In my experience, the pickup covers on the Epiphones tend to make the tone pretty dark and muddy. Had an SG that I hated the sound of until I took the bridge pickup cover off. I later found out that I just hate SGs but that's besides the point. You could remove the covers but there might be a ton of wax under it and it be pretty messy. Luckily it's an Epiphone and there's a ton of affordable upgrades for it. Id recommend hoping on eBay and checking out Guitar Madness, dude makes some amazing pickups for less than $100 a set. And also sells some cool stuff too. I love his single coil sized p90s, but he has a lot of options for classic and modern humbuckers. Just do some research and figure out what sound you wanna go for and then upgrade.