2015 Joe Bonamassa Custom Les Paul Epiphone with Bigsby, BurstBuckers (Page 1 of 2)

I got an email. Green Epiphone Les Paul with a Bigsby.

Here it is at Sweetwater: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ENJBIGNB

JB store: http://shop.jbonamassa.com/collections/ … ness-green

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Hi welcome to the group......does this mean you are ordering one for yourself???

This one is seriously tempting!  I love the colour, and the Bigsby...

I am expecting delivery of one of these this coming Thursday the 17th.  Anyone own one of these and can give a review?  Total blind buy.  I own a GT trad pro Epi that I installed a Bigsby on and I love it.  I'm looking forward to this one though. I also own both JB GT and JB Pelham blue and they are fantastic

I was told by Sweetwater that delivery dates have been pushed to January.

Now that's nice timing.  Looking forward to hearing your first impressions.

Oh, nice font colour in your signature!! 

I've had a little over a week now to play with my new 2015 Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Les Paul so I thought I'd give a few comments on what I think of the guitar. I'll preface this by saying I have never before picked up a Les Paul guitar, Gibson or Epiphone, so my point of reference is to my Fender Stratocaster. I purchased this guitar online from the JB Store so it was a bit of a leap of faith, my thinking was that if Joe was putting his name behind it, it would be up to a mininum standard of build quality.

SHIPPING
Being a guitar built in China, it goes without saying that it has travelled a great distance. Then the tracking info showed me it left Florida via Miami airport, went to Dallas/Ft. Worth airport then up to Vancouver, B.C. It then flew across the country to arrive at my doorstep on Christmas eve. I was nervous about the shape the packaging would be in after all this handling. Aside from the cardboard container being slightly mashed on one side (where the neck would be), it seemed to be in as reasonable a shape as could be expected I guess.
http://i67.tinypic.com/29eq5ud.jpg
Inside, the hardshell case was wrapped in heavy weight poly and the case was in perfect condition. It was a bit of a hold your breath moment as I opened the case and great relief to find the guitar inside was perfect.
http://i68.tinypic.com/312y5pt.jpg

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The first thing I noticed was the weight.  It is certainly quite a bit heavier than my Strat. As soon as you pick it up, it feels like a quality instrument. The neck is much rounder than the slender neck on the Strat, more like a baseball bat, but really comfy. I like the feel of the neck a lot. The overall finish was just flawless and much better than I was expecting from a guitar at this price point. I love the color of the green finish but this is certain to be a personal choice.

http://i68.tinypic.com/15refeh.jpg

http://i68.tinypic.com/66kbaf.jpg

http://i67.tinypic.com/30xkgmb.jpg

http://i64.tinypic.com/t8oj2x.jpg

SETUP
The guitar came with some tension on the strings but about 2-3 whole steps below standard tuning. So the first thing I did was tune the guitar and do some preliminary noodling around. The neck is fatter than that on the Strat but it feels great. The action was a little higher than I prefer (I like a pretty low action) being about 3-4mm at the low E string (12th fret) and about 2mm at the high E string. I decided to lower the low E string to a little over 2mm and the playability felt much nicer to me. I rechecked the intonation and it was bang on.

One concern I have is with the Bigsby unit, the strings route underneath the front roller which leads to a very sharp break angle as the strings come up and over the bridge. The break angle is so great at the high E string that the string actually makes contact with the sharp corner of the bridge block. Others have reported the same thing on the Gibson forum and one user decided to restring the guitar without going underneath the front roller. This may be something that I'll do as well. It seems the short body and Bigsby model gives this result. You can see what I'm talking about in this photo.

http://i66.tinypic.com/20jr5hs.jpg

Here, the guy routed the strings over the front roller, eliminating the front roller altogether.
http://forum.gibson.com/index.php?/topi … ectacular/

The Grover tuning heads feel nice and smooth and hold the strings in tune nicely.

PLAYABILITY
The guitar plays and feels great. But, I think the guitar will benefit from a setup and I am going to take it to a luthier I trust and have a complete setup done. It has wonderful sustain. The tone is warm and rich as you would expect.
Access to the front volume and tone pots is a bit limited by the large Bigsby vibrato arm when it's in the down position.
One other thing I notice is that the frets are somewhat scratchy when doing string bends. By contrast, my Strat feels silky smooth when bending strings. I don't know if this is something that will smooth out over time or not. I'll ask my luthier about this and perhaps a fret polish is in order. The fret edges themselves though are nice and smooth on the edge of the neck, no sharp corners or edges.

CONCLUSION
Well that's enough rambling. It may sound like I have a lot of nitpicks but I thought they needed to be mentioned. Overall though, I LOVE this guitar and I think my Strat may be accumulating more dust, LOL. It looks great, plays great and sounds great. It is well built, much better than the price would suggest. I am extremely happy with the purchase. Oh and it comes with a Meet & Greet pass for two, so I can't wait for Joe to come back this way again where I can meet him and have him sign it. Highly Recommended!

Thanks for the detailed review Jem 777.  Well done, and congrats on your beautiful guitar!  I really want one of those...

I am not sure about changing the string path through the Bigsby though - I am thinking that will change the tension and stability of the vibrato unit, and it will be problematic.  I would be more inclined to stick with the standard string routing, and perhaps file a channel on the back of the saddle so that the low E string is not touching any more.  From your review, I assume it is only the low E that is touching??

A good tech should be able to set it up perfectly.  The scratchy frets can usually be fixed by giving the frets a polish with fine 0000 steel wool, followed up with some silver or metal polish paste.  It is probably some lacquer finish buildup on the frets from the final finish spraying?!?  NOTE: If you are going to use Steel Wool or metal polish, mask off the fretboard with masking tape first, to prevent scratches and a mess!

Hope you can iron out the little quirks and get it playing in A1 condition!