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Epiphone Midnight Les Paul

 

Review of the Epiphone Midnight Les Paul by Nikki

In January 2005 Epiphone announced their 'Guitar Of The Month Program'. The idea behind this series was to release a new guitar for each month of the year in limited quantities.

These guitars would be based on some of the most popular and legendary designs released by Epiphone, and would consist of special hardware and finishes to make them genuine collectors items for guitar enthusiasts everywhere. The guitar being reviewed in this feature is from this series; more specifically it's the Limited Edition 'Midnight' Les Paul Custom.

Features & Build Quality
The 'Midnight’ Les Paul is manufactured in Korea and features a mahogany/alder body with a translucent black flame maple top. The set neck is made of mahogany with a rosewood fingerboard and features mother of pearl block inlays with a total of 22 frets. The frets are nicely dressed throughout the neck and there are dot markings on the side of the neck as reference points. It has a black Tune-o-matic bridge with a stop tailpiece, which is complemented very nicely by the black Grover machine heads and the black strap buttons. The headstock also has mother of pearl inlays. 

The guitar has been designed without the classic Les Paul scratch plate and there are no holes in case you wanted to fit one to the guitar yourself. Having said this I think it looks much better without a scratch plate. 

There are individual tone and volume pots for each of the two Active EMG 81 pickups and it features a 3 way pick up selector switch. A multi ply cream and black binding adds to the overall remarkable look and finish of this guitar. The binding is spot on and there are no blemishes in the paintwork. On the back of the guitar behind the volume and tone pots there is a compartment that can be easily accessed without the need of a screw driver, this houses the 9 volt battery used to power the active EMG pickups.

I must say that I was extremely impressed by this guitar’s build quality, as it is excellent for its price! The tuning was very good, and there were no obvious intonation problems, indicating that these guitars have a much better setup in the factory before being boxed up ready for sale.

The ‘Midnight’ Les Paul Custom comes in a cardboard heavy-duty box and the only accessory included is a 1/4-inch jack cable to connect the guitar to an amplifier, but despite the lack of accessories I was very impressed by this guitar when unpacking it, as it looks great! Budget guitars tend to come packed with accessories, but the more you spend the more emphasis is put on creating a quality product, which doesn’t need to be accompanied with ‘extras’ in order to sell. The ‘Midnight’ instantly reminded me of James Hetfield’s ESP Les Paul look-alike, which should instantly make this guitar appeal to Metallica and heavy metal/rock fans alike. 

Out of the box the tuning and setup was of a very good standard. The action was just right for my playing style. Not too low for the strings to buzz at all and not too high to make runs and chord progressions too awkward to play. The neck is wide like most Les Paul’s and the radius of the neck is reminiscent of Gibson’s Les Paul Custom, which is commonly referred to as a ‘wide and thin’ neck. It’s much thinner than my Gibson’s Les Paul Studio’s neck and makes playing the guitar easier. I was very impressed by the fact that the guitar was able to retain it’s tuning and hardly required me to tweak the machine heads at all even after bending the strings throughout my session! Another thing that surprised me was that it retains the weight of an American made Gibson Les Paul, which definitely adds to the overall feel of the guitar. Les Paul’s are meant to be heavy and it feels very solid.

Sound
I plugged this guitar into two different amplifiers for the purpose of this review. I used a Hohner Panther practice amplifier and my Marshal 6100 30th Anniversary head with a 2 x 12 Marshall cabinet. It was good to see how this guitar performed with both a budget amplifier as well as a valve based stack. With both combinations of amplifier this guitar performed remarkably well. It has a great variety of tones as well as really good sustain. 

The EMG pickups and Les Paul combination has become a slight trend in recent years and there is a reason why, as they compliment each other very well. A lot of heavy rock and heavy metal guitar players have opted for this combination, resulting in classic looks with modern tone.

Buy the Epiphone Midnight Les Paul

Reviewed by Nikki

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