Epiphone’s Ultra series start from the traditional models, then add in some quite useful technologies, to arrive at a guitar that is quite different to the original.
And so it is with Epiphone’s 3rd generation of Les Paul Ultra’s, where the pickups and electronics set these apart from the standards.
At the heart of the new Ultra-III are two pickup systems. Firstly it sports Epiphone’s new ProBucker humbucking pickups styled after Gibson’s BursBuckers to give you that classic rock tone. Secondly, it also has a NanoMag pickup embeded at the end of the fingerboard which captures all the subtle body acoustics and string harmonics (watch the video to hear the difference).
The electronics also offer much more than Epiphone’s run-of-the-mill Les Pauls.
Built into the bridge pickup mounting ring is a chromatic tuner. Push it’s ON/OFF button and sound is immediately muted while the tuner is activated. It has 11 LEDs which are color coded to identify the note and tell you whether it is sharp or flat.
The NanoMag volume knob acts as an A/B switch to let you change quickly between each of the two pickup systems, or a combination of both. Two additional LED’s on the pickup mounting ring indicate which of the pickup systems are active.
Plugging it into a computer is also made easy by the USB socket.
The Ultra-III has 3 outputs. You can use the standard 1/4″ mono ouput where both the ProBucker’s and NanoMag are mixed into a single signal. If you use the second 1/4″ output you get stereo where the ProBuckers come out one of the sockets, and the NanoMag comes out the other.
It also comes with a free copy of Native Instruments Guitar Rig 4 LE – no word yet if this will be upgraded to Guitar Rig 5 LE which comes out next month, but I would ask the retailer for it if you’re buying this in September or later.
It comes with a solid Mahogany body with some of the excess weight shaved off, and a glued-in Mahogany neck with a Rosewood fingerboard. It also has Epiphone’s LockTone locking Tune-O-Matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece.
The available colors, as pictured above, are Faded Cherry Sunburst, Vintage Sunburst, Midnight Ebony, and Midnight Sapphire.
Watch this demo video for a complete picture of the new Epiphone Les Paul Ultra-III:
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Want one.
Very cool all very subtly hidden in one standard looking Paul!
Should have one with an ebony fretboard … please! 😉
This guitar pays on 1 amp or 2 amps?