Epiphone SQ-180 Neil Diamond

[Leonard McCoy]

Model No.: SQ 180 Neil Diamond

Year of manufacture: 2000

Place of manufacture: Korea

 

History: Bought in November 2015. Conversion for left hand together with setup by expert luthier in December 2015. Bridge slightly shaved off to lower the action in general. Saddle and nut replaced with lefty, handcrafted triple-A parts. Black dots added to lefty side of neck. Pickguards and guitar strap knob left in their original places.

 

Sound and performance: clean intonation and low action. A rather tender player but that has, similar to the J-180, an offensive tonal character with high sustain and powerful mids rich in overtones. Well-articulated bass tones without much boom however, producing an overall well-balanced mix between treble, mids, and bass especially when playing with a pick. Ideal for vocals-driven pieces and performances.

 

Description: Sporting a traditional 1.56" neck at the nut like the early Texans and a small jumbo body, the SQ-180 is Epiphone's version of the popular J-180 Everly Brothers by Gibson. The SQ 180 Neil Diamond Signature model differs from the standard model (SQ 180/EB) by ways of tone woods used (solid spruce top, maple back and sides), nonstandard saddle construction, finish (black-metallic), pickguard (a pair of two small interconnected diamond-shaped pickguards), fretboard inlays (diamonds), mechanics (Gotoh SG, partly gilt), headstock (Neil Diamond signature).

 

Photos:

 

[Leonard McCoy]

I've changed strings on her switching from Elixir Phosphor Bronze (.012) to Gibson's J-200 .012, and the results are mind-boggling - I couldn't be happier.

[Irish_Rover]

I've changed strings on her switching from Elixir Phosphor Bronze (.012) to Gibson's J-200 .012, and the results are mind-boggling - I couldn't be happier.

As I understand it the only difference between the J-200 strings and the Gibson Masterbuilts is that the former are silk wrapped at the ball end?

 

I did try the Masterbuilts and thought they sounded fine but they died on me in less than 2 weeks. Always been an Elixir fan but I've started using D'addario EXP's recently and I'm liking them a lot.

 

Anyway, glad to hear that you've got your guitar sounding how you want it to sound (which is the whole point really)

[Leonard McCoy]

As I understand it the only difference between the J-200 strings and the Gibson Masterbuilts is that the former are silk wrapped at the ball end?

The strings' packaging informs us that the J-200 strings are slowly wound and silk-wrapped at the end. As to whether there are differences in wire diameter for the core and winding between the J-200 and Masterbuilt strings, we can but suspect. Gibson, however, probably won't tell us.

[Dodger11]

I put the Masterbilts on my J200 copy and it sounds amazing! Will see how they last though...

[Leonard McCoy]

I just corrected an error in my inital post. The neck of the SQ-180 ND is actually much, much narrower at the first fret. The guitar features a traditional bone nut that is cut to a mere 1.56 inches, not 1.65".