Introduction
Lee Malia has spent the past decade slaying stages the world over with British metallers Bring Me The Horizon. The band have become titans of their scene and now Lee's found his signature suitor in another giant of rock music. Here he talks us through the Epiphone Limited Edition Lee Malia Les Paul Custom...
“[A while back] I got talking to this guy Olf, who works for Gibson, and he sorted us out some guitars," explains Lee. "I remember thinking as soon as I got them, ‘Why haven’t I been playing these!?’ I find them so simple and solid, and they just do the job well.
“Then Olf said to Epiphone, ‘You should do a Custom for these guys’ because he really liked the band, and they just said ‘Yep!’ It was really random! They said, ‘Do what you want, but do it for a budget that kids can afford.’ It couldn’t be like four grand, so it’s a really good, affordable guitar.”
Finish
Lee: “I love wood. All my furniture at home is proper wood, with the grain.
"I wanted my guitar to look natural - the colour of walnut. They came up with this finish, which I liked straightaway.”
Tuners
Lee: “I liked the old-school bow tie shape. I’d used them on tour [on the prototype] and they never went out of tune and I never had to swap them out.”
Inlays
Lee: “The Gibson Artisan is the guitar I based this on. I wanted one for ages and loved how it looks, so the inlays are the same as the Artisan.
"Epiphone got the guy who made them in the 70s to redo it all and send the designs back to them.”
Gibson P-94
Lee: “I had a P-90 in one of my other Gibsons and it had such a nice tone on the clean - and I wanted the cleans to be insanely nice.”
Gibson 84T-LM Humbucker
Lee: “They’d sent me a bunch of humbuckers to try and I wasn’t quite happy with them, so I basically told them how I wanted it to sound and they modded one.
"Now they’ve started making it, and they named it the ‘LM’, which is pretty cool!”
