I was excited to see these two models arrive in the mail. I wondered how well Gibson/Epiphone does at bringing the Les Paul look, feel and sustain to a sub-$1000 and even sub-$500 guitar.
They arrive in a simple angled cardboard box. They don't come with a case. In this instance the two guitars came in two angled cardboard boxes within a single larger square box that I thought could only hold one guitar. I didn't know what I would do when I need to send them to two winners next week. :) Turns out the UPS store keeps "guitar boxes" in stock. Good to know. Anyway, on to the review.
Epiphone Les Paul Ultra II
Look:
Epiphone Les Paul Ultra II ($699 at Sweetwater) has the Les Paul Cherry Sunburst look, gold hardware, large fretboard inlays, everything you need to say to yourself "I am Peter Frampton." It is a classic look, with all the trimmings. For a person such as myself with a long-time case of Les Paul envy, it is very satisfying to own (even for a little while during this review) a guitar with this look.
Playability:
This guitar has very low action. My immediate reaction was "wow." I was pleasantly surprised to see it set up so low, and easy to play. I have a carpal tunnel sort of problem in my fretting hand, and this guitar is so much easier to play than my strat, that I kept going back to it over and over again. Later on I began to see it as a little touchy compared to the Studio reviewed above. Low action is a two-edged sword. It is easier to sound a note when you want to, and also easier to sound a note when you don't want to. All in all, I would prefer low action, but it does require more precise control in your playing.
Sound:
Here's where things get interesting. The Les Paul Ultra II has a thin pickup embedded in the 22nd fret. This "NanoMAG" pickup is designed to allow the guitar to sound like an acoustic. It has a separate output jack with low-mid-high tone controls for connecting to an acoustic amplifier. I don't have an acoustic amp here in the office, so I couldn't test this feature out completely. I pluggged the NanoMAG-only output into my amp simulator and the results were "acoustic-like" but not really "I can't believe it's electric."
However....
After a few days I figured out (reading the docs helped :) that the knobs on this guitar are not the standard Les Paul two-volume two-tone set of four. The bottom tone knob on the Ultra II is actually a NanoMAG volume control. There is only one tone knob, and it affects all pickups. So, you have effectively 3 pickups running at once, one being a strange little NanoMAG mounted above the 22nd fret that gives a very shimmery high sound.
Conclusion:
The Ultra II is a lot of fun for a guy like me. I love pickup selectors, split-coil humbuckers, active tone controls, anything to let me play with the output. This NanoMAG thing is a very interesting addition. You can fade it in or out of the mix whether working with bridge pickup or neck pickup or both. If you don't like it, you can turn it off, but if you want a little more shimmer in your sound, there it is to help you out. I was impressed with the build quality of this guitar and will be sorry to see it go when we give it away next week.
Good luck!
