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sonic romp

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Hopefully this will roll being a Gibson-Epi question: I'm interested in a 60s Epi, but I'll bet a lot of it is based on aesthetic. When I listen to some clips on Youtube, they can sound awfully shrill--especially when the player's heavy-handed. Aside from the narrow nut and neck profile, anyone have an opinion on these sound-wise? Any different from the standard Gibson counterparts (J45/50/SJ, etc.)?

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Before developing arthritis in my hands, my two main players were a skinny fingerboard J-45 and a skinny fingerboard FT-79N. They played and sounded exactly alike. Wonderful instruments, but had to graduate to a bit wider 'board. Both retained the original adjustable ceramic saddle. I couldn't notice anything "shrill" coming from either one. Both had fine bass response with ringing trebles to match. Both sounded more 'mellow' - translate dull and thuddy - to me with rosewood saddles which I tried as well. Bottom line, there really shouldn't be much, if any, difference. Considering that they came from the same factory at the same era and were meant to be alike in the first place, that doesn't seem surprising.

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I don't know anything about Epi guitars, but they must have had significant quality differences, based on the price difference new. Is the Epi X-braced? Does the J-45 get first pick of tonewood for the top? There must be a dif somewhere. Dunno'. Bet they'd sound different with a fixed bone saddle. The ceramic is noisy and the rosewood is subdued, but mostly the adj bridge hardware, especially the metal grommets for the adj bolts, is a top suppressor to some extent.

 

I converted a couple B-25's and got good results, even pried out the grommets and glued down a new slotted B'rosewood bridge. Got a great luthier who works cheap so it was slightly profitable on resale. I figure they were transgendered into LG-2's

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Epiphone models were identical to the corresponding Gibson models, with the exception of headstock shape and ornamentation. That means that x-braced models were correspondingly braced, as were ladder braced models. Selection of tonewoods varied somewhat among both brands, but neither was intentionally 'better' than the other. The initial notion behind Epiphone was to create a wider dealer base in territories where Gibson was already established, not to market cheaper knock-offs. Of course, the Gibson name had more snob appeal and sold for more. All that went to hell around 1970 when Epiphone production became Japanese. Hooray for corporate greed. I imagine the concept is more difficult to grasp for folks who weren't around to experience the change; I was there and sometimes it's difficult for me as well.

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I don't know anything about Epi guitars, but they must have had significant quality differences, based on the price difference new. Is the Epi X-braced? Does the J-45 get first pick of tonewood for the top? There must be a dif somewhere. Dunno'. Bet they'd sound different with a fixed bone saddle. The ceramic is noisy and the rosewood is subdued, but mostly the adj bridge hardware, especially the metal grommets for the adj bolts, is a top suppressor to some extent.

 

I converted a couple B-25's and got good results, even pried out the grommets and glued down a new slotted B'rosewood bridge. Got a great luthier who works cheap so it was slightly profitable on resale. I figure they were transgendered into LG-2's

Sometimes changing the bridge works magic, sometimes achieves nothing. After while, you get to where you can tell if the change will matter or not, depending on the sound of the instrument as originally produced. Rarely does it affect a change for the worse. LG-1 guitars transgender nicely into LG-2s with a good rebrace job!

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The Gibson Epiphone FT79 Texan's are the "long scale" (25 3/4″) version of the round shoulder Gibson J45/J50 with ornamentation inspired by the Country Western model , but with single parallelogram fret markers.

Fancy head stock inlay like the CW with a slim fast neck and a 1 5/8 " nut width.

Same fit and finish as any J45. And as with other natural topped models, Gibson always used their best looking woods.

 

Engineered to be very powerful and we consider them to be outstanding sounding guitars and fun to play. Replacing the adjustable ceramic saddle with a rosewood insert slotted for a proper intonated bone saddle always improves their sound characteristics. When properly executed, this modification can easily be returned to original.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphone_Texan

 

Hope this is helpful.

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