The first decent guitar that this reviewer put his pennies away each week for was a white SG Custom, inspired by Alice Cooper’s original guitarist Glen Buxton on the band’s rendition of Under My Wheels on The Old Grey Whistle Test. The SG never materialised, but that’s another story. While Buxton’s Custom was the later 1966 to ’71 style with the large scratchplate, Joe Bonamassa’s own SG comes from the middle of the 1961 to ’66 era, with the small pickguard and ‘lyre’ engraved long Maestro Vibrola that appeared in ’63, just as the twin-cutaway Les Paul model changed its name to SG.
A faithful recreation of its Gibson forbear, our Epiphone features a two-piece mahogany body with chamfered edges and pincer-like horns, the lower a touch shorter than the upper. Into this is glued a one-piece, slim-taper mahogany neck topped by a single-bound, block-inlaid ebony fingerboard with 22 medium-fine
