Which came first?

[Andre S]

Epiphone Casino or Gibson ES 330?

[ksdaddy]

Pretty sure the 330 was around in '59 or so. I don't think Gibson did much with the Epi models until after that. Just a google-less guess.

[Andre S]

Pretty sure the 330 was around in '59 or so. I don't think Gibson did much with the Epi models until after that. Just a google-less guess.

 

I wonder why the Beatles chose the Casino over the 330

[Murph]

Just a google-less guess.

 

[charlie brown]

I wonder why the Beatles chose the Casino over the 330

 

 

Well' date=' originally....Paul bought a Casino, and John and George loved the tone, so they

too, got them. Paul's has the more "Gibson" like headstock, and John and George's have

the (more) traditional Epi Hour Glass type headstock, as their's were 1965 versions,

whereas Paul's was a '62-64 version. I doubt it would have been "price," as back then the

Epi's were almost the same price, as the Gibson's, and of equal quality. So, basically,

they followed Paul's lead, as it were, more than choosing Epi "over" Gibson.

 

 

[b']Some more on The Beatles, and their Casino's, from the Gibson "Lifestyle" pages...[/b]

 

How John Lennon and The Beatles Made the Epiphone Casino Famous

Ted Drozdowski|04.14.2010

 

The Casino was unveiled by the Epiphone Company in 1958, just a year after the operation was acquired by the Chicago Music Company – then the parent of Gibson. But 1964 was the year that the ringing, bell-toned thinline hollowbody guitar entered rock ‘n’ roll history.

 

It’s unclear whether Keith Richards, who played a ’61 or ’62 model on The Rolling Stones’ 1964 American tour, or Paul McCartney, who bought one in ’64 and took it into the studio for the Rubber Soul sessions the following year, was the first superstar to own a Casino. But the mega-band that will forever be associated with the effervescent, P-90 equipped, six-string is The Beatles. Forty years after their break-up, they are still the crown princes of the Casino sound. McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison all owned Casinos and played them in the studio. And Lennon, in particular, became a champion of the model, using his on every post-Rubber Soul Beatles album and his early solo recordings.

 

Both Lennon and Harrison were hooked on the Casino after getting an earful of the crisp tones and bristling sustain produced by McCartney’s Bigsby adorned instrument, which he played on “Drive My Car” and “Taxman.”

 

When the Revolver sessions began a year later, Lennon and Harrison purchased new 1965 models of their own, making the Beatles (at that time) an all-Casino band. Harrison’s guitar sported a Bigsby, like McCartney’s, but was a sunburst beauty with a stock trapeze tailpiece.

 

After those sessions, Lennon rarely put his Casino down. It became his main guitar for the rest of The Beatles’ musical career, accompanying him on the band’s third world tour, including their final public concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966. Lennon’s Casino was his primary axe on 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, chopping out the chords of his compositions “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” and the sparking arpeggios of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

 

Despite its extensive service on the era’s most cutting-edge album, the Casino was something of a calculated throwback at birth. In the late ’50s, the blossoming of the rock ‘n’ roll era required more powerful amplification, which made hollowbody guitars feed back. That’s why bluesmen like John Lee Hooker preferred Epiphone models like the semi-hollowbody Riveria and Sheraton. They could be turned up to cut through the noisiest juke joint audiences without howling through their amps. But the tonal qualities of the Casino’s classic hollow, two-f-hole construction and 16th-fret neck joint for additional string tension gave it a unique sound. And The Beatles and other rockers, like Richards, found feedback a desirable component of the era’s expanding sonic palette, and the Casino the perfect, highly reactive brush.

 

Lennon’s Casino got a prominent facelift during the making of the White Album. The pick guard was removed and the sunburst finish sanded down to bare wood before getting two thin coats of clear lacquer. The revamped guitar made its public debut in the Beatles’ live “Revolution” promotional video, producing an insanely raunchy tone — in contrast to George Harrison’s cherry red 1957 Les Paul, which was a gift from Eric Clapton. Lennon also played the now-natural-finish Casino in The Rolling Stones’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus film, backed by Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell for a version of the White Album’s “Yer Blues.” Parenthetically, Harrison also had his own Casino sanded down and refinished clear, believing the strip-down had improved the sound of Lennon’s guitar.

 

 

Lennon’s Casino can also be heard on “Get Back,” “I Want You,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” the intro to “Across the Universe,” and other Beatles classics, and was in his arms when the group filmed their farewell Let It Be concert atop the roof of the Apple Corp. building on Saville Road. Lennon used his Casino on the Abbey Road sessions, too, and beyond The Beatles, taking the guitar to Canada for the Plastic Ono Band’s famed Live Peace in Toronto concert.

 

Reportedly, he was interested in having the Casino restored to its original sunburst finish toward the end of his life, but that never happened. Today the guitar is owned by his widow, Yoko Ono, and listed in the inventory of Lennon’s estate as the “Revolution” guitar.

 

 

CB

[lpdeluxe]

Here it is, from Adrian Ingram's The Gibson 335 (Centerstream, Anaheim Hills, CA, 2006) [p 66]:

 

"The majority of Epiphone's semi-acoustic thinlines were more than copies or descendants: they shared the same dimensions, construction, timbers and manufacturing processes. Each model had a Gibson counterpart, equivalent in both hierarchical price and the degree of ornamentation. The 'up-market' Sheraton was basically a non-stereo 335 [sic]; the Riviera, a non-stop tailpiece version of the 335, and the Casino a re-badged 330."

 

Epiphones were built in the same plant as the Gibsons, and were produced by the same design team (Gibson used the 225 Parsons St address; Epiphone used the name of the street on the north side of the factory, Bush, for their address to make it appear separate from Gibson).

 

In 1969, Norlin acquired Gibson just in time to see the bottom fall out of the market for guitars, and one strategy was to move production of Epi offshore beginning in 1970 (initially to Japan, later to Korea and China) and brand it as a budget version of Gibson. They are good guitars: before I bought my 335 I had a Sheraton II, made at the Samick factory. It couldn't compare to the real deal, but it was very nicely made and affordable.

[Notes_Norton]

I don't remember where I read it, and it can possibly be Internet un-truth, but I remember reading that due to distribution problems it was difficult to get Gibsons in Europe at the time the Beatles and Stones got their Casinos. If that's true, they really didn't have a choice.

 

In any case, they are both great guitars. I have a Kalamazoo 330 and Korean/Peerless Casino and I love them both.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ?

[Mr. Natural]

According to George Gruhn and Walter Carter in the May 2010 issue of Vintage Guitar, Gibson introduced the ES-330 in 1959. The Epi Casino appeared in 1961.