china factory, sucks.

[villian]

I bought a brand new epi les paul standard in black. It was made in China and looked great, sounded great. When I got home and compared it with some of the korean epi les pauls that I have it didn't feel half as solid. I think the China factories are epiphones attempt at increasing their profits, and decreasing quality. I returned it. The Epi Les Paul Custom Elite I got that was made in Japan is freaking awesome.
villian

[zep]

I'm not so sure that it's fair to compare and elitist to the regular line in terms of them being about the same, but I have heard that some real lemons have come out of China. Elitists are always good though ;D

[Steelpriest]

We had this topic time and again over at the official forum, I was one of those who said also that a lot of crap comes from china. I won´t buy a chinese Epiphone as long as there are still enough korean made in the stores. Yes, obviously there are lots of lemons among the chinese guitars, hopefully Epiphone will improve quality control alot in the future. Recently I saw a chinese Les Paul Standard Plus that was absolutely flawless though at first glance. The best thing ever is the following: take time and check the guitar you want to buy in a store and play it, don´t order guitars from the internet, don´t buy guitars out of a box, buy the ones that are on the wall in a store.

[OzDog]

I'm not sure anybody should be compairing the Epiphone Elites to the regular Epi line. The reason I say this is because the Elites are based much more around their Gibson counteparts than they are Epiphones standard lines. From wood to hardware the Elites match Gibsons much more than their Korean or Chines counterparts.