Epiphone John Lennon Revolution Casino

The Epiphone John Lennon Revolution Casino is an exact replica of the Casino Lennon famously sanded and modified and used for the latter part of his Beatles career. It was also, famously, the guitar Lennon played at the Beatles final concert on the roof of the Apple Corp. building in London.

Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor II

The Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor II is a semi-hollow body electric guitar based on Epiphone’s Emperor guitar and named after late jazz legend, Joe Pass.

The Joe Pass Emperor features a distinctive trapeze tailpiece, twin humbuckers, and a laminated maple body with spruce top. All the hardware, including tailpiece and pick-up covers is gold. The 3-piece set maple neck has a rosewood fretboard with block inlays, and the tortoiseshell pickguard has a reproduction of Joe Pass’ signature. The guitar is available in antique natural or vintage sunburst.

Slash Interview

Excellent interview with Slash in Modern Guitar magazine in which he talks about working with Gibson on the Gibson and Epiphone signature Les Pauls.
‘Basically the Goldtop is a reissue of the 1991 Goldtop I got from them back then. And I used it for the whole two and a half year Guns N Roses “Use [...]

Epiphone ES-175

The Epiphone ES-175 is a semi-hollow body electric guitar based on Gibson’s hugely popular ES-175. The Gibson ES-175 was originally launched in 1949 and became one of the most famous jazz guitars in history. It was the first Gibson to feature a Florentine cutaway, and was so named because it originally cost $175. Sixty years later is still in production. It has been played by notable players such as Elvis’ guitarist Scotty Moore, and Steve Howe of Yes.

Happy Birthday, BB King

Danny has an excellent post to mark BB King’s 83rd birthday. AS I said in this post about the Epiphone BB King Lucille, BB is one of my favourite all-time guitar players. I saw him live a couple of times, once in 1989 and once in 1993 and both nights were amazing. Sadly, he’s retired from touring outside the US, but there are plenty of live recordings available from over the years. In particular, Live at the Regal, and Live at San Quentin are very worthwhile checking out.

Epiphone Dot

The Epiphone Dot is based on Gibson’s ES-335 hollow-bodied electric guitars which were first produced way back in 1958.

The Epiphone Dot has a laminated maple body, glued-on maple neck, a dot inlaid rosewood fretboard. The Alnico Humbuckers are controlled by volume and tone pots whose bonnet knobs are period accurate. There’s chrome hardware and a Tune-o-matic bridge with stopbar tailpiece. The f-holes and shaped pickguard complete the look.

Two great Slash Les Paul videos

It’s been a while since I posted any videos, so I thought I’d make up for it by posting two great videos today.

They both feature Slash. In the first — which is an Epiphone promo, so is a little ‘in your face’ — he talks about the Epiphone version of the Slash signature Les Paul and how he suggested it to Gibson as a way of making it available to those of us who can’t afford to drop $4,000 on one guitar.

Video: Learn to play the Slash way

Whatever your view of the man or his music, there’s no escaping that Slash is an icon. One of the most recognisable guitar players on the planet, both physically and in his playing, Slash has built an army of fans and would be imitators over the last 20 or so years.

His influence is so great, he’s the cover star for one of the biggest vide games of teh decade, Guitar Hero III, and has had a Slash signature model guitar made in his honour by both Gibson and Epiphone — and very fine guitars they are too.

The anatomy of an Epiphone guitar. Part 1: The Humbucker

The humbucker, or humbucking pick-up, is a feature of most of the electric guitars made by Epiphone and its parent company, Gibson.

The humbucker is a two-coil pick-up with coils of reversed polarity, reverse wound, and connected in series. The name is derived from the fact the design of the pick-up significantly reduces the noise and interference associated with single coil pick-ups used in other guitars, such as Fender’s Stratocaster. In other words, they ‘buck the hum.’

10 ways to make sure you don’t get scammed buying a guitar on eBay

Following the post last week on the dangers of buying an Epiphone guitar on eBay, I thought it would be a good idea to post a few tips on how to avoid being scammed. There are two key factors involved in fraudulently selling fake guitars on eBay - the copies are often very good (at least until you play the guitar) and the prices are very, very attractive.

The combination of those two elements sucks lots of people into bidding on and buying these guitars only to regret it later. Don’t be fooled, just because these Epiphone guitars look like the real thing doesn’t mean they sound or play like a real Epiphone. They don’t. They’re poorly and cheaply made, the wiring is usually dreadful and the finish slapdash.