Re: Epi Les Paul-need some advice.
I used to be a real gear snob in terms of turning up my nose at Epiphones until I played a bunch of them and realized that indeed, there are some tremendous ones out there to be had if you look hard enough. Sure, plenty are duds but there are some which absolutely outplay some of their Gibson counterparts. No, they don't feel like Gibsons. Rather, they, to me, feel like some kind of Fender/Gibson mutation which isn't necessarily a bad thing either.
Granted, with pretty much every Epiphone, the pickups are from hunger, the toggle, pots and jack input plug are dubious, as is the bridge. However, no one can tell me that the Gibson counterpart is automatically well worth 4 times the price of a well chosen Epiphone.
I have an Epi Dot which I chose out of a herd of 14 of them which were just put on the selling floor at yes, my local GC. To make a long story short, this one Dot in particular, right out of the box caught my eye. It thoroughly outplayed my nicely tweaked Gibson ES-335 and looked incredibly nice too. So much so, that I never bothered picking up the 335 any more so, I sold it with absolutely no regrets!
With the Dot, I had the pickups, the bridge and the output jack plug (and the OEM strings, of course) professionally replaced and the guitar setup and now, I have the best "335" I've ever owned and believe me, I've owned several 330s and 335s over the years.
Granted, there is no human touch in an Epiphone but all those dimensions fed into their state of the art CNC machines are a culmination of many years research and players' preferences. Naturally, the wood plays into it too and contrary to popular belief, NOT all Epiphones' wood are the same as their pickups.
Needless to say, this is all from my experience; YMMV.
