I bought a "real" Les Paul
My Ibanez guitars are gone, replaced with...
...the Epiphone Les Paul Traditional PRO-III.
And oh yeah, there's a story behind this. I have some explaining to do.
I will talk about this guitar, but before I do that, two things I'm reminded of immediately is my experience with a thin-necked guitar back in the 1990s and the article Why I never got into Les Paul guitars back in 2012.
I'll start with that 2012 article first.
Most of the opinions I said in '12 are the same I still have today, but a few things have changed.
The Les Paul body shape doesn't cut into my ribs now because I'm not fat anymore. In 2015 I lost the weight and kept it off. After that happened, guitar shapes that used to cut into me were now comfortable to play. "Plank" style guitar bodies now rest properly against my body when seated or standing.
In '12 I was still in thrashing mode with guitar and only played Strats. Now in '19 I play much differently, particularly due to my Jazzmaster phase. The Jazzmaster guitar could not be banged hard because it would knock the strings right off the saddles. This ended up being very beneficial because it required me to learn lighter playing techniques to get around that. Now I play with a much lighter style as a result, and it's not required for me to own a guitar I need to bang hard anymore.
Where my opinion still stands strong is concerning the price of the Gibson Les Paul Standard. It wasn't worth $2,500 back in 2012, and it's not worth $3,400 today. (Yes, that means the guitar has had a 36% price increase in just 7 years.)
One of the very few Les Paul style guitars that I feel is worth its selling price is the Schecter Solo-II Custom - which by the way does not cross over 4 figures. Crazy-good guitar, but still significantly more expensive than the Epiphone I bought. I'll talk about that guitar more in a bit, but let's get to that thin-neck guitar experience I had back in the '90s.
I remember my first experience with a "shredder" guitar neck, and it sucked
Many moons ago back in the '90s, I was at a guitar store in Southbridge Massachusetts and there was a Jackson guitar in stock. I don't remember what model it was, but it was probably a Soloist. I do remember the guitar was new, stark white in color, had a double cutaway Strat style body and a pointy headstock.
What I do remember is picking the guitar up and strumming a few chords on it. I hated the neck almost instantly. Even though I didn't know much about guitars back then, I knew that neck just felt wrong to my fret hand. It felt so bad that I didn't even bother plugging the guitar into an amp to hear how it sounded.
Before playing that guitar, I had never felt a neck so thin and flat. What bothered me the most was the fingerboard edge. The board felt like it was stabbing at my fingers. It just felt terrible.
Was the guitar bad? No, because it was brand new. It was that damned neck shape that really put me off...
...and this brings me to:
What happened with my Ibanez guitars and why I got rid of them
In December '18 I had discovered the 25.5" scale length didn't agree with me anymore, so I wanted to try something shorter. It had to be cheap and available. Two options presented presented themselves, the Ibanez GAX30 (24.7" scale length) and the Squier Bullet Mustang HH (24.0" scale length).
A local Guitar Center had both, so I went and tried them out. The Squier was first. It sucked. Then I tried the Ibanez. It was fantastic. I bought it.
Literally a month later, I liked the GAX30 so much that I bought a second one that was a little more upscale (but still cheap), the AX120. When I got the AX120, that was when I parted ways with my Telecasters (I had two). Now I was a full-on Ibanez guy.
But then something happened a few months later. Fret hand pain.
The pain wasn't in the wrist but rather at the pad directly under my index finger on my left hand palm. I best describe this pain as a dull soreness. It wasn't a sharp nor shooting pain.
At first, I thought this was just my fret hand getting used to the different thinner shape of the neck on these particular Ibanez guitars, and that the pain would eventually go away.
It didn't. It got worse.
After one particular marathon session where I played guitar for 4 or 5 hours straight, that's when the pain got really noticeable.
The pain didn't clear after 24 hours either. It carried into the next day and even the day after that. That's when I knew that no matter how much I liked those two guitars, they had to go. My fret hand was saying, rather loudly, "don't play this neck shape".
Enter the Epiphone Les Paul Traditional PRO-III
Deciding upon this specific guitar was a rather laborious process.
Now in all honesty, I could have taken the dirt cheap way out and bought a guitar I owned before, the Epiphone Les Paul Special I P90. That guitar mostly held all the requirements I was looking for. But going with that guitar would have been a notable step down in quality when compared to the Ibanez guitars. I wanted something at least as good as the AX120 as what I was parting with if not better.
The guitar had to have the following features:
- Above average build quality
- Solid body
- Scale length between 24" and 24.75"
- Top loader
- Total weight of under 8 pounds
- Satin urethane finished neck
- Neck with thickness to it that was not U-shaped
- Priced under $500
Only the Epiphone Les Paul Traditional PRO series meets all these requirements - if you can find one under 8 pounds, which I did. Mine is 7.8lbs.
The neck is absolute best selling point of the PRO-III
On the PRO-III is a satin finished D-shape neck with some actual chunk to it. It's not super chunky but definitely thicker than the Ibanez neck was.
The Ibanez AX has what I called a "squashed U" neck shape, which results in a neck that's thin with pronounced shoulders. It was the shoulder that was causing my fret hand pain. With less wood to grab, that pad on the palm of my fret hand under my index finger was pressing against that neck shoulder in a bad way.
My hand didn't start complaining loudly until playing those Ibanez necks for about 3 months. Then when I did that marathon guitar playing session as mentioned earlier and the pain didn't clear in a day, I knew the guitars had to go.
Since owning my Les Paul, the pain is all but gone now. Some soreness still remains, but it's nowhere near as much as when I was still playing the Ibanez guitars. My fret hand is healing up properly since I'm not damaging it any further.
There is only one real flaw with the Epiphone neck. It's ugly.
The Epiphone Les Paul Traditional PRO-III has an ugly neck, but that's okay
The PRO-III comes in 5 colors. Metallic Gold, Pacific Blue, Pelham Blue, Wine Red and Ebony.
I have the Pelham Blue model. It is the lightest color option of the lot. The tradeoff to this lighter color is that you can see every single imperfection on the back of the neck. Mahogany does not take well appearance-wise to satin finishing. Since it's a semigloss and not high-gloss, grain is very visible and easily felt by the finger...
...which is what I wanted. This neck feels fantastic. But it looks ugly because it has the appearance of looking all nicked up even though it isn't.
Satin finishing makes the neck feel like unfinished wood. Very smooth, zero sticky feel, and takes very well to long playing sessions. But again, looks like crap.
Does that mean the fretboard looks bad? No. That board is pau ferro and looks great:
Something I want to make very clear however is that the reason you can see the grain so prominently on the Pelham Blue model is literally because of its color. Every other color offered has a neck look that is significantly darker on the back and hides the grain lines much better.
Does the prominent grain on my Pelham Blue PRO-III bother me? Given my fret hand isn't in pain anymore, no. Having no pain more than makes up for any appearance gripes I could come up with.
How does the guitar sound? I'll have a video posted here of that soon.
How many guitars did I try before buying the PRO-III? Let's answer that.
I went through a ton of guitars before getting the PRO-III
Said very honestly, the PRO-III is one of the extreme few Les Paul guitars I actually like since almost none of them come with satin urethane neck finishing.
While I was at Guitar Center trying out guitars, I went through many models before deciding to get the PRO-III. Something like 10 to 12 guitars, both new and used. I was probably in that store for at least 2 hours, and thankfully the sales staff wasn't annoyed by that (especially since I spent money that day).
It's very atypical of me to spend over $300 on a guitar, but this time I had to because Epiphone was the only company to offer something that met every requirement I had.
Will I be keeping it?
Unknown at this point. She seems to be working okay at the moment, but sometimes Les Paul guitars can get "moody". If it gets too moody, then I'll have to part with it.
So far, she seems to be playing and sounding right. But time will tell whether or not it stays.
How I get good overdrive tone
I covered clean tone in my last article, so for this one I'm going to talk about overdrive.
What I've learned more than anything else over the years concerning overdrive and distortion is this: Turn down the friggin' gain.
In my earlier guitar playing days, I, like so many other guitar players, plugged in a guitar and used a ridiculous amount of distortion. Why? Because that's what all kids do. I was no different. I didn't know anything about guitar tone in my teens. All I knew were two guitar tones. Distortion on or off. When it was on, I used way, way too much.
These days I know how much of a tone wrecker distortion is, so instead of using way too much, I barely use any at all. The end result of that is that I can actually hear the guitar's tonal character whereas I couldn't before.
One of the best examples of light gain that sounds like 10,000 amps is any song by AC/DC. Listen to Back in Black again and examine the guitar tone. It sounds like there's a lot of distortion going on, but there isn't. Rock doesn't need tons of gain to sound huge.
The way to get a genuinely decent rock tone from amp modeling is to pick a Marshall amp, a 4x12 greenback cabinet, an MXR Dyna Comp compressor (i.e. the "red" compressor) and then add some light delay in the back to fill out the rest - and bear in mind the delay is totally optional.
The key thing to take from this, again, turn down the friggin' gain. More distortion doesn't turn up the rock. All it does is make everything a nasty, buzzy mess.
Said another way, use only what you need, and not what you think you need.
Also keep this in mind as well: With less gain, you can much better control your rhythm and lead tones just by using your guitar's volume control and nothing else. No need for extra gain when you play a lead sound. Configure it just right and you'll never have to stomp a pedal to go back and forth from rhythm to lead.
How I get good guitar clean tone
When I record clean tone for guitar, this is how I go about it.
Good recorded clean tone for guitar on the surface appears to be easy, and in fact it is once you know how it's done.
Before continuing, I own a Line 6 Spider V 60, but if you happen to own a V 30, V 120 or V 240 model of the same amplifier, this will also work.
Aside from what is said in this video, what I do to get a good clean sound is the following:
"Clean" should not be "crystal clean"
The amp selection I'm using in the preset does in fact put a little "dirt" in there, which means you can hear some mild speaker breakup similar to how a real speaker cabinet would sound.
Loudspeakers for guitar use don't sound like hi-fi speakers and never have. When the volume of a guitar amp is turned up even with absolutely no overdrive present, the sound will naturally distort. This being true, having some of that light overdrive in there does sound normal to the ear.
If I were to a "crystal clean" direct sound where absolutely no emulated speaker breakup is heard, it sounds too processed and fake. Yes, emulated amps are of course fake, but the point is that you don't want to make it sound overly obvious.
Some emulated cabinets are more appropriate than others
Smaller cabs will exhibit speaker breakup sooner than larger ones, just like in real life. Sometimes this is desirable because you can more effectively control how much breakup happens with your guitar volume. For me, it is desirable because adjusting speaker breakup at the guitar rather than at the amp is more convenient.
Compression is your friend
On just about all amp modelers be it on the amp or in software, there is the option to enable compression. My preferred compressor is the emulated MXR Dyna Comp pedal. Many modelers list this as a "red" compressor since the pedal color is literally painted red.
It's also usually true on most modelers that the emulated compressor option right next to the "red" is the "blue", the BOSS CS-3 Compression Sustainer.
Some of you may prefer blue over red. I just like the red one better and always have.
Reverb should be light
When I first started using reverb years ago, of course I would drown the sound in it because it was like a new toy to me. But these days I scale back the reverb because I want to hear the guitar first and not the effect.
Sometimes reverb effects are cool to use, but when they overpower the guitar, the effect just gets in the way.
What NOT to do?
The key thing I try not to do since I know from experience that it doesn't work is to "sound vintage".
Something I am very well aware of is that most "vintage" guitar tones sound bland and boring.
Software developers try very hard to accurately emulate the exact guitar sounds heard on famous vintage rock recordings. Do they succeed? Yes, they do. But then when you hear it played through your guitar, you won't like it.
When you develop your sound, don't go for vintage because, again, you won't like it. Modernize, use the right amp/cabinet emulation, add compression, shape it and then your guitar will sound great when recorded.
This guitar upgrade actually works
Ordinarily I'm not too keen on recommending guitar upgrades, but this one is a no-brainer because it works.
In fact, I would recommend doing this upgrade first before anything else.
An output jack made by Switchcraft truly is an upgrade. There is a gold one, but the standard one without the gold connector is even cheaper.
Most don't think an output jack matters for much, but it actually does. It's usually true that where guitar electronics are concerned, the output jack is usually the first thing to fail completely. Why? Because every time you plug in or unplug a cable, you're moving metal on the inside. Eventually, enough movement causes a partial failure where the connection gets "scratchy" or "crackly", and then a complete failure shortly after that where the connection can't be made anymore.
The output jack is something where all mass produced guitars get cheap. There are even $10,000 guitars that exist with ridiculously crappy output jacks installed on them.
You won't necessarily hear any difference in your sound from using a Switchcraft output jack, but you will literally feel the difference when you plug in a cable. The connection will be more secure because the connector is built better, and the tension will be just right.
Dare I say, using a Switchcraft jack feels luxurious when you use it.
The more important thing however is that once installed, the likelihood of your output jack failing is decreased dramatically, and that's what makes it a genuine upgrade over what's in your guitar now.
Ibanez S521 is still one of the better "working man's" guitars
When money is tight and you need a reliable gigging guitar, this one fits the bill.
Definition of a "working man's guitar": Something you can play night after night where the instrument performs reliably without any fuss, and something you can actually afford.
That guitar is the Ibanez S521. It's priced very well for what it is. I've written about this guitar before but it definitely deserves another look because there are a few more things I need to mention about it.
While the S521 isn't the fanciest guitar, what it does have going for it is that it's a simple hardtail that won't let you down, and it works with basically any amp using any guitar effects you have.
This particular guitar is the base model for the Ibanez S Series, but even so it's packed with the good stuff that counts.
- The maple neck is a "Wizard III" 25.5" scale with 12" fingerboard radius. Very comfortable.
- The neck dot inlays are offset, giving the guitar an upscale appearance.
- Frets are jumbo size for easy soloing with no fretting out.
- Pickups are the Ibanez "Quantum", which are quite good. Ibanez states they have "accelerated bass response" with a generous amount of midrange. That basically means a well-voiced pickup.
- Pickup switching is 5-way - but not in the way you would think. The positions are bridge, bridge+neck inner coils only, bridge+neck, neck parallel connected, neck series connected. This is one of the more usable switching configurations that works with pretty much any type of music you can think of, including the type where spanky or "honky" tones are required. The fact you can switch from regular humbucker tones over to the spank/honk stuff is really nice.
What you get with the S521 is a true plug-in-and-go guitar after you set it up to your liking. No upgrades are required because the good stuff is already there.
The biggest selling point of this axe is that it can truly be the one guitar you go gigging with where you don't need anything else. This guitar is not built to be flashy, but rather just to work and keep working reliably.