“I’m still playing my original 1984 guitar on the Oasis 2025 tour, and I wouldn’t have it any other way”: Epiphone goes 'madferit' as it rolls out signature semi-hollows for Oasis's Bonehead and Gem Archer

Just hours after Gibson unveiled the Noel Gallagher Les Paul Standard, a production line US-built version of the Oasis icon’s P-90 equipped Custom Shop model – y’know, the most talked about guitar of 2025 – Epiphone anted up with signature guitars for Gallagher’s six-string lieutenants, Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs and Gem Archer.

Longtime Oasis fans will recognise Bonehead’s Riviera. Finished in Dark Tobacco Sunburst, with that ‘burst beautifully applied to the neck, this Epiphone guitar is a replica of his mid ‘80s semi-hollow that Bonehead wielded in the early days. He tracked their debut album Definitely Maybe with it. He toured with it. And the Riviera survived all the way to this day.

“Epiphone Rivieras have been with me from the early rehearsals at the Boardwalk in Manchester all the way up to those historic shows at Knebworth and on into Liam’s solo career,” says Bonehead. “I’m still playing my original 1984 guitar on the Oasis 2025 tour, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m excited to bring this new guitar to audiences who experienced it back in the day, as well as those coming out to see us on this tour. It plays great and sounds massive; you’re gonna love it.”

If it is as good as the Noel Gallagher Riviera, that goes without saying. Gem Archer’s Masterbilt Sheraton has a Noel connection, too. When Archer joined Oasis in 1999, replacing the outgoing Bonehead, it was Noel who turned him onto the Sheraton.

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“The Epiphone Sheraton first came into my world when I borrowed Noel’s for Oasis tours and recording,” says Archer. “When I started playing with him again in the High Flying Birds in 2017, this was the guitar I asked if he still had.

“I’m playing it again together with my signature model based on his ’66 original, on the Oasis Live ’25 tour. It’s got a ring and a clang to it, with loads of definition and clarity that I haven’t found in any other model.”

That “ring and clang” could be attributed to its Masterbilt treatment. Of the two new Oasis semi-hollows, this is the more upscale.

Conforming to the Inspired By Gibson Custom design idiom, it features a pair of Gibson USA mini-humbuckers, gold hardware, with Grover Rotomatic tuners. There’s multi-ply binding to the body, a bound fretboard and headstock – and just look at that raised diamond trapeze tailpiece (the bound tortoiseshell pickguard is not bad either).

The Sheraton is a five-ply build of maple and poplar, with a maple centre block, with a 60s C profile mahogany neck glued to the body and topped with a 12” radius rosewood fingerboard. Again, it’s aesthetically audacious with those MOP block inlays with triangular abalone inserts. You’d want to make sure your shoes are nicely polished when playing this one.

And yet the Bonehead Riviera is a stunner in anyone’s books. Again, it has a five-ply construction (all maple this time) with a maple centre block, and the spec is pretty much on-point as far as 2025 Epiphones go.

You have a pair of Epiphone’s full-fat Alnico Classic Pro humbuckers, controlled by dual-volume and tone controls, CTS pots as standard. The neck is glued-in and a three-piece maple design fashioned into a SlimTaper C (we’d expect this to be very similar in feel to Archer’s Sheraton).

The white pickguard with the Epiphone foil logo “E” looks really cool against that dark burst finish. And both guitars keep the signature details to a minimum, with just a graphic signature on the back of the headstocks.

That was one of the things we liked about the Noel Gallagher Les Paul Standard; you needn’t have been an Oasis fan to see the appeal of an Ebony Les Paul with that chrome switch washer and chrome covered P-90s.

It’s a rock ’n’ roll machine, and although it might not have had the ageing as the Murphy Lab replicas to come out of the Custom Shop, it has the nitrocellulose lacquer finish that should age nicely itself.

You can put the ageing on that hardware through playing it hard, and the best bit is that it is priced similarly to the current Les Paul Standards.

You can take it as read that the people of Gibson/Epiphone are chuffed to bits to get not one but three Oasis signature models out in the year of the band’s reunion. Lee Bartram, Gibson’s head of commercial and marketing EMEA, certainly is, and he has some personal memories of seeing the original versions of these electric guitars the first time around.

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“The first time I remember seeing Gem playing that Cherry Red Epiphone Sheraton was on July 2, 2005, in Manchester – what a show!” says Bartram. “Gem was such an important part of the Oasis sound in the 2000s, and to see him carry that on with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds makes it a privilege to be part of this project.

“Spotting that Epiphone Riviera on stage during the Be Here Now tour in 1996 is something that stuck with me and inspired me to get my first Epiphone guitar. Nearly 30 years later, I’m honoured to have played a tiny part in bringing the Epiphone Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs Riviera to life.”

All three Gibson and Epiphone signature guitars come with a hardshell guitar case. The Bonhead Riviera is priced £849/$899. The Gem Archer Masterbilt Sheraton is £1,199/$1,299. See Epiphone for more details.

Noel Gallagher’s Les Paul Standard comes in at £2,699/$2,699. You can read more about it here and see more over at Gibson.