Everything You Need To Know About Epiphone Guitars

When you are looking fot a Les Paul or other Gibson guitar but just don't have quite enough money to get the real thing, Epiphone guitars is pretty much the closest thing to it. Sure, you might believe that these are just cheaper knock off's of Les Pauls, Explorers, hollowbodys and other of the Gibson models of guitars but you would be mistaken.

Take the Epiphone Les Paul for instance. First off, here are just a few of the varieties of Les Pauls that Epiphone has released:

• Epiphone Les Paul 100 - great specs and reviews from what I've read and not a bad price either. I especially like the heritage cherry sunburst electric guitar model and vintage sunburst as well. They even come in left handed models and ebony.
• Epiphone Les Paul Special 2 - this one comes in a number of different colors (well, all of them do too) like red and black. The deluxe and limited editions are really sweet!
• Epiphone Les Paul Classic - if you are like me, you will love the quilt top in wine red, custom and gold top versions of this electric guitar.
• Epiphone Les Paul Junior - I haven't had a chance to really review this one a lot but some of the great models of this are the 57 reissue, double cutaway, p90, sunburst, special and tv yellow versions. There's even a Les Paul Junior and amp pack.
• Epiphone Les Paul Ultra and Ultra II - another one I don't have a lot of experience with but would love to do a review sometime and maybe compare it with a standard. Kind of an Ultra vs. standard shootout!
• Epiphone Les Paul Standard - whether or not you get the plus top or plain top you are sure to be pleased.
• Epiphone Les Paul Special II - I've only played one of these a couple time and loved it. Chek out the player pack too.
• Epiphone Les Paul Studio - I have one of these in white. It is quite a chameleon because it can be used for so many different music genres.

Now, I could get into all the different models and options in each of these les paul models but it would become very exhausting.....and I mean exhausing! But, here is a list to a least help a bit. I won't go into any more detail about them though because a quick search on these will find all you need:

• Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus Top electric guitar transparent blue
• Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus Top electric guitar wine red
• Epiphone Les Paul 100 electric guitar ebony

And this is just a start at what they offer.

I collect guitars myself and when I was first beginning my collection I vowed to only have the real things like Fenders, Gibsons and the like. Well, after trying a few Epiphones (reluctantly, my local shop owner made me!) I was hooked.

At that time I was looking for a Gibson SG for my collection and was shown the SG line from Epiphone:

• SG Special - yet another one that offers a players pack - great value!
• SG 400 and SG G-400 - these come in limited editions, custom, gothic, white, cherry, faded, deluxe and more.
• SG 310 - check out youtube for some great clips of this guitar in action. I'd take a video over a review any day!
• SG Custom - many SG models come in customer versions as well. There are usually some great SG Customs on eBay like the Maestro and Prophecy.
• SG Prophecy - never had a chance to give one of these my review but hope to someday. The custom GX and EX are where it's at!

Hollowbodies.....yes they have those as well.

Meet the Epiphone Casino. The Casinos and Casio Elitist are an excellent guitar for someone looking for that fat hollowbody sound. You can even get these with Bigsby tremelo systems. If you like to play John Lennon type music, you definitely need to head over to Craigslist or other online classified site and see what you can find. Then there are semi-hollowbody models too like the Dot and Dot 335. The Epiphone Dot is another semi-hollowbody guitar that should not be ignored.

If you are into guitar collections like me, serial numbers can become an important part if you are looking at dating your guitar or find out if it was made in Korea or Japan.

Phew....that was a lot of typing and I really just scratched the surface of what is available with Epiphone guitars!