EPIPHONE LES PAUL TRIBUTE PLUS ME 1960’s
MIDNIGHT EBONY LACQUER ON FLAMED MAPLE
ENTPMENH1
o Vintage deep-set glued in neck
o Carved hard maple top
o Gibson USA ’57 Classic™ humbuckers
o Push/pull series parallel switching
Epiphone’s long friendship with innovator Les Paul dates back to the late ’30s and early ’40s when Les, working at night at the Epiphone factory on 14th St. in New York City, created one of the world’s first solid body electric guitars, “The Log.” Over the years, Les continued to work closely with Epiphone luthiers reviewing new product ideas and offering suggestions.
Now, the Epiphone Les Paul “Tribute” Plus honours the special friendship with Les by combining his classic design features with legendary Epiphone quality and value with the added feature of Gibson® USA ’57 classic humbuckers.
THE HEART AND SOUL OF A TRUE LES PAUL
The Epiphone Tribute Les Paul features a solid Mahogany back with a solid, carved hard Maple cap to create the ultimate combination of warmth and bite. The solid mahogany neck with a hand-fitted, glued-in joint extends well into the neck pickup cavity, creating maximum neck-to-body contact and acting almost like one continuous piece of wood.
Combined with the Mahogany/Maple body, the result is a tribute to Les’ timeless guitar design with the sound that you can only get from a Les Paul. This beauty is finished in Midnight Ebony Lacquer.
THE TONE OF ROCK AND ROLL
Capturing all the power and nuances of the “Tribute’s” tone woods is a pair of authentic Gibson USA ’57 Classic humbucking pickups. With their “Patent Applied For” decal on the base plate, the ’57 Classic and ’57 Classic Plus are faithful replicas of the famous PAF Gibson humbuckers created by Seth Lover that helped define the “Les Paul” sound and the sound of Rock and Roll itself.
The ’57 Classic gives you a tone that is warm and subtle with a full, even response that doesn’t hold back when you need that classic Gibson humbucker crunch! The ’57 Classic Plus is the perfect bridge pickup and mimics humbuckers from the late ’50s that often received a few extra turns of wire. This treatment gives the pickup a slightly higher output without sacrificing its rich, vintage tone.
When combined, these humbuckers overdrive tube preamps to a smooth level of saturation without becoming overpowering allowing the tone of each individual string to ring through with superb articulation.
Both ’57 Classic humbuckers feature Gibson’s special Alnico II magnets, vintage enamel coated wire, nickel plated pole pieces, nickel slugs, maple spacers and vintage-style braided wiring.
But this Les Paul is not just about recreating the “old”, it’s also about looking ahead, just as Les himself continued to do throughout his lifetime. Using 4-conductor pickup wiring, Epiphone has added two push/pull tone pots to allow for series/parallel pickup switching. The result gives you a Les Paul with all the legendary sounds plus a huge palette of tonal possibilities at your fingertips.
LOADED WITH PREMIUM INCLUSIONS
Other upgrades include a USA Switchcraft™ 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, Epiphone Strap Locks, Grover® 106 Series 18:1 ratio Locking Rotomatic machine heads.
EPIPHONE LES PAUL TRIBUTE PLUS SPECIFICATIONS
o Body Material: Mahogany
o Top Material: Carved Hard Flame Maple
o Neck Material: Mahogany
o Neck Profile: 1960s SlimTaper™
o Neck Joint: Vintage “Deep Set” glued-in mortise and tenon
o Scale Length: 24.75” scale
o Nut width: 1.68”
o Fingerboard: Rosewood with Pearloid trapezoid inlays with 22 medium jumbo frets
o Fingerboard Radius: 12”
o Neck Pickup: Gibson USA ’57 Classic Humbucker 4-wire
o Bridge Pickup: Gibson USA ’57 Classic Plus Humbucker 4-wire
o Pickup Selection Control: Switchcraft 3-way pickup selector
o Neck Pickup Controls: Volume, Tone (push/pull/series parallel)
o Bridge Pickup Controls: Volume, Tone (push/pull/series parallel)
o Fingerboard Binding: Single ply, cream
o Bridge: Locktone Tune-o-matic™
o Tailpiece: Locktone Stopbar
o Hardware Finish: Nickel Plate
o Machine Heads: Grover® Locking Rotomatic 106 Series 18:1 Tuners
o Typical Weight: 8.4 lbs (+/- 5%)
o Strings: D’Addario® .010, .013, .017, .026, .036, .046″
o Setup: PRO SCM setup
THE PERFECT COMBINATION OF TRADITION AND INNOVATION
The Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus is far and away the best Les Paul for the money you can find anywhere in the world, a perfect combination of tradition and innovation. This guitar is as close as you’ll get to a genuine American built Les Paul but at only a fraction of the price making it an absolute bargain! It really is the culmination of years of refining what for many was already a perfect guitar.
The Les Paul Tribute Plus features a solid Mahogany back with a solid, carved Flame Maple cap for the ultimate combination of warmth and bite, just like a Gibson Les Paul Standard Plus. Historic-minded players (which all Les Paul players are) will appreciate that the Les Paul Tribute Plus is the very kind of solid body electric that Les himself envisioned when he first started tinkering after hours in the Epiphone factory in Manhattan in 1940 when the R&D department at Epiphone was one of the most advanced instrument laboratories in the country. Les wanted to invent a guitar that could do anything; give a player any tone they could imagine, a sound that had heft, bite, sweet, or sour, while also making the player look outstanding. And the House of Stathopoulo was just the place to make it happen.
“When I started playing, well… ever since I was a freckle-faced, red-headed kid, I just attacked the guitar,” the late Les Paul was heard to say to Epiphone’s Ted Drozdowski. “I was terribly aggressive about it. There were certain things that, if they intrigued me, whether it was music or electronics, I just went for the throat.”
In many ways, the Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus is the guitar that Les made for himself long before Epiphone did. For those who saw the Les Paul Trio in New York at the Iridium or Fat Tuesdays at their weekly gig, it was clear that Les treated the guitar as an instrument . . . not simply a collector’s item. A good guitar (“Epiphone always made a good guitar,” Les proclaimed) should be a tool and the quicker a guitarist could adjust or dramatically alter their sound, the better. For Les, experimentation and spontaneity was key to great artistry and that spirit lives on in the Les Paul Tribute Plus.
“Les was my guitar idol and I was honoured to call him my friend for so many years,” Lou Pallo of the Les Paul Trio told Epiphone. “When we put the trio together, Les would say we’re going to… well, he’d never tell us what we’re going to do (laughs). He would come in and play a song that we’d never played before. But then I’d go home and look at the changes in a fake book or whatever I had to make sure they were the correct changes, which Les loved.”
Just flip through the auction catalog for the Estate of Les Paul and you’ll find that every guitar Les ever owned–including Epiphones from the 40’s through the modern era were all lovingly tinkered with.
‘Tinkering’ . . . Les Paul-style . . . at the original New York Epiphone factory meant re-wiring pickups, refining, sculpting, and sometimes sawing his favorite Epiphone archtops in half and attaching them to railroad ties, discarded blocks of scrap wood and anything else he could find in an effort to make a guitar that could “sustain for days” and become the ultimate can-do instrument.
Epiphone owner Epi Stathopoulo had a long friendship with Les and thanks to Epi’s generosity (not to mention the factory keys), the primordial version of the Les Paul Tribute Plus can be traced back to Les’ first working solid body electric, “the Log,” which was made in the off hours at the Epiphone factory on 14th St. in New York City.
The Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus is what Epiphone . . . and Les . . . are all about: innovation and tradition. What else do you expect from a company full of mavericks and guitar players?
Once Miles Davis asked Les, ‘What’s the secret, Les? People love you’ and Les replied, “The secret is, I don’t play for myself; I play for the people. I do my best to entertain.” – Les Paul
Today’s Les Paul Tribute Plus is probably closest to what Les was looking for and you won’t find a better–or more affordable–Les Paul on the market today, especially after it has been through the hands of scmusic’s guitar techs for a real PRO SCM setup!
The Epiphone Tribute Les Paul is a fitting tribute to Les’ timeless guitar design with the sound that you can only get from a Les Paul.
