of the string. This means that the action on this guitar is crazy low.
She has HIPSHOT LOCKING tuners.
Even with good tuners and a good nut, most guitars will still go out of tune if you bend enough to pull the string over the nut. Well, to fix that, I added a LOCKING NUT with a TP6 TAILPIECE for tuning adjustments. This means that this thing NEVER GOES OUT OF TUNE once your strings have stretched, because... well... there's no way for them to bind up in the nut. After you lock everything in place, you're good to go. If somehow, a string goes a little bit flat or sharp, you can just turn the knob at the tailpiece to bring it back into tune again, so you don't have to worry about locking and unlocking the nut. If you do want to unlock the nut though, the appropriately sized allen wrench is mounted to the back of the headstock!
Setup
The action on this baby is LOW.
In fact, it's probably too low, to be honest. If you breathe too hard, you'll fret the strings.
I play with a very light touch, and this works for me, but if you're someone who strums heavy handedly, you might get some fret buzz. Not to worry, because the action is so low that you have plent of room to raise it if you need to. Also, because the nut is adjustable, you can really micro-adjust the action by tweaking the height of the string from either end!
Quirks and Dings
This guitar is old enough to vote, and like I mentioned above, it was my first real guitar. I've play a lot of shows with this guitar, and have spent countless hours rocking out with it. There are, of course, cosmetic dings and scratches. I've tried to capture the clearest dings in the photos.
As you can see from photos, I added my own Les Paul Custom style binding to the headstock, because headstock binding is cool! I also put a layer of clearcoat over the endges of the headstock to protect the paint job. If you look at it from an angle you can see that there's a layer of clearcoat (see pics!). I also reshaped the headstock a bit to be more like the traditional Gibson headstock (long before Epiphone came out with the so-called Kalamazoo headstock)
The frets have been professionally crowned and leveled twice over the years, most recently last summer. They are therefore not at 100% fret height anymore, but they are dead level, and as I said above, the action is LOW.
Feel free to reach out with any questions you have, or if you want more pics, etc.!
I'm selling my 2001 MIK Les Paul Standard with LOTS of upgrades
Here's a quick video of a couple of the mods:
I've cut and pasted my Reverb description below, but here's a link to the Reverb post if you just want to follow that: https://rvrb.io/2001-les-paul-stan-w9v6pt
------
I'm selling my 2001 Epiphone Les Paul Standard, which I babied for years and have modified top to bottom, along with a form-fitting hardshell case.
If you're reading this, you probably know that the late 90s / early 2000s made in Korea Epiphones are known to be very high quality guitars. This example is no exception. This was my first "real" guitar, the first guitar I saved to buy after spending more than a year on an old beater I found in my grandparents' basement. Because of that, I babied it, and modded / upgraded it like no ones business. I now have a collection that's bigger than it should be, and it this point, I think this axe deserves to find a new home. Here's what I'm offering:
Electronics:
I have done a TON of wiring tricks to the electronics, allowing you to have an insane number of different tones at your fingertips. Here's the gist.
-Bridge Pickup: Dragonfire Phat Screamer Humbucker, modded with AlNiCo 8 magnet. The Phat Screamer is, as the name suggests, a very hot and thick sounding pickup, wound to about 16k. I then modded it to hone in its tone even further. Stock, the pickup comes with a double-thick ceramic magnet, like most pickups wound this hot would, in order to maintain a solid midrange and enough treble to keep from getting muddy. I ended up swapping out the ceramic magnet, and after a bit of experimentation, ended up keeping a roughcast Alnico 8 I bought from AddicitonFx. Alnico 8 is very rarely used in production pickups, but happens to be a perfect match for the Phat Screamer, offering a very muscular midrange and enough treble bite to be as rude as you want to, while also offering the sweeter character that comes with the Alnico family of magnets.
-Neck Pickup: Dragonfire Gatesbucker Alnico II Bridge Humbucker: Again, yes, you read that right – I put a bridge humbucker in the neck position, as its wound a little bit hotter and offers a little more quick than a typical neck humbucker would, balancing very well with the Phat Screamer in the bridge.
-Peter Green Mod (neck and bridge magnets are out of phase with respect to one another in the middle position). When I swapped the bridge pickup magnet, I flipped its polarity so that the humbuckers are out of phase with respect to one another, giving you that very bright, upper-midrange heavy, biting out-of-phase tone made famous by the Greenie Les Paul. That vintage 1959 Les Paul was out-of-phase by complete accident, but ended up producing some unique and wonderful tones, as the instrument was passed on from Peter Green, to Gary Moore, and eventually to Kirk Hammett of Metallica. Very few guitars have ever been used to record so many different best-selling records! But, maybe you don't see yourself using the out of phase tone very much. No worries... I'll get to that in a minute....
-Toggle switch: Freeway switch 6-way toggle. That's right, 6 ways. Rather than a typical 3-way switch (bridge/both/neck), this switch allows you to toggle between the 3 standard humbucking sounds, as well as 3 separate coil split combinations (bridge/both/neck). This allows you to switch between humbucker and single coil sounds without reaching for push/pull switches.
-I used partial coil splitting on all of the humbuckers. As you may know, a coil split humbucker often sounds a bit weak and thin, because the pickup manufacturer designs the humbucker to make music with both coils engaged at the same time. The solution to this issue is to beef up the coil split by partially incorporating part of the coil you're not using, i.e., you use all of one coil and part of the second coil, to keep your tone from getting too thin. The result is that you get a wonderful single coil tone with this humbuckers split!
-Neck volume knob: 1M audio taper pot with TREBLE BLEED, and a TAP function for a momentary kill switch. If you're not familiar, treble bleed circuits allow you to turn down the volume of your guitar without your tone getting too dark and muddy, which would otherwise happen because high frequencies roll off more quickly than low frequencies. There is also kill switch built into the pot that is activated with just a quick tap, allowing you to do rapid-fire stuttering sounds.
-Bridge Volume Knob: 1M push/pull phase switch with treble bleed. I mentioned above that I did the "Peter Green Mod" to allow for out-of-phase tones in the middle position. But, just in case you want to use the standard middle position Les Paul sound (a la Jimmy Page, for example), you can pull out this push/pull pot to set the humbuckers back in phase again!
-Tone knobs: While standard tones knobs usually just roll off treble frequencies to warm up your tone, I modded both tones knobs to have both BASS CUT AND TREBLE CUT. I accomplished this by modifying a Fender TBX tone control. It has a "center detent," i.e., it kind of clicks into place in the middle position, which acts the way a tone pot typically would if it were on 10. If you rotate it counter clockwise, you roll the treble off like a normal tone pot. On the other hand, if you roll the knob clockwise, you instead cut the BASS frequencies, causing the tone to get brighter and more cutting! Also, this works really well with the out-of-phase humbuckers. By using these tone controls to cut bass or cut treble, you can control which frequencies are cancelled out by the pase difference, unlocking tons more tones you didn't even know you could get!
Between the 6-way switch, the phase control, and the bidirectional tone controls, you have a wealth of tones at your fingertips, plus the ultra cool killswitch effect!
Hardware
All of the original nickel hardware has been replaced with gold.
The bridge is Wilkinson SOLID BRASS bridge for extra warmth and sustain.
She also has an ADJUSTABLE BRASS NUT, which allows you to dial in the action from either end of the string. This means that the action on this guitar is crazy low.
She has HIPSHOT LOCKING tuners.
Even with good tuners and a good nut, most guitars will still go out of tune if you bend enough to pull the string over the nut. Well, to fix that, I added a LOCKING NUT with a TP6 TAILPIECE for tuning adjustments. This means that this thing NEVER GOES OUT OF TUNE once your strings have stretched, because... well... there's no way for them to bind up in the nut. After you lock everything in place, you're good to go. If somehow, a string goes a little bit flat or sharp, you can just turn the knob at the tailpiece to bring it back into tune again, so you don't have to worry about locking and unlocking the nut. If you do want to unlock the nut though, the appropriately sized allen wrench is mounted to the back of the headstock!
Setup
The action on this baby is LOW.
In fact, it's probably too low, to be honest. If you breathe too hard, you'll fret the strings.
I play with a very light touch, and this works for me, but if you're someone who strums heavy handedly, you might get some fret buzz. Not to worry, because the action is so low that you have plent of room to raise it if you need to. Also, because the nut is adjustable, you can really micro-adjust the action by tweaking the height of the string from either end!
Quirks and Dings
This guitar is old enough to vote, and like I mentioned above, it was my first real guitar. I've play a lot of shows with this guitar, and have spent countless hours rocking out with it. There are, of course, cosmetic dings and scratches. I've tried to capture the clearest dings in the photos.
As you can see from photos, I added my own Les Paul Custom style binding to the headstock, because headstock binding is cool! I also put a layer of clearcoat over the endges of the headstock to protect the paint job. If you look at it from an angle you can see that there's a layer of clearcoat (see pics!). I also reshaped the headstock a bit to be more like the traditional Gibson headstock (long before Epiphone came out with the so-called Kalamazoo headstock)
The frets have been professionally crowned and leveled twice over the years, most recently last summer. They are therefore not at 100% fret height anymore, but they are dead level, and as I said above, the action is LOW.
Feel free to reach out with any questions you have, or if you want more pics, etc.!