gearhead

Kind of what I thought. I've looked around and have only found pics of one other guitar with a finish like that. And I'm about 99% sure it's exactly like you said, a '98 from Korea. Thanks for the input!

Most likely the gold top finish.

Looks like a 2000 model made at the Fuji-Gen plant. http://www.epiphonewiki.org/index/Epiphone_Serial_Number_Decoding.php

That serial number sequence was used from 1970-1975.

I found my Epi serialization info, serial numbers from 810000-810999 were used in 1966, 1967, 1969. Hope that narrows it down for you!

The headstock looks a lot better in those pics. The logo looks right, Sits where it should, and yes, I think it's most likely a Korean made Epi. The pickups may not give any clues. I have an older Korean Special, headstock looks the same, the pickups are SAMSHIN, but have no adjustable pole pieces.

It looks legit. The first ones were made in Korea, with the gold colored Epi logo (2005), later ones were made in China, and I've seen pics of a 2011, it had the silver colored logo. Not sure when the logo changed or when production moved to China. Yours looks to be a Chinese variant by the serial number and inspection decal.

Well the headstock looks to be cut kind of offset, but it could be camera angle. The tuners look new, maybe replaced? And the truss rod cover looks to be the old style, late 90"s, early 2000's. You have any pics of the front of the guitar? And I would definitely like to see the rear of the pickups, and the inside of the pickup cavities. Missing the serial number is strange. But I'm not totally convinced it's a fake. Is it a LP Standard or what?

Nice guitar! I'm not sure how the serial numbers went on those guitars, but there is a 1966 Casino on Reverb, serial number 434125. 1966 Epiphone Casino And another with serial number 335787 that is listed as a 1965. 1965 Epiphone casino Quote from A history of the Epiphone Casino web page ( A History of the Epiphone Casino ) " During the time that Paul McCartney purchased his Casino in 1964 and John Lennon and George Harrison purchased their Casinos before the Revolver tour in 1966, fingerboard inlays changed from dot to parallelogram inlays and the tortoise shell pickguard changed to white. Pickup covers, which were nickel from 1963-1964, changed to chrome. " I would guess by your serial number, it's somewhere around a 1968 to early1970's.

I think, that unless you can find some kind of "mini" push/pull pots, that it will be an issue. You may have to install mini toggle switches. As far as extra shielding, I really doubt you would "need" it. But if you did add some shielding tape to rear of the pick guard, you could run a wire from the control cavity to the rear pickup route and strip the insulation so that it will get pinched between the pick guard and the body, making contact with the tape of course.

How about posting some pics? Headstock, logo, inside the control cavity, rear of the pickups.

Here is a pic of the serial number.

I bought my girl a Special II at GC for $75 for Christmas. Pretty straight guitar. But the finish is unusual. The only other guitars I have found pics of online with anything similar were some Special II's that came in player packs. I believe it is a 1998, it has one of those early serial numbers that won't quite decode. The neck plate has serial # 098031013. I think the first digit should be an "O" instead of a zero. And has "Gibson" on the truss rod cover. It doesn't have a Custom Shop emblem on the back of the headstock. Any ideas of what this finish is, or what years they used it?

A little more info to add: I have an Ibanez SZ720 that I installed some SD "Detonator" (HB108 N/B) pickups in. The Duncan Performer Series Detonator is a Duncan Distortion with caps screws, (no retainer under the coils for the normal adjustable pole pieces to screw into) . They look very much like the Invader series pickups. And sound close too. The Invader has 3 ceramic magnets, while the Detonator has one double thick ceramic magnet. And they both have the large headed cap screws on both coils. The cap screws give them a "darker" sound because of the extended magnetic field. That being said, the pickups were very bass oriented in this particular guitar, so I decided to try some mods to see how it affected the tone. First I tried changing magnets, went to Alnico 5's and 3"s. Really didn't have much effect on tone, they were still very bassy. So I decided to try swapping the cap screws for slug pole pieces. The diameter of the screws are .1875" (3/16"), which is standard size for solid slugs. (These pickups have no retainer under the coils for regular adjustable pole pieces to screw into) I tried swapping only one coil, then both coils (with the Alnico magnets). It seemed to make more difference on the neck unit than the bridge unit. So I left the neck unit with the Alnico mags and solid slugs. I tried the bridge unit with the Alnico and ceramic mags, still pretty bass oriented with any of the magnets. I then decided to take out the 500K volume pot for the bridge PU and installed a 1Meg pot. Now that definitely gave the pickup more bright top end. And I experimented with soldering different resistors across the pot to lower the resistance slightly and see how it affected the tone. Different resistor values gave different results, but basically with a large resistance pot like a 1 Meg, less high frequencies are filtered to ground. That is why Fender single coils use 250K pots, because it cuts a lot of the highs, and Gibson humbuckers use 500K pots, so more highs get to the amp. In the end, I used the 1 Meg pot (with no mods to it), the original ceramic magnet, and one row of solid slugs and one row of cap screws in the bridge pickup. So as you can see, there are a LOT of different modifications that can be made to change the tone (and output) of pickups. If you buy a set of pickups, and they are too bright, or too bassy, you can do some cheap mods to adjust the tone, if you have some soldering skills and the time to do it.

It should be mahogany body, but could be laminated. You can tell if you unbolt the neck and look at the neck pocket.Either way it should be fine, I have one that is laminated and I play it all the time.