The Week In Guitar: Epiphone headstock shake-up and a $1.27 million SG
It’s been a busy week in guitar culture, but here are the most notable news stories, trends and weird stuff we’ve seen over the last seven days.
Image: Gibson Brands
Welcome to the Week In Guitar! Your rundown over the last seven days of guitar culture. This week: some BIG Epiphone news, and a very, very pricey SG.
Some Epiphones will have the Gibson headstock going forward
If you ever want to sound truly insane, try explaining to someone who doesn’t play guitar why the headstock thing is such a big deal. But, well, we all know it is. Long have Epiphone Les Pauls, SGs and so on been relegated to being immediately recognisable as more affordable, thanks to the non-Gibson headstock. Long have players called for change. Those calls have been answered – sort of.
It won’t be every Epiphone that’ll get the open-book treatment. The first will be the its recreation of Greeny – the 1959 Les Paul once owned by Peter Green, currently owned by Kirk Hammett. In a statement about the launch, Gibson’s product VP Mat Koehler said: “forthcoming Inspired by Gibson Custom Shop-level Epiphone models will also feature the open-book Gibson headstock shape.” So it’s likely you’ll be paying a premium for that headstock, but as a bonus, the guitars Epiphone has been making at that level have started to come with some serious specs.
Gibson has, of course, been famously protective of its headstock shape. But maybe this move reflects a change in attitude? After all, a mild concession was made in 2020 when the Inspired By… range was given the slightly-more-Gibsony Kalamazoo headstock design.
New guitars with Gibson on the headstock are steadily creeping up in price, too. Best of luck finding one for less than a grand outside of Black Friday (have we mentioned its Black Friday? It’s Black Friday! Head to our hub for the best savings on all your guitar gear). So it’s possible the higher-end Epiphones – replete with the “right” headstocks – are being primed to slip into that mid-priced niche instead. But only time will tell.
Eric Clapton’s The Fool SG sells for $1.27 million at auction
Speaking of pricey guitars: Eric Clapton’s The Fool SG. Last week at Julien’s Auctions it fetched a whopping $1.27 million, the first of his guitars to cross the seven-figure mark.
Hailing from Clapton’s Cream days, the guitar made its debut as the band played their first show in the United States on 25 March 1967 at the RKO Theatre on 58th Street, Manhattan. Clapton used the guitar for most of Cream’s recordings after Fresh Cream, particularly on Disraeli Gears, until the band broke up in 1968. Its name comes from the Dutch art collective that gave it its psychedelic paint job – one of the most iconic examples of that era’s technicolour style.
Quick Riffs
- Kiko Loureiro extends his break from Megadeth
- Dolly Parton teams up with Måneskin for revamped version of Jolene
- It’s Black Friday today!
Quote Of The Week
“You need another guitar”
This is one of those quotes that’s made substantially better by context. “You need another guitar” on its own is, well, self-evident. But when it’s Johnny Marr giving Noel Gallagher some ‘constructive criticism’ because he was taking too long in between songs? That’s different.
The Encore
Just three pedal fans in a room, talking pedals – EQD superfan Max Reff headed down to Akron, Ohio for a special episode of This Old Bench. The show examines some highlights from his 75-strong collection, which is more than just 75 EQD pedals – there’s plenty of rarities, one-offs and even a production mistake, which Jamie Stillman is clearly totally not a little bitter about…