Recently I managed to acquire an almost mint condition Epiphone Les Paul Classic. Unfortunately, I don’t have any video footage of this guitar and my camera skills aren’t too good for this photo shoot, so my very average pics will have to do. I tried a couple of different back grounds to get the best lighting, so the pics will vary depending on which ones turned out the best.

The guitar was in pretty good shape when I picked it up, apart from a few rusty screws it was in almost mint, un-played condition.

Boasting a vintage 50s ‘Clown Burst’ over a flamed maple veneer cap. With two black uncovered Gibson-designed Humbuckers, she certainly looks like a player. The Humbuckers are an open-coil design which use enamel-coated wire, alnico magnets and are double vacuum wax-dipped to minimise and feed back issues often associated with un-potted pickups.

The Mahogany body with a flamed Maple cap had a good medium weight. It wasn’t heavy or light, it felt very comfortable to play and balanced really well on your leg when sitting down to play.

The finish was a very thin poly coat that was in almost mint condition.

The Chrome hardware ie; Tune-o-matic bridge and stop-bar tail piece was still like new, no signs of pitting or corrosion at all.

The neck and fretboard are in perfect condition. Plenty of life on the frets, no signs of twisting and no fret buzz. It has a standard 24-3/4″ scale length neck with all the traditional Les Paul features, a super-fast 1960s slim-taper neck, trapezoid inlays in a Rosewood fretboard with vintage, tulip style tuners.

Going off the serial number, it was made in July 1999 at the Unsung Plant in Korea, with a Production Number of 0951, and as far as my research on these goes, there was only a limited run of 2000 made.

The Headstock had the cut corners, open book Epiphone shape with a ‘Gibson’ truss rod cover and the ‘Les Paul’ model branding.

As mentioned earlier, the poly coating, as you would expect, has held up well. protecting that gorgeous Flamed Maple top. It doesn’t feel overly done like a lot of Fender finishes. The only cosmetic issue with the finish was a tiny scratch at the bottom that you can see at the bottom of the next pic, just above the binding.

The back was a nicely tinted see through cherry finish. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good pic of the back, so this next pic doesn’t really do it justice.

Here is a pic of the Mahogany wood grain in the back of the body, although a little better than the previous pic, still not the best. The wood grain in the Mahogany body looks very nice coming through the tinted finish on the back, and as far as I can tell it looks to be a solid piece, if there is a join, it has been bookmatched extremely well.

So apart from some typical aging, a couple of very minor scratches and some yellowing of the cream binding around the neck and body, all in all, this axe is in mighty fine form for its age. Their is something really cool about these older Korean made Epi’s… Their beautifully carved veneer maple tops look a whole heap nicer than the current Epiphone Les Paul standards being sold at the moment and the workman ship is extremely good.

Here’s a few more pics to finish up with… enjoy!