Never really liked black guitars or f-hole semi solids but on a whim i put in a late night cheeky bid on this and won the auction.
budget priced but very impressed with the quality, the action and finish is great, the pickups are lovely and they both coil split which makes it sound quite "tele" like. i have a les paul with humbuckers and a tele with single coils but this beauty coves both. Id say its my most versatile sounding guitar. I have gigged it twice and used it at rehearsals. im not a headstock snob, gibson sits in the back of the stage. only negatives, the pots are a very uneven taper, might change them, and i think the switch may need cleaning or replacing as sometimes when you switch back to neck pickup it loses volume until you re-flick it back again.
im very happy with this.
its an epiphone 339 if you dont know, retails about £400 so cheap enough not to mind gigging and using. sorry about the bad picture (phone camera) anyone else love these guitars?
https://i.imgur.com/cVY6krl.jpg
Comments
Looks like a great guitar for the money. What's the neck profile like?
Im quite tall so the guitar looks small on me if you expect to see a 335.
i used to have a nice 1970s motsumoko 335 copy which i bought cheap and local when i first started, but eventually i realised it was just too big to put up with. i tried one of those Epis when they first came out (2007ish?) as a replacement for the bigger one.
i really liked the lighter feel, they are ridiculously easy to wear, and the tone was maybe a shade brighter and quiter than the bigger version, but still sounded kinda the same. but they were £350ish then which was way more than i could afford, so i decided to stick with my solid. had there been second hand ones around for £150-£200 i'd probably have taken it.
weirdly i remember the neck as being quite slim, which is my preference. i wouldn't have considered it if it was a chunker. but my memory is crap and it was a decade ago so maybe i'm muddling. maybe the profiles have varied. i know some post-millennial epi SGs have that slimtaper D, while others are chunky.
i say scratchplate off. partly looks, flappy plastic tat unecessary. unless you are thrashing like a mental it serves no purpose beyond trim. and also because if you should happen to catch/knock it during strumming/handling it can pick up (through pickups), because the body is so resonant and it transfers. maybe the MIJ semi i owned had microphonic pickups, but those are the reasons i ditched mine.
enjoy it!
btw, what's the other guitar in the photo?
I did have a Tanglewood 335 but never bonded with it