The late 50's Les Pauls

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Napthol

New member
I'm thinking about picking up a Epiphone Les Paul Classic. It comes with open coils. The description on it leads me to think that the late 50's Les Pauls came with open coils. I prefer covers on my pickups though.

But I'm just curious about it.

If you know please post.
 
I prefer covers on my Les Pauls, also. Adding covers is a very easy and quick fix that can be done cheaply.
 
Last release of faded series comes with open coils. Basically a standard with flamed faded tops. You can have either 50 or 60 neck shape. The Les paul from 50s have all covered pickups. Some CC don't, but as copy of original guitars, I think, the owner removed the covers
 
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Yeah, I think the Les Paul Classic is more of a 60's vibe rather than 50's with the thinner neck and the Grovers.
 
ICTGoober said:
50's Les Pauls did NOT come with open coils. That didn't happen until the 80's, if I remember correctly.
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Well . . . I mean . . .an awful lot of players took the covers off 50's Les Pauls before that:

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a modern epi lp is a fine guitar, but it sure as hell isnt a late 50s gibson. if you want covered pups, you can swap the pups to something like the duncan antiquitys which would be similar to what actually came in those vintage guitars, or you can pop covers on the stock pups in the guitar if you like the way they sound. i really enjoy a set of duncan 59s in the epi lps ive owned.
 
If you are buying an Epiphone, you should be planning on replacing the pickups anyway, so it does not matter what it comes with.
 
I most likely will put a Screamin' Demon in the neck (fantastic neck pickup) with a Custom Custom in the bridge. And I will put Seymour Duncan covers on so the covers fit correctly.
 
Napthol said:
They are better in that department than Fender Stratocasters are.
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Really? I bought two Epis last year. Both unplayable out of the box because of being high fret galore. One of them just plain unfixable because the frets weren't properly seated towards the treble side at many positions.

Not buying Epi again, TBH. At least not without going through one with a magnifying glass.
 
Napthol said:
An experienced and good guitar luthier can fix things like that. I know mine could. He was fabulous.
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Agreed. But honestly, a guitar that cost 800 dollars (my Custom did) shouldn't have those issues. Plenty of other guitars in that price range don't.

I don't mean to badmouth Epiphone. I like my 1959. I just strung it up yesterday, and it's better than I remember it being. But my Squier Classic Vibe cost like half as much and didn't have that attrocious of fretjob from the factory. Both of my Epis did, and all I keep reading about them seems to agree with my experience.

I understand a good luthier should be able to fix that. But a good luthier is also not going to to charge you less than 100 bucks for a fretjob and re-seating the frets when that's pretty standard quality control thing that shouldn't have left the factory at any price point.

JMO, of course. My advise is not that you shouldn't buy an Epi, but to play it before you buy it to make sure it doesn't have an issue as big that it's going to cost you more money to have someone fix it, because plenty of them do.
 
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