Re: epiphone les pauls?
If you're considering Epiphone, then I suggest looking at Agile. I haven't played one, but the specs look good and they get good reviews over on the HC board. Plus they're around half the price of an Epiphone.
Unliked Gibsons, most Epiphones have maple necks as opposed to mahogany, and alder caps as opposed to maple, though the bodies can be any combination of mahogany and alder with maple caps appearing among some higher level guitars. I've heard from one guy online that his epiphone has a maple cap and isn't a custom model, but alder looks an awful lot like plain maple from the side so who knows. They need new pickups, new pots, and new switches. I've had two.. a 7 string les paul, and an explorer. I put new pickups into both of them, and I like both guitars enough. They aren't Gibsons though. The maple neck is an obvious difference. The nice thing is that I've been able to strip them and sand them down so my hand is just on the wood sealer instead of millimeters of plastic. With Gibsons, you have a sticky nitro finish and a mahogany neck which isn't as robust as maple. Plus I don't have Gibson pickups in mine.... I have dimarzios, and part of the Gibson sound for better or worse are the pickups.