iansmitchell Posted July 17, 2008 Share Posted July 17, 2008 I've never seen a guitar assembled' date=' and had romantic visions of something akin to a vintage woodworking shop with luthiers that resemble Geppetto... and smoking pipes of course. Oh well.[/quote'] I always expected gas masks and giant evil veneering machines worked by village natives in loin cloths paid in banana bunches... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwl325 Posted July 19, 2008 Share Posted July 19, 2008 I've never seen a guitar assembled' date=' and had romantic visions of something akin to a vintage woodworking shop with luthiers that resemble Geppetto... and smoking pipes of course. Oh well.[/quote'] Ah, gotcha...yeah, these pics would be a major disappointment! Re the Custom Shop question, I noticed two auctions this week that seemed a bit unusual--both have almost identical descriptions of the guitars--natural finish Casinos that supposedly were re-serial numbered because they were made with a trapeze instead of a Bigsby. I thought these were unusual for a couple reasons--1, I thought the LE Casinos with Bigsbys were all sunburst models, and 2, since the only other diff would be the tailpiece, I wonder why they would have been offered as CS models to start with? Any insights around here? Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rpach10115 Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 Here's my opinion: I own MANY epi's. All different kinds. I own 4 Custom shop Epi's. Here's the difference that I've found: The necks seem easier to play than a non Custom Shop guitar. I have NO IDEA how this can be, maybe the luck of the draw, but the do seem smoother. The fret edges are rolled nicely on the CS as opposed to the non CS one's that I have. Also, the SG that I have came factory with the EMG 81/85 pickups, so this must be different that the regular production line model. There is something unusual about all 4 CS guitars that I have. Most of them are the color. I have a wildkat that is a strange off-white color on the top, and a cream color on the bottom. Weird. This is just my opinion based on the Epi's that I OWN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubstar Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 "10,000/month. 1 year run. You do the math." I just can't see that many LE G400s w/ maestro being produced...for a 27 day work month, that's 370 guitars per day...seems exceedingly excessive, especially considering LE epiphones are not that common on ebay, CL, and in shops...they also seem to stick around on MF for about 3 months and then they are gone... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
byrds1965 Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 "they also seem to stick around on MF for about 3 months and then they are gone... They seem to bring back "good sellers" I would guess. I bought one of the Pelham blue G400s then they were gone, now they seem to be back again and my GC has one on the wall too. Hope they bring back the Casino with bigsby again or the cherry G400 with maestro. I have the black and gold one but would trade in to get the cherry. Also would be nice if they did it with binding this time as the other G400 post stated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfsboy Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 I have a "Custom Shop" EE Dot SE with blocks instead of dots and a flame maple top . I noted the Custom shop logo and the limited edition stickers etc .I ignored them .It is just a very good guitar ,well made ,even if it is by little oriental women instead of beefy American luthiers trained by the Marines and Stradivarius. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iansmitchell Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 "10' date='000/month.1 year run. You do the math." I just can't see that many LE G400s w/ maestro being produced...for a 27 day work month, that's 370 guitars per day...seems exceedingly excessive, especially considering LE epiphones are not that common on ebay, CL, and in shops...they also seem to stick around on MF for about 3 months and then they are gone...[/quote'] Well, each factory turns out 10,000. There are several currently producing epiphones now. Given, all aren't CS models. But it's not shockingly few. Consider MF is only a US dealer, and japan, Australia, the UK, canada and other nations all want epiphone guitars. Once you break it down to cities, epiphone still makes about enough guitars for there to be three or more from the last 10 years in any USA city. That's huge. That's US only. Epiphone, even in a smaller section, smaller time frame, makes ENORMOUS numbers of guitars. Even if MF sells the CS models for only 3 months, they could easily be in production far longer. Particularly when you consider how many guitars it takes to load a cargo ship from china to the united states at an economical rate. If they produce a model for a year, they may take months produce a shipload, weeks to get it from port to port. Then setup in Nashville, then to MF. MF could run the model a day and it wouldn't reflect production time. Also, considering the country of labor origin, mechanics, and production, I'm not sure about a 27 day work month. They may run 24 hours if the veneering vacuum pumps and other machines take a long time or much more energy to start up and shut down, or have to be fully inspected every time before they start again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iansmitchell Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 I have a "Custom Shop" EE Dot SE with blocks instead of dots and a flame maple top . I noted the Custom shop logo and the limited edition stickers etc .I ignored them .It is just a very good guitar ' date='well made ,even if it is by little oriental women instead of beefy American luthiers trained by the Marines and Stradivarius. [/quote'] Block inays on a dot? Hilarious.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricochet Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 10' date='000/month. 1 year run. You do the math.[/quote'] That's a little optimistic.:-) The serial is using 4 or 5 digits on a Epi guitar(the other are year and month) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricochet Posted July 22, 2008 Share Posted July 22, 2008 That's probably an exageration...but let's just say it's a sh!tload of guitars and not a very "limited" run. IIRC it was Limited to 4 or 500, but can't remember where I read it. According to our village-expert Rot it's not limited by numbers but limited by the time a LE serie is running. Which would make sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biff Posted July 23, 2008 Share Posted July 23, 2008 FWIW. The Epiphone Slash signature model must be the most important "limited edition" at the moment for Epiphone and the Nordic distributor (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland) got 78 pieces of them. I may live somewhat in the backwoods but still two out of three Epiphones I own are LE, odds are that the production runs are 400-500 *minimum*. That way you have a couple to ship over to each US state and one to each country selling Epiphones :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricochet Posted July 23, 2008 Share Posted July 23, 2008 FWIW. The Epiphone Slash signature model must be the most important "limited edition" at the moment for Epiphone and the Nordic distributor (Sweden' date=' Norway, Denmark, Finland) got 78 pieces of them. I may live somewhat in the backwoods but still two out of three Epiphones I own are LE, odds are that the production runs are 400-500 *minimum*. That way you have a couple to ship over to each US state and one to each country selling Epiphones :)[/quote'] Yeah, I was really surprised a local dealer over here is selling a staggering 25 LP Custom LE "natural plus tops". That's really a inordinate amount compared to say 500 pieces 'worldwide'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suek Posted May 7, 2010 Share Posted May 7, 2010 The last pic in the custom shop shows a LP with a body contour? Ive never seen this before? Mine is flat on the back. Is it a LP? if not then my appologies for being dumb :- Those guitars are way too big to be Les Pauls. They look like Casino's or a Dot, They look big. The headstock in black defiantly is not a Les Paul. It's an Emperor http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Depiphone%2Bemperer%26ei%3Dutf-8%26y%3DSearch%26fr%3Datt-portal&w=394&h=500&imgurl=farm3.static.flickr.com%2F2144%2F1792048333_8003924912.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fmikeskliar%2F1792048333%2F&size=183k&name=epiphone+headsto...&p=epiphone+emperer&oid=463dfacd9d1af354&fr2=&spell_query=epiphone+emperor&fusr=msnyc111&no=11&tt=4603&sigr=11jki6pa2&sigi=11mip1d2l&sigb=12vlpfo26 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midiman56 Posted May 7, 2010 Share Posted May 7, 2010 Hey, Suek ... See that little red "X" in the box at the bottom of the post? That represents a missing image that the original poster was probably referring to. Then again, it could all be a question of scale ... them Chinese gals are pretty darn small! Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prof_87 Posted May 7, 2010 Share Posted May 7, 2010 Those photos make me want to burn my Epi. I wish I had never seen them! :- Why would you say that about your EPI? Johnny Ashburn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Buffalo Posted May 8, 2010 Share Posted May 8, 2010 Block inays on a dot?Hilarious.... Strange' date=' but true: [img'][/img] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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