I know a guy that has some knock offs from Asia and they’re actually pretty nice. Gibsons are way overpriced. I have a 1964 Epiphone riviera I bought new in 65 that was made in Kalamazoo next door to the Gibson shop. It gets to go out to local jams once in a while.
He was showing me a new Les Paul his son traded for and the pots for the volume and tone knobs he had them out because they didn't have the same quality of his older model Les Pauls and his son wanted to upgrade them. He was showing me the frequency response on the new Paul's pickups compared to the old ones and there was a very noticeable difference especially in the lower mids. They were trying to figure out what to replace the pickups with to get that same warmer sound of the older LPs.