THE BEST EPIPHONES EVER?
“THERE’S NOTHING MORE YOU COULD WANT FROM A TV SPECIAL”
Gibson’s new management demonstrated its willingness to listen and respond to customers last year when the brand’s core line-up was totally overhauled and split into Original and Modern collections, finally giving fans the production-level vintage-vibed instruments they’d long asked for. Epiphone was next in line for a refresh and Winter NAMM 2020 saw the public debut of a range of new Inspired By Gibson models.
The strategy is pretty clear; Epiphone guitars in the Original Collection will be closer to their Gibson forebears than ever before, with vintage-style features and finishes, upgraded electronics with hand-wired CTS pots and in addition, Les Pauls and SGs will benefit from a headstock design Gibson is calling the ‘Kalamazoo’.
For several decades, most Epiphone solidbodies have featured a headstock with the top corners of the ‘open-book’ outline missing, and many players have requested a design closer to the classic Gibson look. Such has been the demand, a whole subculture dedicated to Epiphone headstock conversions has sprung up – Google ‘Epiphone headstock’ and the search bar will autocomplete ‘conversion’.
Epiphones had open-book headstocks long before Gibson acquired the company however, and in recent years,
