REVIEW EPIPHONE 50TH ANNIVERSARY MODELS
EPIPHONE ZEPHYR DELUXE REGENT, SHERATON, CRESTWOOD CUSTOM & WILSHIRE £1,429, £1,429, £1,049 & £899
CONTACT Epiphone PHONE 00800 444 2766 1 WEB www.epiphone.com
As you will have gleaned from Tony Bacon’s excellent history of Epiphone on page 62, while the Stathopoulos musical-instrument-making dynasty took root in 1873, Epiphone didn’t evolve into a bona fide guitar manufacturer until 1928. The four instruments you see here straddle what we might term the company’s ‘golden era’, from the 40s to the 60s. They also mark the change from an independent builder of primarily archtop jazz guitars, to a purveyor of thinline and solidbody blues, pop and rock machines now under the auspices of guitar giant Gibson. And while the Sheraton is clearly a member of that company’s fabled ES-300 family, the other three are purely Epiphone designs.
The Zephyr Deluxe Regent was an important product for Epiphone and – alongside models like its gigantic (470mm/18.5-inch) brother the Emperor Zephyr Regent, the Broadway and various Masterbilt models – was aimed directly at similar Gibson archtops at various size and price points.
The Indonesian-built 150th reissue faithfully celebrates the 1948 original, with its 444.5mm (17.5-inch) laminated maple body, five-piece mahogany and maple neck, ebony fingerboard with imposing mother-of-pearl ‘cloud’ inlays, all topped off by a large headstock with delightful ‘tree of life’ decoration, also in pearl. Electronically, it’s a far more intuitive affair than that aforementioned sibling with its triple pickups and mind-blowing array of switches, simply featuring twin Epiphone New York mini-humbuckers, two volume controls, two tones (both CTS), and a three-way Switchcraft pickup selector and output jack. The faux a bit of Art Deco, their built-in ‘pointers’ showing where your controls are set. Those pickup surrounds, too, look like they’ve sat in jazz bars for hours soaking up cigar smoke to turn them a nicotine-stained dusky yellow.
