Yorgle

“Regent” was simply the name used by epiphone to distinguish its archtops with cutaways from full bodied varieties. You can expect lots of deviations in these early Kalamazoo built guitars as Gibson used up the remaining Epiphone parts from Philadelphia. For example, I’ve seen early Windsor and Sorrentos from 59, 60 and 61 some having oval fingerboard inlays and some with just dots. Edit: I seem to recall that the 311 and 312 designations originally represented blond vs sunburst finish. The addition of the “N” to an E311 seems redundant, but it’s just how things were done back then. Adding the N to an E312 is a mystery.

Love it! Very classy.

Strings are cheap. Buy a few sets and try them out to see what works best for you.

If you only need to drop the action a few 64ths, you could try using some vintage thumbwheels as they tended to be thinner than the modern ones, but I suspect that you’ll need more adjustment than that. Reducing height at the bridge only lowers the action at the 12th fret by half. Modifying the base or finding some shorter saddles is your best bet.

That’s a 1970s Epiphone neck added to an earlier (but certainly not THAT early) non-Epiphone body.

My daughter has it at college so I rarely get to play it anymore.

It’s likely not that the blue paint that has faded, but rather that the lacquer has yellowed, imparting a green tint to the color underneath.

The new headstock design actually pre-dates the Gibson/Kalamazoo era. My ‘56 arch top was built in New York and it has that same style headstock as did other Epi arch tops as far back as 1939-40.

Isn’t it possible to have just the pots replaced on the board?

You can make a one-time radius block good enough to shape the new inlays by sticking a piece of 220 sandpaper to the fingerboard (between the 1st and 2nd frets) and rubbing a small block of pine or other softer wood back and forth between the frets until the radius is “transferred” to the pine block. The new inlays can then be mostly shaped with the block before they’re installed. Once they’re glued into the fingerboard, razor blade works great to scrape them flush with the surrounding wood.

Looks great. I just finished I laying a vintage pearl Epiphone into my Alleykat’s headstock (it can easily be hidden by the bikini plate logo if I ever want to go back to stock.” The fake block inlays on the neck are next. Where did you get the pearl for your neck?

You have to fish them out through the f-hole. YouTube is full of videos showing various ways to do this.

"Note he did not mention soldering the tabs to the cover, theoretically if you make a good solid contact be the tabs or chassis to the cover the cover would be grounded."-- that's true but only if they are tightened down firmly, which in the case of the metal covers, tends to cause the sharp edges of the covers to dig into the finish. Soldering them is the best way to guarantee a good ground and no vibration, but you'll probably need a 40watt iron- the typical 25watt from Walmart most likely isn't going to work.

The metal covers need to be soldered to the pickup baseplates to be grounded.

They are on mine.

A up-bowed neck can cause this because it raises the height of the nut relative to the bridge, tempting you to lower the bridge to bring the strings down, which might otherwise work but for the pickup being in the way. Action too high at the nut can also create this situation.

I’m sure the wiring upgrade would be an improvement, but whether it’s enough to justify the cost/difficulty of doing it is questionable. If you like the way it sounds now, just leave it stock and play it.

If it’s the bridge saddle buzzing, dab a drop of clear nail polish on the screw threads.

Try pressing down on the pickup mounting ears while it's buzzing and see if it stops. My 2015 Wildkat had a mystery buzz and it turned out to be one of the solder joints on the bridge pickup was cracked allowing the cover to vibrate. Another place to check is the A-string saddle on the bridge.

I don't think you can have too little relief as long the strings don't buzz. My tried and true method is to adjust the truss rod to zero relief (neck perfectly straight), then set the action at the 12th fret to 3-4 64ths treble and 4-5 64ths bass, then play for a while and listen for buzzing. If strings buzz before the 12th fret, I add in relief 1/8 turn at a time until the buzzing stops. If they buzz after the 12th fret, then I raise the bridge.

Are you planning to paint the top or re-stain it? If you are painting it (to a solid color), all you need to do is lightly sand it with 600-800 grit paper, prime and paint. If you want to re-stain it, that's going to be considerably more difficult because ALL of the existing finish has to be removed before the wood can be re-stained. That requires either sanding, or heat-stripping-- either of which could potentially cause irreversible damage to your instrument if you screw up. As pointed out above, the flamed wood you see now is usually only only a few mils thick and if you sand through it, that spot will show up as a dark blotch once you apply stain. If that happens, your options are to either apply a new veneer, or sand the rest of the flame layer off and hope that the grain of whatever wood is underneath looks good enough to stain. Of course, the other option at that point would be to simply paint it a solid color. If you just want to darken the shade of the cherry burst, e.g., to go from the bright red/yellow to something more like tobacco, you can lightly sand off a few mils of the clear finish (don't go all the way through to the color) and use a dark tinted clearcoat to bring the finish back up. It won't look quite as dark as a true tobacco burst, but it will still look quite nice.

I'm curious what's all wrong with that? To my eye: 1) the neck tenon is both too short and too shallow, and/or possibly even the wrong shape altogether; 2) the obvious router issue for the pickup cavity; and 3) the back of the instrument doesn't appear to even touch the heel block. If it were a vintage instrument, it might be worth taking it apart and fixing it right, but I don't see any practical (i.e., cost effective) way to fix all of that without disassembling most of the guitar. If it were mine, I'd consider just filling the voids with epoxy and calling it good. Let us know what your luthier does with this.

Trust me, I learned the hard way that it’s nearly impossible to sand off the finish to the point where the guitar can be stained without going through the Maple layer in spots because the clear poly actually has soaked into the Maple layer, essentially making the stainable layer paper thin. If ANY poly remains it will not take stain, and you’ll get a splotchy look. But if you keep sanding, you’ll almost certainly sand through in spots (especially on curved areas on arch tops) and not even notice it until you apply the stain. The spots you sanded through will suddenly show up as dark splotches. The only thing you can do when that happens is to paint it with a solid color. That’s how I got my gold top Wildkat!

Beautiful! Looks to be in excellent condition. How well does it play?

What about a Wildkat case? I think the Coupe is about the same size as a Wildkat. My Wildkat measures 13.75” at the lower bout, 10.25” at the upper bout, and the body of the guitar is 17.75” long. Total length from strap button to top of the headstock is just shy of 40”.