On Wednesday we posted a new homepage at Epiphone.com featuring Marcus Henderson and his new Epiphone signature model… the Apparition. We are totally pumped about this screamin’ new guitar… and you gotta check it out! Visit the new Apparition Micro-Site at www.epiphone.com/appartition or follow the links below for more info:

Apparition Micro-Site

Apparition News Item

Apparition Contest… win one!

We are busy putting the final touches on a new promotional video for the Marcus Henderson Apparition model. Can’t wait to unveil the video and micro-site… should happen very soon so keep your eyes on Epiphone.com.

BTW… the Apparition absolutely ROCKS! It has EMG 81/85 pickups, Original Floyd Rose, Gorgeous Quilt Maple top, SpeedTaper Satin Finish neck… and a couple features that no other Epiphone model has. This thing screams!
 

14 years ago we had a bunch of Epiphone Christmas ornaments made and used them as promotional items. I kept one and every year since then I have hung it up in the office as Christmas approaches. It’s a little worn and tattered by now but has come to represent the Holiday Season in the Epi office… in fact, it is tradition. People have been asking where it is… so today, I hung the traditional Epiphone ornament! Ha!

Which reminds me…

If you’re still looking for that perfect gift… why not give the gift of music with a quality musical instrument from Epiphone. Did you know we have several instruments that are less than $300 MSRP? Plus, you get a Limited Lifetime Warranty on all our guitars… Now that’s a great gift!

CLICK HERE NOW to check out five Epi’s under $300.

NAMM is coming up in mid January and as you can imagine… we are hopping crazy, in an effort to get ready for the BIG show. And… If you have been there, you know that the Saturday night Epiphone party is THE place to be. It’s an intimate setting with some of the finest musicians/bands in the world that people just don’t want to miss. Each year we turn literally hundreds of people away and when people find out the lineup for this year it will no doubt be the same. I’m working on signage for the event now but can’t reveal the lineup just yet. All I can say is… all you dealers and VIP’s out there may want to start requesting passes from your rep now! It will be another great show.

We will be making a formal announcement soon on the homepage of Epiphone.com.

This cool 60’s era Epiphone Pacemaker Amplifier made it’s way into the office next to mine this morning… Here’s a few shots of it for my fellow amp-geeks out there. Look for this beauty in an Epiphone print ad in the very near future.

Spent the major part of the morning on a location photo shoot for a new product. Here’s a behind the scenes look for you.

 

Hello all out there in guitar land.  I would like to spend some time talking about the Les Paul Ultra II guitar from Epiphone. Since about 1991, I’ve been a chickin’ pickin’, plank spankin’ sort of guy, with some forays into shredding, sweep picking and economy picking a-la Frank Gambale. This was all on top of my usual repertoire.  Before this, however, back in the '70s and '80s I was a straight-ahead knuckles-to-the-pickups McLaughlinesque “see who I can impress” fusion jazz rocker. I’m glad that I grew out of all of that. (So is everyone else around these parts…) The guitars that I used for this were always Gibson Melody Makers that I preferred over everything else because of their neck profile and especially because of their light weight. I have always loved, but never owned a Les Paul for the same reason; it was too heavy for me, and my back. Great guitar, don’t get me wrong — but I just couldn’t do it.

What a great joy when I strapped on the Epi Les Paul Ultra II. This mahogany body and maple cap beauty is chambered out in key places making it one of the lighter electric guitars I’ve ever had over my shoulders! One might be thinking that there is a compromise in tone if a guitar is lighter — this is not the case. This particular guitar is outfitted with Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pros in the neck position and a Seymour Duncan Custom/Custom in the bridge position. There’s only one word that comes into my head to describe the tones that I can get out of this guitar, no matter what I’m doing at the gig or at home. Juicy!

Epiphone has also seen to it that the back of the mahogany neck has a satin finish for guys like me that get stuck, promoting ease of motion. There is something else that I can’t get out of my other guitars that this one has . . . Strummmmability. Strummishness? Strumola. Strumtastic . . . I know they’re not real words, but you know what I mean.  Many electrics currently available can’t handle a full on strum like Tom Petty for example who plays electric rhythm with a clean sound. Many of those guitars go out of tune or sound “clangy”. Most folks leave this up to the acoustic guitar, should they have one in their band, or just play solo. As well, most electrics go out of tune should you put a beatin on it, but this baby doesn’t. As a great added bonus, the Ultra II is also equipped with a low impedance cobalt pickup located at the end of the fingerboard.  The NanoMag© pickup gives you shimmering acoustic like tones. One achieves this by just rolling back the “southern-most” knob where the tone pot would be on the front in the usual bridge pickup location. There’s also active tone and gain controls for the NanoMag pickup located on a control panel on the back of the guitar. Roll it back to the Seymour Duncan’s, give it a crank, and you’re good to go with songs like Sweet Child O’ Mine, or any fat sounding Les Paul song you can think of without missing a beat. You can noodle around with some jazz tones and I roll back the tone pot, with the neck pickup toggled, and got some very sweet, convincing jazzy archtop tones as well. That also illustrates this point: if you’re a beginner learning everything under the sun on guitar, or if you are a journeyman player taking requests of every sort - this would be the guitar for you! The lightweight construction doesn’t weigh heavily on you over a four hour gig, and the body width and bout are just pronounced enough for you to engage in hours-on-end practicing.

OK… so you may have noticed that I ramble a lot about our history on this blog… and there’s a good reason for that. Epiphone’s history is a rich one to say the least and many times we find ourselves drawing on that rich heritage for inspiration… and today was no different. I just got out of a meeting with our Art-Director and much of our discussion centered around these 60’s era Epiphone catalogs. Cool stuff!

Read more about Epiphone’s history by clicking HERE.
 

It’s been a little crazy around here lately! Still, last week we took the time to get together and share a Thanksgiving meal as an Epi family. And even though this is late… we hope you had a very Happy Thanksgiving yourself!