Fifty years later, and just weeks after the death of the man from whom it takes its name, only 1959 of these limited edition guitars are available to buy. The Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Standard Limited Edition features an authentic 1950s rounded neck profile. Nick-named ‘the baseball bat’ this neck, according to Epiphone ‘feels beefy yet comfortable in your hands while adding warmth and sustain with it’s greater mass.’

The solid mahogany neck is hand-fitted to the body with a deep-set long neck tenon which ‘extends well into the neck pickup cavity creating even more tone and sustain.’ The body itself is solid mahogany, with a carved hard maple cap and AAA grade flame maple veneer on top. One look at the pictures and you can see just what a stunning guitar this is.

The Gibson BurstBucker pick-ups have unpolished magnets and non-potted coils and are designed to recreate the sound of the Gibson humbucker pick-ups on the orginal ‘59 Les Paul. Those pick-ups had coils with a different number of turns which gave the sound more ‘bite.’

There’s a Switchcraft toggle switch, Mallory-150 tone capacitors with metal pointers, nickel hardware, and a blank trussrod cover. The serial number is stamped on the back of the headstock.

The Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Limited Edition comes with a replica brown Lifton-style case with pink interior and a certificate of authenticity. It’s available in two finishes; Faded Cherryburst and Faded Iced Tea.

As its name suggests, the Riviera P93 features three ‘dog-ear’ single coil P-90 pick-ups. It also has a gorgeous Bigsby trem and tailpiece. The Bigsby, along with the polyurethane finish and gold hardware make this one good-looking guitar.

The Riviera P93 has a laminated maple body and top, glued-in mahogany neck with rosewood fretboard and trapezoid inlays. The Tune-O-Matic bridge complements the Bigsby perfectly.

In addition the, head features Grover tuners and the body, a 3-way pick-up slector and tone and volume controls for the neck and bridge pick-ups.

While the P-90s give that extra crunch for rockabilly and blues, the Riviera P93 is also very well-suited to jazz, and the Bigsby makes it perfect for country playing.

Reviews so far seem to be very positive. Over on Guitar Center, cguitarist929 said ‘This guitar is AMAZING for the price! My brother just got it yesterday and I never thought epiphone would make such a nice guitar. This guitar has a thick warm tone on clean, great for blues. But when distorted, it can play from classic rock to punk.‘

And on the Musicians Friend, Sgtpeppere64 said ‘It’s got that woody tone that threatens to retire my Fender 72 deluxe,American Mahogany HSS,Variax 700 and Nashville Tele. I road tested it for days, on a Vox DA5 practice amp, and was mesmerized!! I don’t know how to describe the experience thru my Mesa Boogie!‘

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.

According to Wikipedia “Joe Pass previously had a relationship with the Ibanez guitar company, but in the late 1990’s Epiphone released the Emperor II, claiming Pass had a hand in the design of the guitar. Epiphone had previously issued the guitar as just the Emperor and with Pass’s endorsement some subtle changes to the guitar were made (such as moving the pickup selector switch). While Pass endorsed the Epiphone he was more commonly seen with a Gibson ES-175?

It’s certainly true that Pass was more often seen playing an ES-175, but the Joe Pass Emperor has more in common with the Epiphone Broadway than it does with the other Emperor in Epiphone’s range, the Emperor Regent, which features a single mini-Humbucker. Both the Broadway and the Emperor Regent have Frequensator tailpieces, while the Joe Pass Empereror 2 has a trapeze tailpiece, similar to the one on the Nick Valensi Rivieria P94.

In the words of one proud owner the Joe Pass Emperor II is a “warm, smooth and silky affordable Archtop that delivers rich, smokey tones from jazz to blues.”

Click here to shop for Joe Pass Emperor II guitars on Amazon.

MF describes the new Wilshire as ‘Perfect for anyone who wants to stand out or already has an SG and LP’

It has a Mahogany set neck, Alnico humbuckers, solid mahogany body, and is finished in white. The Wilshire also has a rosewood fretboard with block inlays, chrome hardware, ‘bat wing’ headstock, and inline Grover Mini-Rotomatic tuners.

The chrome bridge and stop tailpiece complete the look and there’s a pick-up selector and volume and tone controls for each of the humbuckers.

The original Wilshire was made between 1959 and 1970 and originally featured two P-90 pick-ups and dot inlays, along with a Tune-o-matic bridge and stop tailpiece. In 1962, the P-90s were replaced with mini-humbuckers.

Checkout the Epiphone Limited Edition Wilshire Pro Electric Guitar Alpine White at Amazon.com.

Check out the Epiphone ES-175 at Amazon.

The original Gibson ES-175 had a single P-90 pick-up, but by 1957 featured two humbuckers. The Epiphone ES-175 is a replica of the Gibson model. It has a pair of Alnico Classic humbuckers, a maple body with maple laminate top, mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with split parallelogram inlays.

There are volume and tone pots for each pick-up, a Tune-o-matic bridge and lovely trapeze tailpiece. The chrome hardware looks fantastic against the vintage sunburst finish.

Reviews from people who have taken the plunge and bought one are very positive. On epinions.com, buffoonery said “The Epiphone ES-175 delivers serious tone and value for the money. And, if you swap out the pickups, for a total of $750 or so you will own a very fine instrument.”

And on Harmony Central, Jay Ingle enthused, “I’ve been playing for 41 years, Rock, Country, Blues, Bluesgrass, and now Jazz for the last 12 years. I’ve had one guitar that actually played better, a 62? Les Paul Custom, this axe plays next best.”

The current average overall rating on Harmony Central, from 9 reviews, is 9.4 out of ten.

This isn’t the guitar to go for if you primarily play rock or metal, obviously. But if you’re into playing jazz, blues, country or rockabilly it could be your new favourite guitar.

Check out the Epiphone ES-175 at Amazon.

Epiphone has announced the introduction of its second Slash signature Les Paul, the Slash Les Paul Gold Top.

Like the Slash Les Paul Standard Plus Top, the Goldtop was designed and built in collaboration with the Guns n Roses and Velvet Revolver guitarist and is limited to only 2, 000 units worldwide.

Highlights of the Slash Les Paul Gold Top include the same Slash custom neck as the Plus Top, profiled from the neck on Slash’s own Les Paul, a pair of Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro II pick-ups, and a Locktone Tune-o-matic bridgae and tailpiece. There’s also vintage nickel hardware, classic tulip tuning pegs, and a custom Slash truss rod cover.

The body is solid mahogany with a grade-A maple top, the glued on mahogany neck has a long-neck tenon which was originally found on early Les Pauls from the 1950s and 1960s. As well as giving extra strength to the neck, the long-neck tenon provides more ‘wood to wood contact’ between neck and body which gives longer sustain and a sweeter tone, according to Epiphone.

The Goldtop is the same as that introduced on the original Les Paul in 1952. Achieving the finish involves one coat of primer, two coats of gold paint, and four coats of polyurethane, applied over nine days.

Each Slash Les Paul Goldtop comes with a hardshell case with Slash logo, a certificate of authenticity signed by Slash, a laser-cell print of Slash, both of which are presented in a leatherette booklet, a leather metal-studded strap, and 24 Slash picks.

I’ve been lucky enough to see him live twice. On the first occasion, at the Edinburgh Playhouse in 1989, the theatre was absolutely jumping. Everyone was dancing by the end and there was a couple in front of us who looked they were having a particularly good time.

The story of BB’s guitar, a Gibson acoustic he was playing in the late forties, is the stuff of legend. He named it Lucille after a woman who was at a gig he was playing in Arkansas in 1949. A fight broke out over the woman, that caused a fire to start and the place was evacuated as it burned down. Rather than run for his life however, King went back into the joint to retrieve his guitar. On finding out that the woman over whom the fight had broken out was named Lucille, he gave the guitar which nearly cost him his life, the same name. And he’s called every guitar since, Lucille.

The Epiphone B.B. King Lucille is a semi-hollow body archtop with no f-holes and was designed by the great man himself. It’s based on the Gibson ES-355 King played from around 1958 onwards. He used to stuff the soundholes with rags to prevent unwanted feedback. “I don’t want feedback – unless I want it. And a lot of times with the S-holes if you really crank it up and the amplifier is close to you, you will get feedback. I’m no technical person, but I do know that. I know how to get feedback from Lucille when I want it. But only when I want it,” he told interviewer, Walter Carter.

The Epiphone B.B. King Lucille features two humbuckers with Vari-tone control, gold hardware, laminated maple body and top, and a set maple neck with rosewood fretboard and block inlays. The tailpiece is a TP-6 fine tuning unit and the headstock is emblazoned with the name ‘Lucille’. The Epiphone BB King Lucille comes in ebony and has stereo outputs.

If you want the ultimate Epiphone B.B. King Lucille, Rock for Kids is auctioning one, signed by the great man himself, on 5 December 2008. You can see the guitar here.

It won’t make you sound like BB on its own, but with the right amp set-up and a lot of practice, you might just get close.

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.

In the second, an interview with Sky News, Slash goes into greater detail about signature guitars in general and the three Slash signature models in particular. He also tells how when he was an up and coming guitar player, he wrote to Gibson asking if it would send him a guitar for free. To Gibson’s credit, it didn’t just file his letter in the bin — it offered to sell him a guitar at cost. Not sure it would do that today. Might be worth a try, though.

< Update: Sorry, the videos have been removed from Youtube >

For once, the hype surrounding the band was justified by its eponymously-titled debut album which, for me, is one of the best albums of the year so far. And not just me. Uncut’s John Mulvey said in his review: ‘when you’ve heard these songs more than once, it’s hard to shake them out of your head.’

That’s certainly true of tracks like Walcott and I Stand Corrected, both of which are more conventional than other tracks on the album but none the less enjoyable for that. The inclusion of beautiful orchestral strings adds to the rich tapestry, but it’s that wonderful guitar tone that time and again, track after track, adds something special to the album.

Vampire Weekend combines the band’s much-documented blend of Afro beats and pop melodies with smart, intelligent lyrics in which the band occasionally come across as trying a little too hard to be clever.

Oxford Comma, the second track on the album, is a case in point. Lead vocalist and guitar player, Ezra Koenig, explained the song in an interview: “Part of the idea of Oxford Comma is the idea of grammar as this obviously construct that a categorical imperative because it’s so specific to the English language. It’s kind of linguistic imperialism.” See what I mean?

We can forgive Ezra his verbosity, however, because as well as fronting a band which has produced a great album, he plays an Epiphone, a Sheraton II to be precise, as you can see from the pictures.

Vampire Weekend have been busy touring over the summer and at the end of June played two terrific sets at the Glastonbury festival.

Click on the video below to see and hear Vampire Weekend play Oxford Comma at Glastonbury.