Epiphone Les Paul: Talking About Modding Guitars With Bassist Billy Lease
One of the anomalous things about the band Cabin is that their band members are all pretty versatile musicians. We've had drummer Dave Chale talking to us about acoustic guitars and amp heads, and in this video, bassist Billy Lease talks about occasionally switching to his guitar; an Epiphone Les Paul.
Here, Billy confirms a standard conception about Epiphone Guitars -- they're incredible guitars if you upgrade and switch out the hardware.
BILLY LEASE: Billy Lease, and the band, Cabin.
Sometimes we [OVERLAPPING]
PATRICK OGLE: Switch out. I certainly gather that you guys probably switch out instruments.
BILLY LEASE: She plays -- She'll play violin and keys and sometimes she'll play bass and I'll play guitar.
PATRICK OGLE: And this is an Epiphone Les Paul.
BILLY LEASE: Yes. I've had this since I was like 16. I've had this for years.
PATRICK OGLE: Now these are often much maligned guitars, so you're going to make the case for the Epiphone Les Paul [OVERLAPPING].
BILLY LEASE: Yeah. Well I put a lot into it. When I was younger, I bought it, and it still sounds great and I actually -- I got like old fret work done on it. They're known for, you know, having bad tuners but my tuners actually work.
PATRICK OGLE: You didn't replace them.
BILLY LEASE: I didn't replace them. No, and it stays, and I can tune it and come back a week later and it's still in tune.
PATRICK OGLE: A lot of things that people talk about this guitar, not this specific one, but generally the Epiphones, what people say is that the guitars themselves were fine but all the hardware sucks.
BILLY LEASE: That's what I did. You know, I got it and pretty much I put a -- I've got a Steve Morse DiMarzio right here at the bridge, and then at the neck I put in a DiMarzio PAF, and then got a little coil tap right here to split it and get some Strat tones if I want. Yeah, that's about it, and then I plug into the Peavey Classic 50, and I also I'll use a Boss GT-6 as well.
PATRICK OGLE: So everybody in this band uses a GT-6?
BILLY LEASE: Yeah. I'll just use hers actually. When we're on stage, we'll do a quick switch out and just run cables through them [SOUNDS LIKE] quickly.
PATRICK OGLE: Now -- Okay, so basically I mean one of the things about this that's interesting is you kind of like are confirming something that other people have said is that if you have a guitar you want to like fool with and add stuff to and change the tone, well you don't want to buy a Les Paul and do that with it. You don't want to spend the money on a Les Paul so why don't you get one of these?
BILLY LEASE: Yeah. I mean it worked out. It's, you know, if I had left it the way it was when I bought it, then it wouldn't be as reliable or it wouldn't sound that good either like, you know, I had to get the frets filed, the nut on it I had to get replaced, truss rod adjustments. I think it's a good 15 years old or so too, this guitar I bought used, so.
PATRICK OGLE: Sometimes they can -- Sometimes the older ones seem to be a little bit better made.
BILLY LEASE: Yeah.
PATRICK OGLE: And sometimes that's just a fantasy people like me have but sometimes it's true.
BILLY LEASE: Yeah. I don't know. I've heard -- I don't know what year it is. I've heard the last two digits of the serial number would be the year or something.
PATRICK OGLE: With Gibson, that's sometimes true. I don't remember.
BILLY LEASE: If that's true, this is '86 but I don't see anything that old. I don't know. I mean I bought it. I think I paid $400 for it and the put in 300 or 400 bucks into it afterwards, you know, with pickups and everything, and really haven't touched much on it since, and it does the trick.
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