Epiphone Casino Review

Great P90 Tones in a Hollowbody Guitar

I bought a used Epiphone Casino off Craigslist for $425. It came in excellent shape and after checking the serial number found out it was made the Pearless Plant in Korea - one of the better plants that made these guitars. I took it in to get a set up done (the previous owner hadn't had it set up in over 8 years!!) and I also decided to replace the trapeze bridge with a Bigsby B70.

After some nut sauce at the nut, the Bigsby works great - no tuning problems at all. Although I would consider replacing the tuners with higher quality ones. I'm also considering adding some Lindy Fralin P90s in the guitar. I'm essentially trying to slowly rebuild the guitar with better parts over time.

The sound of the stock pickups are good - a really soft P90 tone that's pretty jazzy in the neck pickup. The bridge, with the tone full up, gets enough a cut to do lead work. Where the guitar really excels it with a bit of dirt on the bridge pickup - a great blues tone. Because the guitar is a true hollowbody it does feedback very easily. But this isn't a bad thing at all. You just have to let a note or a chord ring and you're in feedback heaven. My only hope would be to get a slightly high tone set of P90s in the guitar as I find myself rarely using the neck pickup when playing with the band.

Overall I'd definitely recommend this guitar for the price - new or used. Their well-made guitars that are really nice to play. Make sure you try it out first because it does have a fairly soft tone when played clean.