“There’s nothing more you could want from a TV Special” The colour looks wonderful and with its grain-obscuring opaqueness and hint of olive green, the vibe is very much mid- rather than late-50s. You might not expect a modern budget version of a 1950s student model to have much of a ‘wow’ factor, but this £349 guitar has it in spades. Time to take a deeper dive… Les Paul Special Other common features on our Original Collection review guitars include Graph Tech nuts, nickel-plated hardware, vintage-style Epiphone Deluxe tuners with an 18:1 ratio and Indian laurel fretboards with a 12-inch radius. Either way, most people – us included – seem to think it’s a massive improvement. So although the Kalamazoo headstock more closely resembles the classic Gibson outline, it’s actually a historic Epiphone design. That said, the switch for 2020 isn’t such a radical move Epiphones had open-book headstocks long before Gibson acquired the company and in recent years, they’ve continued to be a feature of original Epiphone designs such as the Wildkat.

Such has been the demand, a whole subculture dedicated to Epiphone headstock conversions can be found online.

The strategy is pretty clear Epiphone guitars in the Original Collection will be closer to their forebears than ever before, with vintage-style features and finishes, upgraded electronics with hand-wired CTS potentiometers and in addition, Les Pauls and SGs will benefit from a headstock design Gibson is calling the ‘Kalamazoo’.įor several decades, most Epiphone solidbodies have featured a headstock with the top corners of the ‘open-book’ outline missing, and many players have requested a design closer to the classic Gibson look. Epiphone was next in line for a refresh and Winter NAMM 2020 saw the public debut of a range of new Inspired By Gibson models.

Gibson’s new management demonstrated its willingness to listen and respond to customers last year when the core lineup was updated and split into Original and Modern collections.

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