Mystery Ephiphone Guitar: Prototype or Custom Build? The guitar was delivered a few days later, and I ripped the box open like a kid on Christmas morning. With packing peanuts flying, I pulled out a hard shell case that could have housed a 335. Inside the case was a label-less, serial number-less semi-hollow electric guitar with Epiphone on the headstock, just like my friend had described. The guitar looked and felt like it was USA-made, but I needed to examine it more closely. I noted the guitar’s Grover tuners, and the nut looked original and to Gibson spec. The brand was inlayed like a Gibson, with the finial in the center, which is typical of a standard 335.
I also noticed what I call “ears” on the headstock, which occur when Gibson cuts the neck blanks for their guitars and then reuses scrap pieces by gluing them to the headstock portion of the blank, creating laminate lines that can be seen on the back of the headstock. The neck and heal were made of mahogany, with no laminate joints, and the fret board was rosewood with dot inlays. However, the headstock had no serial number, no volute, and no stamp to indicate that it was USA-made. Mystery Ephiphone Guitar: Prototype or Custom Build? The body of the guitar appeared to be a laminate mahogany top, back, and sides-not maple, like a typical 335- with a subtle, tobacco-burst, nitro lacquer finish. The bridge was a Gibson-stamped ABR Tune-o-matic, and the wiring was braided like a Gibson as well, but I could find no label or markings inside the f-hole. Since I was having a hard time dating the guitar without a serial number, I decided to remove the electronics to get a look at the pots, switch, and pickups.
Tone and volume potentiometers typically have a series of numbers on them that identify the manufacturer and the production date. Unfortunately, these pots were liberally covered in solder, which made the numbers completely indiscernible.
The pickups, however, did offer me a clue. Mystery Ephiphone Guitar: Prototype or Custom Build? In 1980, the Norlin Corporation began to take the first steps toward production of a reissue Les Paul guitar, and they assigned engineer Tim Shaw the task of reproducing a PAF-style humbucker for the project. Due to financial constraints set by Norlin, Shaw could only approximate certain aspects of the original pickups, but the final product was a PAF-style pickup that was superior to the pickups that Gibson was producing at the time.
Tim Shaw pickups are easily identifiable because they have a separate, ink-stamped series of numbers on the bottom that indicates the type of pickup (bridge or neck), as well as the date of production. The pickups in question were stamped 329 682, which revealed that the production year was 1982. I was looking at an Epiphone-branded, Gibson-made, USA-manufactured 335 with no serial number and no label, but with pickups that gave me the guitar’s production year. My conclusion was that the guitar must have been either a prototype, or maybe a personal build for someone who worked for Gibson at the time. Either way, my friend had himself a great playing and sounding instrument, and I’d had fun doing the detective work.
First of all,the very first clue would be that this has an Gibson Headstock, not an Epiphone. All of the markings scream Gibson so I figure this is an experimental custom build to see what they could produce on a limited budget. I’d pay handsomely for this guitar because it is most likely a one off. Good job reearching the pickups and indeed it shows it was manufactured (the pickup) in ’82 but this may not be true with rest of this fine axe. A little prodding from Gibson themsleves may yield more info on this instrument. In the meanwhile, can I have it just because I’m a faithful reder?
I agree that this guitar is either a prototype or a custom one-off. In 1982, Epiphone produced the American series (Spirit, Special & Map guitar) in Kalamazoo. These were meant to be lower budget, American-made guitars to compete with the higher quality Japanese importsthough, extremely high quality for the Epiphone brand.
They had the same open-book headstock, two-screw truss cover and scroll Epiphone logo as this 335. Most likely they had nitro finishes as well. After poor sales, they moved production to Nashville to produce them as Gibsons and rebranded the remaining Kalamazoo-made guitars with a Gibson decal over top of the original Epiphone logo. There were several other one-off prototypes that came out of Kalamazoo during that time period as well. Paul, the SG that your linked to is also from the American Series circa.
Very nice find! Jim, the “Epiphone by Gibson” models were early Korean (1986-1988).
I think that the imports you may be thinking of were the Bohemian-made Epiphones from the Czech Republic. They were very high quality and also short-lived. The only imports that I am aware of with a Gibson heastock were 1989-1990 Korean (Samick) guitars that were produced directly after the “Epiphone by Gibson” models.
There were a couple of cross-over guitars with both the “Epiphone by Gibson” logo and a Gibson headstock. The SQ-180 was one of them. The only other Epiphones with a Gibson headstock, that I am aware of, were the Japanese Domestic Market guitars from the 1990’s – mid 2000’s, which included some standard-run models, the LQ Series and the Japanese-market (only) Elite/Elitists.
Though, these were not actually imports because they were made exclusively for the Japanese market. Although, quite a few have made their way across the globe. Hi my name is chip i am from salem mass.
You had mentioned youre epi as being a proto. I was given given a gibson ES340 in 1994. I have had hard time finding out the exact year. This guitar was owned by my uncle but he has since passed away so i have very little info as to when it was purchased.
I myself worked at daddy’s junky musica kick ass used dealer.sorry to say daddy;s went out of bussiness. Iworked with two of the company’s vintage experts and they just could not pin point the exact production date. Like youre epi the pots were no help all i can tell you is that it has all it’s original parts. My friends at daddy’s did tell me that it could be a prototype.So i was wondering if you could help me out.
All i can tell you is this is one beautiful guitar it is walnut and the neck was laminated to match the body.It is listed as excellant condition. I also aquired GIBSON FALCON AMP wich i just finished restoring any insight you may have would be deeply appreciated.
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Models Specifications and Info. About serial numbers on Shiro Arai Co./Matsumoku Guitars. Serial numbers for these guitars is not a perfect science, but in nearly all cases after Matsumoku's involvement they can be trusted to indicate what year the guitar was produced. Shiro Arai Co.
Most guitars produced by Arai such as the Aria Diamonds (not to be confused with the Aria Pro II Diamonds), Lyle, Conrad, Maxi-Tone, Japanese Epiphone, Univox, and the other pre-1976 guitars often had serial numbers usually on the neck plate (I imagine so dealers could track warranty, etc.). Unfortunately the number was arbitrary and had little to do with when the guitar was produced. After Arai joined forces with Matsumoku, the serial numbers began to have some bearing on the guitar's production year and rank in production sequence. Serial numbers on these guitars were arbitrary numbers and did not indicate date of manufacture. When dating these guitars only ballpark ranges is possible. One tip is the type of pickups. Single coil trapezoid face = mid to late 1960s, P-90 sized single and dual coil pickups = early 1970s, normal humbuckers and more strat like singles = early to mid 1970s.
Guitars produced by Matsumoku Nearly all guitars produced by Matsumoku (beginning sometime late 1976 or early 1977) bore serial numbers indicating the year and possibly production sequence. A small number of guitars produced had serials preceeded by a letter, but as to what the letter inidicated is yet a mystery and one can only guess without concrete evidence. I have seen both 6 and 7 digit serial numbers (excluding the letter if it is present).This new serialization covered Aria, Aria Pro II, Vantage, Westbury, most Westones, Japanese Washburns, some Electras, and the Skylark as well as others.
As far as I know, the Korean version of these labels bear 8 or more digit serials and sometimes the production locaciton code (letter indicating Korea, Phillipines, Indonesia, etc.) which does not concern us here. The first digit (and upon rare occasion the first two) indicated the year. There is an inherent flaw with this single-digit method as the single digit year indicator will re-cycle after a decade! Attention must be paid to when the particular model was available and apply that to the first digit of the serial, excluding the letter if present.
Epiphone Guitar Company
A bit of cross referencing is required. For example, my first Cardinal CS-350 has the serial 2010237 which indicates both by the first digit and the duration of the Cardinal CS-350 run it is a 1982 (and I know it is, I bought it then!). In rare instances the first two digits would indicate the year, in which case we can safely assume that my Cardinal is not a 1920!
Had it been the two-digit version it would have begun with 82XXXXX rather than 20XXXXX, which would also indicate 1982. Spotting and identifying early Korean models after production shifted to Korea. Early Korean models adopted similar looking serial numbers but were not indicative of the year manufacturered. Many early Koreans appeared to be nearly identical to the Japanese models with one important thing missing, at least on models with bolt necks and neckplates: 'Made In Japan' or 'Product of Matsumoku'. Without this, it is not an earlier Japanese model.
Other tip-offs to later Korean heritage are bridges with squared-off ends, 3rd fret scarf joint in the neck, Schaller style tuners on models previously equipped with keystone style tuners, smaller potentiometers, and Quck-hook tailpieces with standard stop-bar stud spacing among others. You can contact us regading contributions to this archive, or if you have corrections. Please don't contact us with general guitar questions via e-mail as these are better suited to the Message Board's forums. Website design and original content 2001-2015 K.
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