EPIPHONE ES-175 PREMIUM ELECTRIC GUITAR & OHSC, MSRP $1665.00, WITH GIBSON ’57 CLASSIC PICKUPS! (THE MSRP DOES NOT INCLUDE THE CASE, WHICH WAS SOLD SEPARATELY)

This Epiphone ES-175 Premium Guitar is the most awesome modern hollow body that Gibson has produced since they moved their production of electric guitars from Kalamazoo, MI! I can critically evaluate this guitar based on the other Gibson guitars that I have owned.

I bought my first Gibson guitar in 1968 and it was a Gibson L-7 with the DeArmond pickup (it had the screw-on cable, and it worked with my Fender Bandmaster stack amp, which was the ‘standard’ for jazz guitarists at the time: but it was a feedback monster, if you turned the wrong way, but OHhh what an acoustic sound). I made the September 18, 1969 issue of Downbeat Magazine (see photos) playing my Gibson L7, and Downbeat was “The Bible” of jazz, at that time. I was in the house band at The Casino Royale, which was the top jazz club in Cleveland, OH owned by Tuskegee Airman Sam Benford (he was a bombing navigator, and engineer). All of the musicians in the band were way over thirty, and we played On Green Dolphin Street, So Near So Far, Billy’s Bounce, Well You Needn’t, Along Came Betty, Now’s The Time, Dolphin Dance, and more, however when I broke into Tequila, Mr. Walker, or Bumpin’ On Sunset on my Gibson L7, you could hear a pin drop in that crowded, smoky club: they hung on every note! Sean O’Meara had the jazz show on WCUY, and he came to hear me play almost every week. Within less than two years, I was playing in New York City.

In 1971, I was the lead guitarist and band leader for a Motown artist named Edwin Starr (my first gig was at The Copacabana in NYC on June 10, 1971, for two weeks, and I played across the USA and Canada, until Starr moved to England), and I bought a Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty with the three pickups, and a Marshall 100-watt tube head with two Marshall slant speaker cabinets, each with eight 10” speakers: I don’t ‘think’ that they make those cabinets anymore. At the same time, I bought a red Gibson SG because I liked Terry Kath of Chicago’s sound! 

(NOTE: from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, Gibson guitars were NOT expensive; for example, I bought my Gibson L-7 at a pawn shop in 1968, on my way home from high school, for $50 - it was hanging in the window, and nobody wanted it because Jimi Hendrix had taken over, and the Fender Stratocaster with a chain of Marshall amps was 'the thing'. After I bought the guitar, I went across the street to the gas station, and gas was .25 per gallon, so $4.00 would fill up my '59 Chevy Impala. My Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty with the three pickups cost $575 new with the hardshell case in 1971 at DiFiore's Music, on the west side of Cleveland, and I picked up my Gibson SG used for $300. By the 1980s when I bought my Gibson Les Paul Recording and Gibson Chet Atkins guitars, neither of them cost more than $800 at Sam's Music Store: we did not 'revere' guitars then, we just used them to do the job! There was a guy on Antiques Roadshow in Alaska that I saw tonight, and he had a '68 Fender Telecaster that he bought around 1970, from his recollection, for $100: Antiques Roadshow appraised it for $12,000 - $14,000.)

In the 1980s, I bought a Gibson Les Paul Recording (never used all of the controls, though), and a Gibson Chet Atkins with the nylon strings (Earl Klugh was popular then, playing nylon strings with Bob James).

My next Gibson (circa 2014) was a Gibson Les Paul Studio (Worn Cherry) which I played through a Marshall 100-watt head and traditional stack (one slant, one square), but I did not care for it compared to my previous Gibsons, which were made in Kalamazoo. I bought a blonde Gibson L-4 and it has a smaller body than the Gibson L-7, so its acoustic sound was not the best, but it was ‘okay’ although it costs a ton. 

In 2015, I bought a black Gibson ES-165 Herb Ellis with the BJB Floating Humbucker Pickup, and the guitar was ‘not bad’, and it sounded ‘pretty good’ through my Blackstar HT Club 40 tube amp, however even with the Gibson SEG-900M L-5 strings that I put on it, the guitar was good enough to gig with: and this is the guitar that I really want to compare the Epiphone ES-175 Premium with, due to their difference in price! Those Gibson ’57 Classic pickups on the ES-175 Premium Guitar literally ‘blow away’ that Gibson ES-165 Herb Ellis which had an MSRP that was over $4,000! This is probably why Gibson STOPPED MAKING the Epiphone ES-175 Premium because it cut into their main line guitars! I urge you to play the Gibson ES-165 head-to-head with this Epiphone ES-175 Premium through a Blackstar Tube HT Club 40 amp (or higher), and I’ll bet you that the Epiphone ES-175 Premium will win, hands down!

Well, most of the experienced guitarists who have played the Epiphone ES-175 Premium will tell you what this is, and we didn’t see THIS coming! I bought this guitar from MusiciansFriend, and they did a great set-up on it: I think that they put Gibson strings on it, because that is how it ‘sounds’, like the modern strings that Gibson is turning out: I am including a set of Gibson B.B. King strings which have the .54 low E string, (I don’t know why Gibson stopped making those L-5 strings). I would take this guitar over that Gibson L-7 that I had in 1968 without flinching: it’s no contest. It’s those Gibson ’57 Classic pickups that tell the story with ‘this’ guitar, and by the way, the action on the neck is totally fluid and fast! Here are the specifications from MusiciansFriend:

The legendary jazzbox at a revolutionary price.

All used items are sold as-is, no returns.