Epiphone Les Paul Sparkle Top, Diamond
(Gibson 498t & 490R pickups)

This was a short run of the Epiphone Les Paul Standard from the mid 90′s. The top is a silver sparkle top which has an awesome shine under stage lights. As with most standard Epiphone guitars, swap the pickups for a classic Gibson tone, and you’ve got an awesome value and good looks.

These will pop up on Ebay or Craigslist on occasion and are usually pretty inexpensive. They’ve got the standard mahogany body/alder top that most Epiphone Les Paul’s feature, jumbo frets and vintage Gibson-ish tuners. The only down-side to this guitar becomes apparent at set up time. As with most of the Korean-built Epiphone guitars, the inspection at the factory isn’t the greatest which means a guitar or twenty can slip through with a not-so-exact scale. The intonation has never been an exact science on this guitar and takes a lot of tinkering to get it correct. I could almost swear the scale length is 24 65/128″. Just enough to throw me off.

Epiphone Les Paul Mods

I’ve done quite a few upgrades to this guitar. The first stock parts to go were the tuners. The Kluson knock-off tuners had a nice look, but didn’t cut it when it came to keeping the guitar in tune for long sets. I picked up a set of chrome 3-on-a-side Sperzel locking tuners which started my ongoing preference for them. Sting changes are a breeze because Sperzel’s don’t require multiple string windings. Just thread the string through a hole, tighten down the screw on the back and tune up. They’ll hold for days through crazy string bends, speed picking and even drop tunings.

Next to go were the electronics. I ordered a CTS 500K pot kit with Orange Drop caps to replace the volume and tone knobs (check out GuitarElectronics.com for these kits) and picked up a set of Gibson 498T/490R pickups off eBay. This really opened up the tone of the guitar and smoothed out a lot of the nasty chiming that came from the stock Epiphone pickups. This upgrade will give a much cleaner sound with a giant improvement in realiability and functionality. For around $100 and an hour of soldering, you can do wonders for almost any guitar.