Epiphone Slash Rosso Corsa Les Paul review

Red is the colour, rock is the game

  • £679
  • €769
  • $1665
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There's a touch of burgundy to the colour, and it looks great with the AAA veneer of flamed maple

MusicRadar Verdict

We love the Rosso Corsa Les Paul's look, vibe and tonal versatility.

Pros

  • +

    Weight relieved body feels good. Rock chords sound great. Finish looks the part.

Cons

  • -

    Not much.

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There's a touch of burgundy to the colour, and it looks great with the AAA veneer of flamed maple
There's a touch of burgundy to the colour, and it looks great with the AAA veneer of flamed maple

Epiphone Slash Rosso Corsa Les Paul

This is the Epiphone version of a limited-edition Gibson that's no longer available. Slash is often seen on stage with that guitar, and the Rosso Corsa finish, translating from Italian as 'racing red', is exclusive to the RC models.

"The pickups, voiced to resemble a boosted PAF 'bucker, sound full and fat with a modern-style edge"

There's a touch of burgundy to the colour, and it looks great, with the AAA veneer of flamed maple beneath mimicking a real - and much more costly - flamed maple cap.

The hard rock maple cap sits on a mahogany body. The latter has undergone weight relief treatment, which sees nine holes drilled into, but not through, the body wood. Strapped on, it's all you can do to resist automatically adopting a rock pose.

Pickups comprise a zebra set of Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro II Slash humbuckers that are controlled in the usual manner, and the profile of the neck is based on that of Slash's main Gibson LP, offering a playable mix of late 50s girth with early 60s width.

The pickups, voiced to resemble a boosted PAF 'bucker, sound full and fat with enough of a modern-style edge; and through our litany of Marshall test amps.rock chords do just that: rock. It sounds good fed straight into GarageBand, too. We love the guitar's look, vibe and tonal versatility.

Simon Bradley

Simon Bradley is a guitar and especially rock guitar expert who worked for Guitarist magazine and has in the past contributed to world-leading music and guitar titles like MusicRadar (obviously), Guitarist, Guitar World and Louder. What he doesn't know about Brian May's playing and, especially, the Red Special, isn't worth knowing.

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