My take on this is that I have a Chinese left handed les paul copy. (note les paul copy). And it plays relay sweet. But (and this is really important), it doesn't try to be a genuine les paul. Also the right handed ones were a POS. The advantage in being a Leftie is we can play every guitar within half an hour and decide for ourselves what is the best at our price range. Also we have to ignore branding if we are going to play more than one. So the short answer is, ignore clones, but play every "style"copy to find the one that works best for yoy. And the very short answer is play before you play,.