SG Special Electric Guitar, Cherry

Great experience. So far Love Love this guitar!

Great value for a guitar. And you can live your AC/DC dreams on a budget! It arrived on time and in good condition. Be prepared to make some adjustments to the instrument. Here is a list of the things the guitar needed when it arrived: Intonation: The intonation was off on four strings. Very easy fix if you own a tuner and a small screwdriver. Truss Rod: The truss rod was completely loose, I had to turn it a full turn before it "caught". Then another 1/4 turn to get it just a hair off dead straight. String Action: The strings were a full 1/8" upon arrival, the truss rod adjustment got it down to 3/32", and I had to lower the bridge to 1/16". Once at the proper height, there was no string buzz at any point on the neck. Pickups: The pickups were a little high, which caused the guitar to sound harsh and muddy. After adjustment to Gibson factory specs it was much better. The pickups seem very "hot", so you may want to lower them below Gibson specs. Tuning: Tuning was off, which is to be expected. The frets were very shiny and smooth. No rough ends. There is one spot in the finish, like a speck of sand under the clear coat. It's a little bump, but only visible if the light catches it just right. The guitar is very thin, light, and comfortable to play. The tuning machines are the cheap parallelogram-shaped ones, but they get the job done and I see no reason to change them. The volume and tone knobs are very responsive. The Kill-Pot is really cool, but not something I will probably ever use. I've been very impressed with the Epiphone "Special" models. I own a Les Paul Special II, and Special I P-90 as well. They are fun guitars to play. Do not be discouraged by the price. Neither should you be afraid of the bolt-on neck. It's a cost-cutting measure that you won't find on high-end Gibsons, but Fender has been doing that way since the 1950's. These are great playing guitars with an iconic look and a sound all their own. So, go ahead and get your "Angus" on!

The finish was excellent, the frets pretty smooth and the fret ends rounded pretty well. You could file down more if you are a stickler for that, but it doesn't affect my playing at all. The setup was good out of the box. Relief was correct, and intonation was pretty good, but not perfect. Action is good for most styles of playing, although you could set it lower. I wanted a bolt on neck so I can tear it down and put it in a suitcase. I was worried it would wreck the setup, but the neck joint is cut precisely, and it went back in place without losing anything, except I had to set the bridge height. I'm not saying anything about tone, because I'm only played on a cheap practice amp. I think it's a great guitar for beginner or intermediate. Granted, from the reviews not everyone has been as lucky as me in terms of setup and quality. I've had this guitar about a year.

Be forewarned: with some work this is a great guitar. The kill switch on the tone pot went bad very quickly because it is garbage, forcing me to change the pot with a good 500 meg pot. Figuring out how to rewire it was a pain in the ass. Also, the guitar has a mahogany veneer over what may be a poplar body. You can't trust the product descriptions on Amazon because the sellers often lie and Amazon lets them get away with deceiving the customer. Had I known a solid mahogany body was available for $80.00 more, I would have bought it. I decided to buy an SG, mostly for sentimental reasons, because the SG was the first guitar I ever played. I was about 12 or 13 years old at a neighbor's house who owned the guitar. I think the only song he knew was "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones. When I held the guitar in my hands I was in a state of awe as I had never held a guitar before. After a few moments of fumbling around, as if by magic I actually began to play some lead guitar that was probably rudimentary, but musically coherent melody. Similar experiences have happened throughout my life, when for brief moments I was able to do the impossible, as though a transmission directly from my unconscious to my conscious mind. My neighbor-friend was in a state of shock because he had never been able to play lead guitar and I who had never even tried to play guitar before was actually playing. After a couple minutes, he demanded I return to guitar to him out of jealousy and fear and never let me play it again. He had turned me on to Black Sabbath which I loved and went out and bought "Paranoid" and "Volume 4". I did not actually begin to learn how to play until several years later, when my uncle gave me a garbage Japanese acoustic guitar that could not be tuned because the bridge was ripping off the face of the guitar. I developed a love and passion for the guitar, especially after hearing Jimi Hendrix several years later, so my guitar obsession naturally shifted to the Stratocaster. Here I am, more than half a century later and my love of the instrument has only grown. I currently have a collection of 27 guitars of all types and makes and this Epiphone SG is the latest addition to the collection. I was not expecting much from a cheap guitar, but figured that it would be a good instrument to modify and transform to a first class instrument, as I have done with many guitars and basses. When I opened the box I was not disappointed and although it felt cheap and light (6.2) Lbs, and likely neither mahogany or alder as advertised the fit, finish and color is over all, excellent which is common for cnc manufactured instruments which virtually eliminate human error. After tuning, I plugged the cable in to my 2 amp system my pedal board divided with 2 independent pedal chains dedicated to each amp, I was pleasantly surprised. It felt great and sounded as good as it looks, I decided that I am not going to change the pickups because they sound great. As I expected, with all cheap guitars, the tuners are absolute garbage which I will change and will make a few other modifications (I bought a roller bridge for under $13.00 delivered from ebay and quality Chinese made locking tuners from Amazon), I am going to make a custom nut out of a brass rod and modify the kill switch on the tone pot to eliminate the excessive noise and replace the plastic fret markers with abalone. Eventually I may change the pots and tone capacitor, but am leaving them for now, because: "if it ain't broke. don't fix it". Its kind of amusing how as much as things change on some fundamental level they remain the same. As my musical tastes matured and expanded far beyond rock and classical music, to Jazz, Flamenco, Indian, Arab, African, Japanese, Chinese and every form and idiom imaginable, I recently returned to listen to Black Sabbath who I had dismissed decades ago as adolescent and irrelevant only to remember why I loved them in the first place and realized exactly how great a guitarist Tony Iomi is and his contribution to rock as one of the originals. While I hate heavy metal, I love Tony's playing. Derek Trucks, the great Slide Player of the Allman Brothers was part of my desire for an SG style guitar and I can tell you that while I would have preferred real mahogany, I am really glad I bought this guitar because cheap or not, it is a great guitar that is fantastic for slide.

Beautiful and light weight

I was very impressed with the quality, finish and playability of this guitar. I've been playing for 30 years and own about a dozen electric guitars of various makes across a wide range of prices. I wanted to get an SG to play some classic rock and have fun with. I didn't expect much for the price, but I tried this guitar and the G400 Pro and honestly preferred the feel of this one. The guitar came boxed with an inner box to protect it during shipping. Although playability out of the box was fairly good, I had to perform a setup to get the guitar exactly as I wanted. I removed the strings, rubbed down and oiled the fingerboard, then strung it with D'Addario 10-46 nickel wounds. The truss rod required a quarter turn adjustment to get the neck profile straight. The intonation and action were pretty much perfect out of the box. I just raised the action a tiny bit to make it more in line with my other instruments. The pickups are a bit darker than a traditional SG and while they sound great heavily overdriven, the clean sound is a bit lacking in character. After a week or so of playing, I replaced the pickups with a set I bought from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009A5JA98/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 These pickups are amazing value for money and sound fabulous. However the pickup frame was larger than the original stock pickups so I had to rout the body slightly to get the new pickups to fit. This was a simple operation which only took me 10 minutes to do with the Dremel. After a bit of work, this guitar now looks, plays and sounds like a professional instrument. It's rapidly becoming my favorite guitar to jam with. I love it!

Great entry-level guitar from Gibson (they own Epiphone). Beautiful tone and pitch. Love the Gibson famous double humbucker pickups found on Les Pauls and SGs. At entry-level, you only get the volume and tone knobs, but a decent amp and fx pedal will fix that. Bought it for my son, but he plays his Ibanez more, so I've been playing it more.

This was my very first electric guitar. I purchased it in 2019 and was more then good enough for a beginner like me at the time. Highly recommend for the price

What a fabulous guitar for the money! WOW! I was so surprised. I've been trying to get an SG (Gibson) for ages, but they're hard to get in the UAE (at least for a reasonable price). I bought this budget guitar to expressly upgrade the electronics to top tier, so take a Epiphone and turn it into a Gibson+ version with minimal effort. What impressed me so much about this guitar is it's setup. The neck is great, very similar to my Les Paul, but well aligned. Playability/action is wonderful! Strings are super well aligned with the frets all the way down to 22, with no fret buzz playing open. My review isn't fair (dropping a star because of the electrics), because I played once with the provided pickups, before replacing them with Seymour Duncan JB and Jazz set of humbuckers, and wow am I happy. Other than replacing the pickups, nothing done and this guitar is amazing! It shreds, produces incredibly warm tones and is super versatile. With 10 strings (instead of normal 9's) this guitar is great value.

Very good guitar...versatile...a must buy

Achetée pour apprendre la guitare et la coupler avec le jeu rocksmith 2014, cette guitare est juste superbe. Très bien finie, ultra simple et équilibrée, elle délivre un son qui me convient tout à fait. il y a deux micros et un interrupteur à trois positions. bref une guitare électrique idéale pour un débutant qui ne veut pas racheter rapidement une autre guitare

Bought as “Used Like New". Arrived quickly. Item is in brand new condition including all accessories, manuals etc which were in new from factory condition. In other words, the item was brand new. I can only echo most of the other comments on here and say it is fantastic value for money. The finish is stunning, and it plays great straight out of the box after a little tweak, I have lowered the action by adjusting the bridge screws. Intonation is spot on, no adjustment necessary. Doesn't have quite the same sustain as more expensive Epiphone SG and Gibson models, probably because of the bolt on neck but that's about all the notable difference there is. The 'killpot' feature is great fun although musically probably pretty useless. For the price I got it for (£106.00), should it have been no good as a serious musical instrument, it still would have been worth buying to put up on the wall.

Sono arrivato a questa chitarra per caso e l'ho comprata per curiosità. Per il prezzo è un prodotto ottimo. Rifinita benissimo con materiali solidi. Il colore è bellissimo. Per quanto riguarda il suono è molto potente e grintoso. Confrontato con altre solid body con humbucker in mio possesso questa urla e graffia molto di più. Probabilmente diventerà una mia prima scelta per i live. A confronto di chitarre molto molto più costose questa fa il suo lavoro. È una chitarra per chi vuole un look retro ma soprattutto un suono potente, pieno e un po' sgraziato. Non l'ho provata con i puliti ma credo che non sia quello il suo compito. Ah, dimenticavo, il Killpot è una figura assoluta!