Customising an Epiphone; go-to improvements?

[Empathy]

Hey gents, just looking for some opinions on a bit of a customisation project I want to do. Recently dug up the Epiphone Les Paul Custom that I bought for a pittance off a friend in 07, thought it'd make for a nice project guitar.

Basically what I'm asking is if there's anyone that has any experiences with the Epiphone LP's and their fiddly-bits; if you were customising one of these, what would you be inclined to replace and/or upgrade in regards to hardware/components? Pickups, bridge, tuners, nut, all the guts and gorey bits.

Obviously from what I can tell the pickups are plain crap, the tuners are decent, nut isn't anything special at all, the bridge is relatively solid, and the dials/switches are healthily responsive. The input jack is loose, so that's going to need immediate fixing/replacing.

I want to set this thing up for Drop D, was even thinking about throwing it down to C for use in a doom metal project I'm investing some time in, so I'm trying to consider that in my choice of parts.

Maybe I should just sell it for $300 and trade one of my other guitars for a nice Gibson

Cheers in advance for any input!

 

[luismars]

I had the black one until someone stole it...

Actually I changed everthing but the wood because I changed gold for silver hardware, the tailpiece seems ok but when I changed it the sustain improved a lot. I bought the pickups of a gibson standard, and changed all the pots and caps after a while since I wasn't really happy with the tone. After that it become my favourite.

 

[BLUElightCory]

Keep the body/neck, swap out everything else. My biggest complaint with those guitars is tuning stability, so that'd be my priority - new tuners, bridge, nut, and tailpiece, as well as a look at the frets and a possible (probable) neck adjustment.

 

[006]

Planet Waves Trimlock tuners! Locking tuners that cut the excess string off for you, love them.

EMG's or whatever pickups you prefer.

Graphtech Graphite nut.

Definitely have the fretwork checked out by someone competent.

 

[Empathy]

Thanks for the replies dudes, I figured most would reccomend completely flushing it out and I'm pretty keen to do so. I'll probably take it in to Ormsby over the next couple of months and see if he can take a look at the fretboard.

As for pickups, almost all my guitars are already loaded with EMGs so I'm going to stay passive on this one. Any particularly favourites for a full mahogany body / mahogany neck?