Epiphone and Matt Heafy launch MKH Les Paul Custom Origins Collection, including 25.5"-scale 7-strings

After teasing his new Epiphone signature guitar, the MKH Origins Les Paul Custom last year – and subsequently revealing its seven-string counterpart would feature a 25.5 scale length, metal's modern-day renaissance man Matt Heafy has officially launched the MKH Custom Origins Collection.

The result of close work between Heafy and Epiphone luthiers, guitars in the Origins Collection are “made for metal”.

The collection comprises a Les Paul Custom spec'd to Heafy's requests, available in both six- and seven-string versions, Ebony and Bone White finishes and both left- and right-handed configurations. In terms of specs beyond these variations, all guitars in the collection are identical.

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They feature a maple-capped mahogany body with modern weight relief for “hours of comfortable play”, a mahogany neck with a SpeedTaper D profile for playing comfort and a contoured heel for easy upper fret access, as well as gold hardware, locking Grover Rotomatic tuners with Tulip buttons, and classic Les Paul Custom cosmetics.

“With my approach to design and my approach to aesthetics, I always try to put just as much care in visuals – even though I'm not a visual artist – as I would the auditory art,” Heafy says. “It's typically always been things that I can't make are the things that inspire me the most: food [and] art. And in turn that helps feed the musical inspiration for me.”

The guitars come loaded with a pair of the Trivium frontman's Fishman Fluence Custom Series signature humbucking pickups, which serve up three distinct sounds: two standard Modern voices and one single coil-style tone. These options are accessible via push/pull volume and tone pots.

As revealed by Heafy late last year, seven-string iterations of the MKH Origins Les Paul Custom boast 25.5" scale lengths, a notably longer scale for a Les Paul, which generally lends itself to better tuning stability and fewer intonation problems– perfect for tackling the drop-tuned riffs of Heafy's black metal side project, Ibaraki.

The six-string MKH Origins Les Paul Custom is available now for $1,099, while its seven-string counterpart retails at $1,199. For more info, head to Epiphone.

It remains to be seen whether Heafy has used one of his new MKH Origins Les Paul Customs on Ibaraki's debut album, Rashomon. But while we wait to found out, you can check out some of the material released under the Ibaraki banner, including an epic single featuring Gerard Way, titled Rōnin.