Epiphone LP Junior Special Electric Guitar--Les Paul for Less Cost

The Epiphone LP Jr. offers nothing if not amazing value. I bought mine for $99 about five years ago and it has worked very well for me. The action is pretty fast and the tonewood body makes the instrument a little lighter and easier to tote around than the majority of the higher priced Les Paul models from Epiphone and Gibson--there is still some substance here, but your shoulders will appreciate the relief.

This guitar comes equipped with only one humbucker. I was initially concerned about this, since one of the advantages of playing an electric guitar as opposed to an acoustic is the opportunity to vary the tonal quality using different pickup settings. My experience has been surprisingly good in this regard. Though you can't get the same nuances of sound that you would if you had two or three pickups to switch between, the pickup here is pretty versatile--the bass sound is OK with the tone knob down low and it brightens up nicely when you turn it up high.

One of the reasons you want to buy a Les Paul style guitar over another model is for the ax's famous sustain. While I'm not going to pretend that this tonewood body plays like the mahogany you would find on a more expensive Gibson, it still manages to get the job done as far as allowing you to hold a note for an extra bar or two if that's what you are looking for.

My one knock, and it's not inconsiderable, is that the hardware on the instrument is pretty weak. The pickup is good, but the tuning pegs are definitely a cut below; more than one jam session has been slowed down by my adventures in tuning with this instrument. It's passable in this regard, but not exactly ideal. Worse yet is the bridge. I actually went years on this instrument before breaking any strings. Now they say if it ain't broke don't fix it, but any guitar player knows that strings get to sounding dull when they've been played on for a long time, so I finally decided to change them. The problem was, I didn't realize that the pressure from the strings was one of the things that was keeping the bridge in place. The bridge isn't really screwed into the body as a permanent piece but kind of sits pressurized between a couple of bolts that attach near the bottom. So, as I was taking the strings off, the bridge detached from the screws and it became this big mess for me trying to get the bridge to sit right again. If you do get this guitar, be sure to replace the strings one by one. That or upgrade the hardware, which may be what I end up doing.

I bought the Epiphone LP Junior Special Electric Guitar a few years ago when I had one of my infrequent gigs coming up and no real stage ready electric to play. I considered getting one of my old guitars rehabbed, but when I saw this in the Musician's Friend for $99 it seemed like a quick and probably less expensive way to get back in the game. The guitar has given me several good years of intermittent service, sounding reasonably good at a very low price, so I can't complain TOO much about it. A fine deal at this price point.