Guitar comparison videos have become quite the thing these days. And while it’s useful to compare models to explore their tonal differences, sometimes it’s fun to pit two obviously mismatched guitars against one another and see what happens. Sometimes the results can be surprising.
That appears to be the mindset with this new video from Rob Chapman and his pal Lee. They compare the most expensive Les Paul to the least-expensive Les Paul. In this case, the models are the Gibson True Historic 1959 Les Paul—U.S. retail price: $8,599—and the Epiphone Slash “AFD” Les Paul Special-II, which retails for $382 U.S. as part of a performance pack that includes a gigbag, cable, strap and picks.
As you might imagine from its name and price, the Gibson True Historic 1959 Les Paul is an as-close-as-possible recreation of the celebrated 1959 Les Paul Standard. The Slash Les Paul is a great budget guitar for players who are just starting out. Obviously we’re talking opposite ends of the spectrum.
But who knows what surprises await. Rob and Lee plug the guitars in and test them through one amp to evaluate their tone.
As Rob notes of the Slash Les Paul, “While we were testing guitars, there was a funny psychological thing in my mind. I was telling myself, Oh yeah, imagine this was one of those Sixties things that was made but never actually happened, and it has a bolt-on with vintage tuners and plastic nut, and I was like, Yeah, I could get into that vibe. If you relic it, suddenly it’s this kind of quirky, old-school Gibson, and it becomes a different thing in your mind.”
The testing gets underway at the 9:45 mark, which is where we’ve set the video to begin. If you want to watch the entire clip, just drag the starter back to the beginning.
Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.
