Epiphone Hummingbird

As I promised last week here are the my thoughts on the Epiphone Hummingbirds. As you all know Epiphone is Gibson's ugly step sister. Well that's really not fair because Epiphone does make some very sweet and most importantly affordable guitars. The Epiphone Hummingbirds come in the same two varieties as the Gibsons (Hummingbird and Hummingbird Artist). Neither of these has a built in pickup so you can plug them in.

Here's a side-by-side view of both models:

Here's what I think:

Looks:

The first thing I have to say is the pickguards on these things look terrible. I said last week I wasn't crazy about the hummingbird and butterfly etching. The pickguards on the Epiphones are so thin you can see the rosette inlay right through them. I can't imagine that is by design because the inlays on these leave much to be desired.

Finish:

The the sunburst on the Epiphone looks pretty bad in these pictures but believe me it is even worse in person. Very cheap looking. The tabaco burst finish on the Epi Artist looks better but the actual up close finish on both of these is not great. The materials also seemed low end too. Not totally sure what tone woods are used on this one but I wasn't impressed.

Action/Playability:

Believe it or not the action on the two Epiphones I played was slightly better than on the Gibsons. However the necks just didn't feel right and I didn't enjoy playing these all that much.

Sound:

Well I was so blown away by the sound of the Gibsons I talked about last week it would be hard for any of these to top that and they didn't. Maybe it was the low end tone woods or just the construction of the guitar itself.

Price Tag:

Here is the one place the Epiphones blow away the Gibsons! You can drop a zero from the end of the Gibson prices.

$350 (Hummingbird) / $300 (Hummingbird Artist)

Pro's:

Price. Although for $300 - $350 there are a lot of other choices out there but if you have to have a Hummingbird on a budget here you go!

Con's:

Everything except the price.

Thanks for reading. I still do not have a ton of requests so if you want me to find out more about a particular guitar let me know so I can find one to try out.

ez8