Reviewed by:
unregistered, on may 27, 2004
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
Price paid: $ 450
Purchased from: DC Music
Features: - Arched maple top, back, and sides
- Bound F-holes, body, and neck
- Dual humbuckers
- 3-way Switch
- 2 volume and 2 tone controls
- Solid center block and hollow wings
- Grover tuners // 10
Sound: Epiphone made this guitar back in the 60's when it was used by blues players such as john lee hooker and now the new ones sound just as good. I found that this guitar has nearly endless sustain due to the solid center block, while the hollow wings provide that blues/jazz sound. It suits my playing style perfectly except when i want to get that jimi hendrix sound, when I feel like diving into hendrix I have to resort to my Fender Strat for that particular sound. Other than that I've found that I can play everything from B. B. King, the beatles, and Eric Clapton to Led Zeppelin and nirvana. I run my guitar straight through my kustom, Fender, or gorilla amp and rely on the reverb and overdrive of the amp. The bridge pickup provides crystalline leads and solos while the neck is great for that distorted rhythm or warm clean sound. // 8
Action, Fit & Finish: The action on this guitar is unbelievable, when I brought it home from the store and started taking measurements I found that everything was perfect. The pickups were adjusted for maximum sound. I was really impressed with the pickguard, normally the pickguards on my guitar get pretty scathed from my strumming but i've had this guitar for four months and the trapeze style pickguard doesn't have any swirling or scratches. My guitar had a finish flaw but that is why my guitar was dicounted at the store, there is some sort of mark on the back that takes an intense eye to notice, although this lowers the value of the guitar i would choose a guitar with a small flaw that is 200 dollars cheaper over the same guitar minus the flaw plus the 200 bucks. // 10
Reliability & Durability: this guitar is one tough mother for a semi-hollowbody, Maybe it's my love of this guitar that makes me baby it so much but this guitar does withstand live playing....unless you're into setting you're guitar on fire like hendrix. all the hardware is great except for the strap buttons, the original ones were actually very good but unfortunately my former favorite guitar store DC music reccomended that i Switch to strap locks and the screws don't fit so they stripped out the wood and now I'm pissed so I'll move on. I would not use this guitar without a backup simply because the unpredictable can always screw something up. // 6
Impression: This guitar suits my blues-rock style perfectly, I've been playing for about 4 years and I own a Squier Strat, Fender Strat, Kustom amp, gorilla amp, and play through a friends Fender amp for gigs but do my recording with my own amps. If this guitar were ever stolen or lost I would most definitely buy another. I love everything about this guitar except I think Epiphone should upgrade the pickups and make their own line of strap locks to avoid the cheap ones made by other companies. In my purchases I always research extesively and when I made this purchase I was very surprised because of the great deal for this guitar. // 10
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