The Epiphone company is 144 years
old. Pause for a moment and take
that in. That’s nearly a century and a
half of building stringed instruments.
Impressive, no? How many other
companies, in any industry, can boast
of comparable longevity?
Among modern day guitarists Epiphone
is frequently thought of as a poor
man’s Gibson (a company that is a mere
115 years old, by the way), largely
because its primary business for the
last few decades has been making
cheaper, imported versions of its
parent company’s iconic instruments, a
trend which really took off in the ‘80s.
However, prior to the 1957 acquisition
of Epiphone by Gibson’s former parent
company CMI, the two guitar makers
were not only separate, but also each
other’s primary competition in the
booming archtop jazz box market.
Epiphone is currently headquartered
in Nashville, Tennessee, but its deeper
origins actually lie in the former
Ottoman Empire (currently Turkey)
with a Greek luthier named Anastasios
Stathopoulos. Mr. Stathopoulos was
already a respected maker of lutes
and violins in his home country when
he immigrated to the United States in
1903, settling on Manhattan’s Lower
East Side. He continued this successful
instrument business in New York, but
passed away in 1915, leaving it to
his eldest son, Epi. By the late ‘20s,
Epi had changed the name of the
business from House of Stathopoulo to
Epiphone, and began focusing mostly
on banjos (which were all the rage)
while also launching a line of acoustic
archtop guitars to compete with
Gibson, whose L-5 model had quickly
risen to the level of industry standard.
For several decades, the competition
between Epiphone and Gibson was
neck-and-neck, with each company
working feverishly to one-up the
other’s designs. Body sizes were
expanded, innovative features were
added, and bold advertising campaigns
became the norm. It was in this era, at
the height of its competitive fervor and
prior to the CMI acquisition of 1957,
that Epiphone created so many original
designs and world-class instruments,
many of which are still with us today.
Of course, the Gibson era didn’t put
a stop to its innovations entirely, but
as Epiphone transitioned into more
of a budget import guitar brand,
innovation slowed and original designs
came fewer and farther between.
Epiphone’s legacy of innovation is
strong, however, so let’s take a look at
a handful of the coolest original guitar
designs that have distinguished this
grand old instrument company from its
competitors and parent companies.
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