Pre 1998 foreign made Epiphone (budget) Lespauls were made with 4 pieces of solid mahogany glued together as opposed to one solid mahogany piece. This allows for cheaper costs on wood. The top was usually a 2 piece maple cap with a thin solid maple veneer on top of the cap to make it look like it was one piece.
Afterwards, Epiphone started making Alder/mahogany guitars. This is a type of alder - mahogany layered wood thats kinda like plywood. They sandwich a bunch of layers of mahogany with alder together and pressure compress them into a solid piece of wood. It's not exactly glued plywood, but it is layers of both woods compressed into each other. Once compressed, it's very hard to tell that the wood is actually comprised of layers of alder and mahogany compressed together. If you look closely on the back of the Epi Les Pauls, you can see the layers of the wood. At first initial glance it will look like a solid piece of mahogany, but depending on how the wood is cut, you can see layers of distinctly different wood grains meshed together.
Again, this is not your typical glued layers of alder and mahogany plywood. Instead it's layers of alder and mahogany pressure compressed into each other. The grain of both woods become intermeshed and it's really hard to see the actual layers. In some cases, it's undetectable depending on how they cut the slab of wood.
Epiphone still uses a 1/4" slab of maple for their caps. Sometimes you'll luck out and get a solid maple cap, Usually the caps are 3 - 4 pieces glued together. To hide this, they will use a very thin maple veneer on top to hide this. Once this is glued, it's impossible to detect unless you view the underside of the maple cap. This is how they can sell their LP copies with quilted and flamed maple tops for so cheap. The flamed and quilted maple top is actually a thin veneer that is glued on top of a normal maple cap.
Tom
