It's been a very good year for Epiphone with its Inspired By Gibson electric guitar models, including the imminent 1959 Les Paul Standard and a batch of leaked guitars. Now after their preview at NAMM, it's breaking out with its own distinctively contemporary take on classic guitar blueprints with the new Prophecy Series; a Les Paul, Flying V, SG and… an Extura?!
We'll get to that. Epiphone Prophecy models have surfaced before but this is the first time they've had a whole series. All these models share core specs of active Fishman Fluence pickups that have been designed with BurstBucker voicings – so very much an Epiphone / Gibson spin on the Fluence.
The pickups offer three distinct modes; the BurstBucker's "a warm Patent Applied For vintage humbucker", a hot modern active humbucker sound, and a shimmering, hum-free, slightly overwound single-coil sound". These diverse tones are all accessed by push/pull volume and tone pots.
Hardware is good news too; Grover locking Rotomatic tuners, Epiphone LockTone Tune-O-Matic, a Graph Tech NuBone nut (a nut that we wish most guitars would ship with as standard nowadays).
The deal is sweetened further by custom binding, ebony fretboard, jumbo frets, weight relief, and an asymmetrical SlimTaper neck. They featured craved heel joints too for improved access – though you don't really need it on the SG.
All the models are 24-fretters too.
Satin finish (ooh we love a satin finish) options for the AAA figured maple tops are Red Tiger Aged Gloss and Olive Tiger Aged Gloss, or plain top in Black Aged Gloss. Parts of the inlays are even matched to the individuals finishes. Nice!
All models are $899 / £799 and available now.
So if you're looking for a modern slant on classic Gibson designs, with specs that are easily Gibson-worthy, and arguably above, this is potentially a very strong showing for Epiphone. But one question remains for us…
Why the new 'Extura' and not an Explorer model? It's basically an Explorer with the narrower waist and deeper cutaway of the Gibson Futura. Simple as that.
For more info, visit epiphone.com
