Epiphone guitars at Eagle Music Shop

Epiphone

The Epiphone foundation stone was set in 1873 by Anastasios Stathopoulo A Greek violin and lute maker.The New York company incorporated in 1923 and concentrated on high quality banjos. The Epiphone line was named after Epi Stathopoulo one of the founders sons. In 1928 the companies name was changed to The Epiphone Banjo Corporation.Epiphone was best known throughout the 1920's for it's line of highly ornamented Recording banjos.

The company became highly successful as a guitar manufacturer in the 1930's when it changed it's emphasis from banjos. Epiphone was virtually the only company to make this successful switch. The C G Conn company aquired Epiphone in 1953 and moved production in part to Philadelphia. The Stathopoulo regained control in 1955. The Chicago musical instrument company, which owned Gibson, acquired Epiphone by 1957, published a brochure in 1958, and began shipping Epiphones from it's Kalamazoo Michigan plant in 1959.

These instruments are commonly referred to as 'Gibson-Epiphones'. The Norlin company purchased CMI (Gibson) in 1969 and by 1970 Gibson had moved production of all Epiphone models to Japan and then later to Korea. Modern Epiphone models still have the classic design features and style of the original models, but with price tags much lesser than their USA cousins. All models are backed up by the Gibson company name.