Review: Epiphone Les Paul Junior

   A few weeks ago we did a review on the Gibson Les Paul Junior. Today, lets take a look at Epiphone's low-budget take on it.

Features: This guitar has a single cutaway Les Paul style body, 21 frets, a wrap-around bridge, one open-coil humbucker in the bridge position, and one volume and one tone knob. The headstock is in the Standard Epiphone style and there is a black pickguard. Not many features, but just adjusting the tone knob can make the humbucker sound like it's in the neck postion and anywhere in the middle. // 8

Sound: This is great for almost all types of music. It gives you both warm and bright sounds, all you have to do is turn the tone knob. When you have the guitar on its brightest setting, there is a bit of noise when you're not playing. Because of the variations of the sound you can get out of this one pickup, you wont really feel the need to buy a guitar with a neck pickup. The only reason I would buy one with a neck pickup is to get the sound of both pickups together. The clean sound isn't that bad for a humbucker either. // 8

Action, Fit & Finish: Unfortunately, the factory set-up was terrible because the action was too low and there was a terrible amount of fret-buzz . You should raise the action just enough to stop it. But a high action is not very desired so a six will have to do here.  // 6

Reliability & Durability: The strap buttons are really solid. As most les pauls are, its a solid piece here. The finish is pretty good, but it will scratch off if you're not careful. // 8

Impression: The things I love about this guitar are the looks, the simplicity, the price and the general straight-on rock sound. The thing I don't like is the action, which you can't lower cos there will be too much fret buzz. When comparing this to Squier Telecasters, some other Epi LPs and a few low-end Ibanez's, choose this because its awesome and honestly, Ibanez sucks. // 9