Epiphone G-400 Review - Great Guitar, Great Price!

By R. S. Rasnick

The Gibson SG doesn't have the comparable iconic history as the Les Paul or the Stratocaster, but it's still a mighty rock and roll image. Angus Young of AC/DC can show to that.

Many guitar players, from rock to blues to jazz, have played the Gibson SG at one time or another. While the Gibson SG is a powerful instrument and surely worth the purchase price, not everyone can fork out the $1,200 it costs for a brand new Gibson SG. Fortunately, Epiphone makes an affordable SG-style guitar, the G-400.

Since the Epiphone G-400 is plainly more inexpensive, we have to determine how well it "stacks up" to its big brother, the Gibson SG.

We have no niggles with respect to the cherry finish, which is just plain beautiful and looks great on the instrument's mahogany body. The SG shape itself is faultless. If it weren't for the name on the headstock, the guitar would be a dead ringer for a Gibson SG.

The mother-of-pearl inlays are wonderfully done, though we did discover some small traces of glue residue near the edges. Likewise, we noticed some minute traces of glue holding the neck joint in place, but these squabbles aside, we found the construction quality to be really well done.

The instrument stayed in tune really well, and we are able to set the guitar's action extremely low. The intonation was dead on and easy to set; nonetheless, we thought the bridge saddles were just a touch too sharp when we rested our hand on the bridge. Still, this is a minor complaint.

The guitar plays well, suitable for pretty much any style of music. We did notice a a couple of buzzes and rattles here and there, but we did set the action moderately low, and we didn't observe any of these sounds through an amplifier.

Even unplugged, the G-400 has a superb, vibrant sound. It's a very alive instrument, which is welcome seeing how lightweight the guitar is.

The positive characteristics are only heightened by plugging the instrument into our test amp, a Dr. Z MAZ-18 NR. The G-400 pickups provided a well balanced but not terribly aggressive sound.

All three pickup positions yielded quality sounds useful for just about every style under the sun. When we auditioned the G-400 out with some highly distorted sounds (using some high gain pedals), it sounded a little muddy to us, but that's likely because of the warm-sounding mahogany body.

If you plan to gig with the G-400 in a metal or shred setting, a change of pickups might be needed.

In The End, we think the Epiphone G-400 is a wonderful guitar for people looking for classic rock, blues, and even hard rock tones, and who don't desire to drop a ton of cash on their purchase. It's a fun instrument with various usable tones and one we highly recommend. - 32370

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