Battle of the '59 Les Pauls - Epiphone 1959 Standard vs. Gibson Custom Shop

hmm hello [Music] oh [Music] uh [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so so [Music] looks like a les paul and it smells like a les paul i'm pretty sure it's a les paul does it smell like a little next part it's not got the odorless pole that certain les pauls have is it this it's more like the eau de toilette as opposed to the perfume isn't it i think anyway welcome back pete and i have been on holiday for a week not together um but you know we're close but close actually yes quite close yeah um and we're back uh although you've probably not had a break from the you know there's been videos anyway we never left the never ending stream uh and today in uh this fresh new video for us we thought we would grab a couple of guitars that came out last year um but every time i we do a les paul video uh you remind us in the comments section that we haven't done a proper review yeah of the 1959 epiphone les paul reissue and we didn't they were in and out of the shop and then get stolen let's do the video there's nobody left there but now we've got them yes so this is basically a top of the range epiphone les paul uh they retail in the uk at 7 49. come with a beautiful hard case which perhaps we'll do a sweep of the guitar in the hard case over very much as kind of like an epiphone version of the hard case that a 59 custom shop let's pull would come in yeah go straight into the loft or the garage yeah you're not a big hard case fan are you people man and i agree if you've got 50 guitars and you've got 50 horse coats where are you going to put all those pockets well think about anderson's we've got about 700 guitars on display cost me an arm and a leg just to rent somewhere to put the cases right but uh specs wise we the the major differences between this and perhaps the you know the epiphone legible standard is this aged finish so it's still a kind of a a polyurethane finish we're not in the sort of the realms of the nitra yet but they call it aged and it's like a satin finish designed to sort of give it that slightly more warning look and feel and you've got the burst bucket two and three pickups on here which are american-made and basically you know have been used on various gibson les pauls uh over the years currently i think the closest would be something like a gibson les paul standard 50s has the burst bucket one and two so just basically the same pickup but marginally marginally less hot than these hot hot um it's got it says here as well it's got all of the you know les paul standard outfit so you got you know your your uh cts yep potentiometer switchcraft toggle jet what all of the vintage goodness inside this as well yeah did they bring this out when they did the um every phone acoustics was that the thing they started putting on this is the same kind of finish that's on the jared james that's right les paul that's right yeah might have been used on on the same kind of other than that though again you know the body is obviously a mahogany it's a solid mahogany body you've got the maple top uh on the epiphany guitars they're still using a laurel fingerboard because of course rosewood hasn't really uh begun to be reused terribly commonly on far eastern made guitars mahogany neck bound got the clues and vintage style tuners which are very cool kind of period correct the nice limited edition badge on the back of the switch cavity and i think you get a an extra if you don't like this one do you because i know you're doing this on the custom shop on the anniversary stuff don't you but now as you can hear in as you heard sorry in the opening jam it's a great sounding guitar yeah right it does all the things that i thought it would do in terms of you know the big fat rich sound on the rhythm pick up the more bitey sound on the treble pickup i was dialing tones back it was doing all the things now go on well no you playing all right ui was playing so interestingly as well in this video entirely because i had to take my uh expensive pedalboard somewhere and i totally forgot i'd taken it there and forgot to bring it back so in today's video and this is quite interesting i'm using the pedalboard that i made in our ultimate budget pedalboard video which you can watch if you click up here so if you are clicking around please like and subscribe please do and then lines up the thing and do the stuff and um yes and pete's got not just his expensive pedalboard but like his expensive pedalboard with an extra expensive pedal yeah i've added the cornerstone gladio there so so now i've got one pedal here it's more than your pedalboard i think you've got one pedal on that board that costs more than my whole board and and and the whole board is like 10 times more than my board so if you thought we sounded similar in the opening jam i guess the question is are expensive pedals worth it um hey-ho of course it's a good video if you thought pete sounded way better then you've answered that question he's also away from the guitar player um right so songs pedals straight into my victory uh v140 which in fairness is still a jolly expensive amplifier so i like it but it's clean and it's just kind of clean and valvey transparent it's a great demo amplifier for this that's got girth hasn't it just got girth not enough people get into the tone and volume controls on the les paul you really can't or something and he's doing everything and it's just his thing and i don't know if this is he changes kind of his rig from time to time but for a long time and i think potentially still now he was very much of the school of thought that you took an old-school valve amplifier dimed it so just everything as loud as it would go and then literally just take the the volume on your les paul back a couple of notches so that it didn't uh hit the amp with quite so much load and he he was saying it was allowed it to sort of bloom a bit more but um he's back to his big setup now with his with his you know dumbbells and i saw him it's just at the albert hall maybe three or four years ago and we got free tickets from gibson thanks very much totally totally assuming that we'd be up in the gods somewhere like where the free tickets go and we were front row at the albert hall literally on the side that joe bonamassa's amps were on it was a monstrous show what a player anyway yeah keeps anywhere anyway so that was the anyway i didn't that was i didn't even get past the the rhythm so this is when you combine the two the rhythm and the treble [Music] sorry every time i hear those chords now i can't help but i just think about the new song i mean we're not going to go at you and every time you're like here we go again sorry we didn't really talk about the neck carve again on the 59 here they've tried to copy a classic 59 net card so it's kind of like a slim to medium vibe neck 12 inch radius so again it's all very less pull you know it's not trying to be like a modern take on a les paul it's it's a vintage spin you buy the modern one a modern yeah if you want coil taps and all that kind of stuff this is not the guitar for you you know treble pickup so right rich and harmonic that you know les paul tonics so yeah if for some gain i mean i've got a funny little set up here on my board i've kind of got a mages by tc which is a rat style pedal which is you know and then what i was using was a was a tone city sweet cream and the tone city comp engine to give it [Music] i mean bit of echo [Music] [Music] so there you see yeah a selection of tones so you know reasonably gainy i mean what else let's suppose been used by everybody over the years hasn't it from you know from les paul himself doing sort of jazzy lines through to slash and way heavier players than him clapton obviously through all the blues break up years peter green i mean it's a pointless list because it would be forever long forever man i wanna be forever long that's that's this guitar and it's 750 pounds uh well spent in my opinion oh i i would agree listen i mean you can't go wrong two colors a few two colors yeah which interestingly sorry to kind of crush you there just these were the two original yeah colors that were made on the on the the les paul in 1959 yeah i mean if you're looking to get you know if you don't have now either 350 000 pounds to buy an original 59 or however half a million or however much that they are or you know something like this yes we're going to come to in a minute which is about five is it plus five plus grand i don't think you'd find many most 58s now are sort of four to five this is gibson custom shop it's four to five grand for a 58 and five to six grand for a 59 and then upwards if you want you know relic king or uh the murphy lab stuff yeah so yeah so this is a great and you know and if you if you don't have the means to to get a let's pick you know a normalness pool 50s whatever yeah what 2300 kind of thing you know yeah so great value for money i really i quite like this sort of thing the idea is we're going to do a kind of a blindfold comparison between the 59 by gibson custom shop and the epiphone but we're not before we started shooting this video with the original originally the idea was to blindfold pete and go can you tell the difference between which if you're playing it and because the satin finish on the epiphone is so different to the gloss nitro finish on the back of the um the custom shop it was almost a pointless it's too easy because it's still it's just like you can immediately you go i know so what we decided to get on a new lap yeah i'll blindfold me pete will play and i've got to see if i can guess which is the one sound wise and to make it even harder i'm going to be using telecasters to make it even harder let's not plug that one in until i've got the blindfold yeah yeah so i said i just them in earlier and i must have been there there are you know yet you can tell the difference absolutely well pickups wise they are different so of course in the 59 all the custom shop range use a slightly ambiguously named uh custom bucker which basically gives gibson license to kind of wind the pickup however they want to to um recreate the period of guitar that they're trying to to make yeah so sometimes when you see the word custom bucker it doesn't that's not doesn't necessarily mean all custom bucket pickups are the same they certainly aren't um so in comes through the power of uh the delivery pigeon here it comes do you like our new attire as well by the way we have a whole new range of colors of anderton's t-shirt i mean i of course wore the color that was popping the most you pick the one that matches your personality okay so here we go guitar number one you nearly said what it was didn't you no i said guitar number one this is guitar number one i almost play okay so that's clean straight into the outfit okay so here's number two on the neck pickup [Music] middle position bridge [Music] okay switch back really quickly guys you need to play along here if you have i mean obviously you know it's too late now to say that isn't it but you should just look don't look at the screen whilst pete's playing and see if you can work it out too okay so here we i'm going back to the neck pickup now on the other guitar that's everything on full going back to the other guitar [Music] and i'm bringing a bit of gain on from the day just [Music] on the bridge pick up okay that's there was a little bit of gain there from the dane on the bridge pickup you're gonna get the same on the other one [Music] so [Music] [Applause] a little bit of neck from the other one [Music] [Music] i mean that that should be enough really okay so this is number one so i think whatever you i mean again what i'm playing now what could it be you just i think what you're playing now is the epiphone and what you played before there i mean please i've got to say this is a this is a this is a largely a guess but with maybe one or two things that i think i can hear so the one right here the one i think is the the gibson seems a little bit more open and a slightly wider spectrum of frequencies the one that i think is the epiphone sounded a little bit darker and a little bit more compressed maybe could you just do a you want some some soft playing stuff a little bit of game but just something so i want to sustain i want to i want i want the 12th fret or like the you know the sort of 15th fret b string bend you know okay so that's that's car number two was it uh yes okay so that's the one i currently think is the epiphone let's see if guitar number one can do the same [Applause] hey let me try to put a little compression on there so maybe it gets a bit more sustaining [Music] quickly guitar number one is the epiphone then that is a killer sounding guitar okay still going with numbers so i mean the pedals now you've got a origin effect you've got a gladio and then together again that one that you were playing i think on the vibrato on the upper notes again it's just slightly more scratchy sounding yeah i think so can i yeah you can you can yeah that's what i think yeah so what about just your clarity one was the gibson two was the phone right yeah so there were no i just swapped them over but you you hit you're hearing exactly what it is i'm also hearing i'm also i don't know if you can hear that can you hear those there may be a little bit of this setup on this guitar is really beautiful you know it's just it's playing wise it's it's it's it should be better to play you know but you can this just needs a little it comes straight out of the box we're literally taking them out of the box like i would have this set up before i i think that's is that fair to say yeah i do i kind of feel now of course the argument is you know should you expect the factory to do that should you expect the shop to do that or should you be expected to do it yourself i mean i'm not saying it's bad no i think i'm saying i think the reality is you have to accept that the cheaper the guitar becomes the less time there is to to focus on very labor-intensive parts like the final settings just strings i mean i've just put a new first set of more but you know i don't know what strings is on here but yeah you know it feels to me like i do agree i think you could take any guitar probably a thousand or hundred pound or less and perhaps more so it becomes more obvious when you get down to sort of say 500 or less than that yeah and just before the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best 50 60 pounds that you can spend is to go and take it to a ludia and say can you stick some new strings on it and just give it the one so because it will improve its playability substantially but sometimes can benefit from that you know because then they'll get in on the room air conditioning and you know the neck yeah if you if you own a guitar for you know 10 years i you know you'd expect to want to service that five or six times you play that quick i think you need to play that it's a lot lighter isn't it as well it's a super light guitar that guitar if you ask that it's one of the one of the best 59s i've played 60 anniversaries uh it's really really a nice guitar i mean it is a super super guitar isn't it but they all look and they're so this is that's it i mean when was the last time you played a bad custom shot you know yeah you're right you're right but that is very nice it's just something but it again it immediately feels like a guitar that you've had for a while that you just want to play yeah as opposed to a guitar that you go i'm sure you know if i had that set up and i had it for a few months i'd get bang into it but it's almost six thousand pounds less of 500 pounds less you is that enough to to justify the money it's not in the i mean i think when you play a guitar that one percent that the audience struggles to hear becomes like 10 percent doesn't it become when you're playing it becomes much easier to sort of [Music] you can probably get a couple of cool nice pictures but if you want to you know again a lot of people say that nitro finish is just you know again makes the guitar a bit more open and resonant you know i mean this is we set the world on fire again by arguing like this but you know what i mean i know exactly what you mean lee but i would say i would say you know if you if you have the money and you want to tweet yourself go for it if if you you know if you don't then these are great but compare do you have a little play compared to i mean again this is a guitar that i'm instantly going yeah i don't know this is this is a bucket list guitar isn't it absolutely not come on play a bit and let's see what do you think when you play them well i mean i i kind of feel like we've demonstrated there's a you know there's like a there is a difference but it's a tiny difference in the sound um and you know yet again as we probably demonstrate over and over and over again you can't go well this is 10 times the price but it's not you know therefore it should be 10 times better it just doesn't work like that at all yeah 100 um and of course with the guitar tone is only one part of it you know feel balanced looks i always say you have to you have to when you look at the guitar like this you're going to want to pick it up in one you need to be inspired by the guitar i mean look yeah and then look you don't you don't get talked looks like top on that man i mean the neck on is it that neck on this one that's got a nice it's got a little bit of flame in there yeah and that's that one there's got a foam in the neck flaming neck well look i said we're rambling only with the rambling uh as always um you know you guys close you know just what do think in the comments the whole thing i think we'll get similar results i think you'll go i'm pretty sure that's the custom shop and that's the squire but you know it'll be marginal and your and the whole debate will come down to is it worth 10 times as much or not i mean that's about the you know custom shop strap is about ten times the square classic vibe same and this isn't quite ten times this but it's a piece of wood with a piece of wood on him i do still i'm gonna say this again because i've said it like a hundred times i do wish that epiphone would just put the gibson headstock on there les paul you know it's like they kind of they kind of they changed it to make it almost but i'm a bit like why don't you just do it exactly exactly the same yeah why not it's not that different though now is it look no what can i say it's just you know it's a great guitar for the money and this looks like a great guitar and that's just a great guitar but it'll cost you half an arm and half a leg or whatever well thank you very much pete as always for your stupendous playing ripping off today man i'm not into it what happens i take a week off so your week off and you can't stop it all comes back out of me and we need to be absolutely useless in the next video another thing please if you uh have some of these suit ups that you would like us to do if you're still watching by the way the one guy who's still watching the end of this video uh please comment and say well we'd like to have a shoot up with the um i would like to shoot that out with the murphy labs could do epiphones versus standard usa versus custom versus murphy labs we do the whole thing hey such a tough job but someone's got to do it and on that note everybody will say goodbye and we shall see you in another video very soon au revoir [Music] pardon me you

Channel: Andertons Music Co

Views: 450,788

Keywords: Andertons, Andertons Music, Andertons TV, gibson, epiphone, epiphone vs gibson, epiphone 1959 les paul standard, les paul, gibson custom shop, cheap vs expensive, blindfold challenge, shootout, comparison, gear shootout, epiphone les paul vs gibson les paul, holy grail guitar, 1959 les paul, '59 les paul, The Captain, Danish Pete, are expensive guitars worth it?, best les paul, electric guitar, custom shop, les paul standard

Id: b2PKnjBuldA

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021