I purchased this guitar from Musician’s Friend on Amazon. Due to some trouble, I had to wait for it for a couple of months. It finally is in my hands and I must say I’m impressed and absolutely satisfied. There’s plenty of good reviews of this guitar on the web, so I refer you to those for the features; instead, I want to focus on the quality of the product itself. There is some concern among guitarists about buying instruments online, with random reports about people receiving badly constructed specimens of supposedly quality guitars. It hasn’t been my case. This guitar has been known, since it was first released, for being a big improvement in quality for Epiphone, and for being the closest reproduction of a 1961 Gibson SG, for less than a third of the price. The one I received from MF and Amazon completely lives up to such fame: completely solid, flawless construction; gorgeous looks and quality appointments; and above all, near professional performance. Like any guitar that comes new out of the box, it required some action and intonation setup, but that was all: no flaws at all in the general construction or in the finish.

A few comments on the features.
The playability is amazing. The neck has the same satin finish as the body; it’s wide and flat but not annoyingly fat or thick; and it joins the body at the 20th fret, giving free access to the last frets. All this makes for a lightning fast playing guitar.
The sound is just great. The pickups are hot, they can really give you that Gibson humbucker crunch, and with high distortion it’s just brutal, perfect for everything from riffs to soloing to the mighty pinch harmonic! Of course, there are things that no SG can do, but if you wanted to do those things you would be looking at Strat reviews… but it IS a versatile guitar, it can suit many playing styles, and, unlike other guitars popular in the hard rock/heavy metal world, it can handle clean playing very well.

I encourage anyone who is thinking of buying an SG guitar but cannot afford a Gibson to try this one. Other brands might offer the same quality but just lack the “original” vibe that only Epiphone, being a Gibson subsidiary, can offer… and no, I don’t work for Epiphone.

EDIT: the first painful quality issue has surfaced. The wood around the input jack is thin. Due to this, any untoward pressure exerted on the area can potentially crack the wood. I turned around with the guitar plugged in, but the cord was stuck under the amp, and so the plug forced the input jack into the wood and it cracked badly. I had heard that before but I never thought it would happen. So be warned… either you take special care in avoiding this kind of situation, or you don’t buy this guitar.

I’ve just started the electric, having played classical for a couple of months. i went for agood brand, not top oof the range like a gibson, but up in the high guitar range. and it was the epiphone G400 cherry. it look beautiful, the finish is very good, although sometimes it gets fingerpreints on it, but these can only be seen if the guitar is in direct sunlight and they can be wiped of hanyway, and the inlays at the fret are pretty much perfect. it’s also hardwearing and has two pickups and a good tone. maybe its just my strings which buzzed a bit ( the 6th string, e string, etc. blah), but after adjusting the bridge, it’s gotten better plus I probably need new ones. its a good guitar for beginners and intermediates, and it certainly is a respected company plus it looks good. i’m learning guitar on it and will have it for a long time. so if you’re looking for something nice – a proper guitar with quality and good looks as well as a good brand – I’d go with this one. it great, there are possibly a copule minor flaws, its not a fender strat or a gibson les paul, but its a solid guitar that sounds great, plays like it should, and looks damned sexy. although one problem is that it is slighlty top heavy so when in a strap the guitar will want to nosedive down, so you’ll have to support it which is a bit annoying, but thats nothing compared to the music this baby makes. the strnings it comes with aren’t that great though, don’t last too long, and are slighlty thicker gauge, and maybe they buzz on evry guitar so i’m gonna get super slinkys on my guitar. i hear they are good for bending.

Whether you’re looking to blaze through Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” or ride a Rock n’ Roll Train like AC/DC, there is no finer guitar.

While the profile is somewhat thicker than it’s $1000+ dollar big brother Gibson SG, this little fellow packs a punch. The satin finish is very beautiful I must say, though the worn brown finish is somewhat darker than the pictured, but it’s ok. It’s just aesthetics, it’s the sound that counts.

The first time I managed to hammer out “Thunderstruck”, I was amazed at the action of this budget rocker. My hands danced on it’s slender neck and it snarled to life with an overdriven amp. Playing clean, it’s a beauty. It takes some tweaking of the tone and volume controls, but you can get the classic rock sound with a quality amp.

The Bridge Humbucker pickup has a sharper treble edge than the neck, which is good for picking the high strings when your playing some seriously heavy metal. The Neck pickup has a much warmer, chunkier tone reminiscent of older 50′s guitars, but manages to overdrive the amp without overwhelming it. A big plus is that it cleans up so well at high distortion levels, especially when the selector switch is in the middle position (both Neck and Bridge are on). Under the right circumstances, tweaking the volume/tone controls for each pickup, it sounds as though you have two guitars playing at once.

With a solid state (transistor) amp this puppy has some serious bite, great for heavy metal. With an older tube amp, it can move mountains with the stroke of a power chord. Amazing quality for such a low price, I’d highly recommend it for starting out or graduating up from an acoustic guitar. It’s worth every penny.

Rock on.

The Epi worn cherry guitar is a very well crafted instrument.Great for playing the blues but can jam with any musical styles.The sustain is amazing.Looks good,sounds good,plays good and,you can’t beat the price.

this is the second electric guitar i

have owned. now have five and an acoustic.

i keep coming back to this epiphone because

its always in tune and had great sustain for

classic rock and blues.

you cant go wrong with this model it will

be around many years and the cherryburst

color is perfect.

I gave this guitar only 4 stars because I have’nt pluged in in yet. It is still in Sam Ash music being set up. But I have played it unplugged. It plays very smooth. But, if you have small hands beware. Even though Gibson (on the phone)says the neck profile is not real chunky. It is. Not quite a baseball bat like a 1958 Les Paul, but very round and very close to it. That combined with a fairly wide finger board can spell disaster for those with tiny little hands and pinkys. I will try to updte in about a week or so.

While there is no way this is going to give you the sound of a good quality dreadnought acoustic that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sound great. I am blown away by how natural the sound of this guitar is.

This is a much improved version of the old Chet Atkins model. I have both Epiphone models and the SST Studio is head and shoulders above the older model. The new pickups and new preamp make it easy to dial in and get a real acoustic guitar sound.

Now you may ask why purchase this guitar over a regular acoustic like the PR5E which also sound great plugged in. Here are my reasons.

1. No feedback issues. The guitar has no sound hole so you eliminate that issue altogether.

2. small and light. It is much easier to play for an entire gig than my Takamine dreadnought.

3. It sounds better with a band in my opinion. While I would probably not play this for a solo guitar gig I think the brightness of the guitar cuts through much like the sound you hear in Nashville country music. It adds a great acoustic sound to the band.

4. $350 it worth having just for the novelty. We all need another guitar, right?

Nicely constructed, Korean (not Chinese) built. It’s stamped as a Custom Shop/Limited-Edition, which is to say there’ll only be as many as Guitar Center and its online offshoots (e.g. Musician’s Friend) can sell. Still, they’re quite rare in SoCal’s GC’s — unlike the concurrent Explorer bass, which is much more visible. I think, in the long run, they will be mildly collectible. The pickups are a shade underpowered, but for a medium scale Gibson bass (i.e. one that is never going to sound like a Fender)this is rather admirable — more for its looks than anything else, granted, but it’s extremely playable out of the box. Better by far than my ’71 EB-0. My sole complaint is the placement of the top strap button, which should really be on the neck-center. Being a bit neck heavy, you will want to move the button, or at the very least put a strap lock of some kind on the current location.