Epiphone Les Paul Standard Guitar – Facts and History

Whether to buy the Epiphone Les Paul guitar or not is a favourite topic to be discussed by people who like to play a guitar as well as other music lovers. Guitars such as the Epiphone Les Paul are affordable but not cheap; you get an inexpensively priced quality guitar.

The history of the Epiphone Les Paul guitar goes way back in the late 1800′s when Anastasios Stathopoulos from Turkey mastered his ability in creating string instruments. When his family migrated to the United States in the early 1900′s, he put his skills to good use.

Back in those days, the Americans have a fascination with the banjo, another stringed musical instrument. It was an opportunity for the Turkish instrument maker to extend his skills to this kind of instrument.

The great response from their customers prompted the company to venture out to guitar-making. The name Epiphone was actually taken after Anastasios’ son, Epamimondas, in 1928. However, after a few decades of operation, the company was bought by Gibson in the late 1950s.

In the early 1950s, Gibson introduced the Les Paul electric guitar, named after the popular guitarist Les Paul who also invented his own solid body for the guitar. Gibson designed a different version of the guitar while still incorporating suggestions from Les Paul and using him as the endorser for the new product.

In order to make the guitars more affordable, the materials needed to be economical, including the labour costs which is why they are manufactured in Korea. The resulting guitar became what is now called as the Epiphone Les Paul guitar. The Epiphone Les Paul guitar is a modified version of Gibson’s original creation.

Fond guitar users would usually heat up the Yes and No sides as to the argument of how good the Epiphone model is compared to the original Gibson creation. The critics would say that the tone emanating from the Epiphone models will not level up to the quality produced by the original.

In truth, the quality of the Epiphone Les Paul guitar is not much different from the original Gibson design. It has been modelled from the original Gibson guitars with almost the same inlays. It may be a bit lighter compared to the original but according to guitar users, they find it to be more responsive and the sound to be almost identical to the original Les Paul.

The makers of Epiphone have a standard built patterned to the specifications of the Gibson design, with little or no difference whatsoever in the sound quality. For some of the users of the Epiphone Les Paul guitar, they are very happy and satisfied with it because it is affordable and is still almost the same as the original design.

Aside from these similarities, the Gibson and the Epiphone models are physically created to look similar, almost like twins.