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Since 1957, Epiphone has been a subsidiary of the guitar manufacturer Gibson. Legendary guitar models such as Les Paul, SG and Thunderbird by Gibson are available from Epiphone in the lower to middle price segment. Epiphone is famous for its high-quality archtop guitar, which guitarists like Tommy Thayer (Kiss), Tony Iommi, Jeff Waters (Annihilator) or Joe Bonamassa play. Read more...
In 1923, instruments first appeared in the USA under the name Epiphone, produced by Greek immigrant Epimanondas Stathopoulos in his company House Of Stathopoulo in New York. However, the story actually begins in 1873, when his father, Anastasios Stathopoulos, built his first instrument. His family emigrated in 1877 from Greece via Turkey to the USA in 1903.
The sons, Epimanondas and Orpheus, began helping early in the New York business, which was called A. Stathopoulo, manufacturer-repairer of all kinds of musical instruments. After Anastasio's death in 1915, Epi and Orphie continued their father's business operations. From 1917 onwards, they manufactured the instruments under the name House of Stathopoulo.
In 1924, they registered the name Epiphone as a trademark in the United States of America. It is composed of Epimanonda's nickname Epi and the Greek word Phone for sound. The company produced various stringed instruments until the 1950s, some of which achieved world renown.
When Epimanonda died in 1943, his brother Frixo joined the company. A dispute soon arose between the two brothers and Frixo sold his shares to Orpheus in 1948, who thus controlled Epiphone alone. After the Second World War, production drops drastically and in 1953 Epiphone gets into serious financial difficulties, so that a first change of ownership takes place, moving production from New York to Philadelphia.
Since most of the skilled workers did not take part in this move, Epiphone was hit hard by the resulting loss. Orpheus succeeds in getting Epiphone back in 1955, but continues to produce hardly any instruments. As a result, Epiphone was looking for a buyer again two years later.
At that time, Epiphone was no longer a serious competitor for Gibson. A small company from California worried the then president Ted McCarty much more. However, Gibson had a weakness in the area of double basses that Epiphone had successfully produced. McCarty did not think twice, but seized the opportunity and integrated the former competitor into the Chicago Musical Instrument Company (CMI), Gibson's parent company, in 1957. The original idea with the double basses quickly gave rise to a new model series of different instruments, built from a symbiosis of Gibson and Epiphone parts.
When the materials from the Epiphone factory ran out in 1961, only materials from Gibson were used. This was the beginning of Epiphone's path to the B label, the production of which the company outsourced to Japan in 1969 for cost reasons. Some models, such as the Crestwood, the Model 1140 Flying V, the "Scroll" as well as the Sheraton, were manufactured in the legendary Matsumoku factory, which also produced for Aria, Vantage, Washburn and Skylark. This consequence was again a break in the model range. So these Japanese Epiphones are something quite different and more comparable to the other Matsumoku instruments. Since the cost pressure was constantly increasing, Gibson followed the general trend in 1983 and moved the production of Epiphones to Korea. Here, mainly Samick took over production and again there was a break in the model range, to which most of the original Epiphone guitars fell victim.
If the more expensive Crestwood, for example, was considered the counterpart to the SG, it was logical to actually replace it with a genuine SG replica now, since this form had a significantly higher acceptance among musicians and thus promised higher sales. In 2000, Epiphone began production in China. Again, costs were the main reason for the change and again, the company had to struggle with massive quality problems in the early days. Even Epiphone, as one of the big and strong-selling brands, did not have enough control over the production quality of the individual factories. This is probably one of the reasons why Epiphone has been producing guitars in its own factory in Qingdao since 2002.
Since the Korean era, Gibson has consistently placed the Epiphone brand in the upper entry-level range. Apart from a few independent models, today's product range consists mainly of licensed copies of well-known Gibson models. Epiphone is the only manufacturer authorised by official concession to use the names of the corresponding models for its instruments.
