Epiphone SG Special - Heritage Cherry Reviews

This is a very nice guitar for the money, and in general. I had a late 90's G-400 and I was never too impressed with it, mainly terrible pickups. This came set up beautifully, perfect fretwork, and Epiphone really worked to improve their pickups and it shows. The pickups are hot but not muddy. Great service from Sweetwater also as usual. Imo the killpot is a gimmick but the switch is of good quality/feel. Beautiful guitar.

came in perfect condition, tuned to perfect,even came with candy!I couldn't of asked for any better

it plays awesome , very happy with my purchase !

Thank you for the nice email! Just so you know how important word of mouth & social media are, one of my co-workers told me about his positive experience which in turn made me want to get the similar value & service as well. I received my new Epiphone SG Electric guitar which I'm very happy with. This was a Father's Day Gift that I will use and enjoy very much. My oldest Son has a Mini Fender that I purchased for him last year and now we can jam together. And yes you've most certainly earned my future business. And everyone that I spoke to over the phone were very professional, knowledgable, courteous, patient & above all respectful. All of the above that I mentioned will always go along way in any business. Continue the above and it will always strive.

Again thank you all for the great experience. Talk to you all later!

And Happy Father's Day to you all!

I owned a 1968 Gibson SG for many years and this is a much better instrument. It played great right from the start with virtually no setup required. The action is great, you can play every fret, and the intonation is uniform across the board. I bought this for a student (14 yo) and its size is perfect for somebody with this need, since the scale is slightly smaller than a standard. I cannot believe a value like this. I'm not about to give up my American Custom Strat, but this could easily be my 2nd guitar.

For this review, I'm not going to rant about the experience of buying the instrument (I got it for a discount at Guitar Center, and I'm never buying a guitar there again.) This is just about the instrument.

I had played an earlier version of this guitar years ago. It was the black version without the pickguard. I liked the sound, and for the most part the feel as well, but it still looked cheap and the action somewhat reflected that.

Cut back to the present, I have owned Strat-style guitars pretty much exclusively and I really wanted a different design, so I came back to this one. To my delight, Epiphone has revamped this instrument. They made the cherry finish a more stained-into-the-wood sort of color (as opposed to the flat red I had seen earlier), which makes it a surprisingly beautiful guitar. They had also added a pickguard, a more Gibson-esque "SG" truss rod cover, and best of all, an integrated killswitch into the tone pot that is super fun to experiment with. The strings are still slightly high, but nothing very tough to work out. The stock pickups sound great, clean and even with just the right amount of bite and grit. The controls are simple enough, and the tuners do their job just fine. The instrument overall is also now the lightest in my guitar collection.

What is really mind-boggling about this guitar is the value for the price. This instrument has just about everything in a true SG - good pickups, nice neck profile, and a beautiful finish - but at a tiny fraction of the price of a modern Gibson SG Special. I would seriously take this guitar over any modern Gibson SG any day.

I have been playing for 30 years and bought this for my daughter for her first electric. Out of the box amazing! Beginner price but Player quality. Amazingly the neck was sound out of the box, a simple intonation adjustment and finished. The smaller scale neck was perfect for my 14 year old daughter yet was very comfortable for me.

The pickups sound just fine as they are. No sharp fret edges on the neck. Soloing to two step bends possible all over the neck.

As a bonus this guitar also included a Tap Kill Switch on the tone knob. A super excellent buy for just about anyone!

This is my first guitar in my 40 year old life. It sounds great and it's easy to play. For the money it is a great deal, and I highly recommend it to anyone starting out on an electric guitar!

When I took it out of the box, I didn't like it. Had very poor sustain. For $169, i felt safe experimenting. I tightened the screws joining the neck to the body. Slowly. To a point where some screws might snap. And waited three days. And went another half tur. And the sustain is fabulous now. The pickups are good, although it may need something brighter in the neck. I may have just been very lucky, but I can't make my set neck SG sound as good as this guitar. My musician friends say " You fell into one" with this one.

Looks and plays as great as my American Gibson sg...wish I bought this first!

I am new to guitar playing and this guitar is rock solid. feels good. well balanced and the finish and color is awesome.The service at Sweatwater is second to none THANK YOU

I own an American special strat,a Gretsch 5420t,two unique Agile les Pauls,a fender Powercaster ,a fender telecaster,a
Gibson es-335 .This Epiphone sg special is the guitar I play!!!! Light yet well balanced and with the right amp ROCK MACHINE!!!!!
I'm shocked by the HUGE tone the stock 500 k pots the kill switch the GREAT neck and frets I replaced the bridge with a Wilkenson roller and the guitar opened right up WOW is all else I can say!

Great for the sale price. Hope you're good at setting the neck, the intonation and the action. (I am)
Cause you will need to have it done. Once all that nonsense it completed, THEN you can enjoy this wonderful guitar. Personally I'm going to upgrade to a 6-way switch with 4 wired overwound humbuckers and DPDT knobs. . But that's just me, your tastes may vary. Yeh I'd buy another one at THIS price if I could.

Looks great, plays great, too...very comparable to my American sg-special!

I really like my guitar, my 1st Epiphone, I used to have a Gibson and I honestly can't tell the difference. Ephiphone guitars are very well made.

I bought this guitar to practice as a begginer again; to loosen my fingers and get on with chord progression. The action on this is absolutely great, I don't need to be The Hulk to hold down the strings. It looks great and friends of mine, which are advanced players actually rave about this being a starter unit, after they played it. It was delivered on time as promised and the the price didn't put me in the hole ~ Thanks Sweetwater

Beautiful instrument. Fast delivery. Mike Soper and crew nailed the customer service again! Guitar sounds awesome and not a blemish on it!

Well-made. The build quality was higher than expected. For the price, that's impressive. The tuners worry me, but that always happens with guitars at this price point. The kill switch built in to the tone control is a surprisingly useless feature. Every time I go to adjust my tone while playing, I'm killing my signal. Poorly thought-out. But all that is trivial. The real problem here are the pickups. They're muddy, muddy, muddy. Just plain boring and blah and dark and muddy as heck. Even in bridge position, there's not nearly enough treble response. It's great, I suppose, if you want nothing but dark, murky tones. If you're looking for something usable, look elsewhere. There are other guitars at this price point (or slightly higher) that don't suffer from this problem. Good build, lousy sound. Replace the pickups and all the electronics with something half-decent, and you'd have a very nice little SG. As it is, not so much.

This is not a bad guitar for the price, very cheap. I got it for my son, who has gone out and pawned or sold 3 Fenders that I gave him at different times. If this one goes, it's not a big loss. I don't get the kill switch because it only shuts off the signal when you hold it down. It would be useful if you could push the pot down and it would stay silent until you pushed it again. You asked.