Epiphone B. B. King Lucille Electric Guitar

The Gibson/Epiphone B.B. King Lucille guitar is a based on a legendary blues icon in America. B.B. King has the ability to speak to audiences all over the world with his customized "Lucille" guitar. Epiphone has faithfully re-created this guitar at a very reasonable price.

The Lucille is a semi-hollow body guitar but is unique in many ways. First off, it does not have the traditional f-holes. the body is still semi-hollow but without the f-holes the sound is very muted when not amplified. The plus of no f-holes however, is two fold. First, it makes the tone when amplified very unique. Second, it is much more durable.

The next unique thing about the Lucille is the vari-tone circuitry. Most guitars have volume and tone control knobs and a switch that changes between the neck pickup (one closest to top of guitar) and the bridge pickup (one closest to bottom). The Lucille has those but also a rotating 6-position switch called the vari-tone circuit. It acts like a built in effects box in that each setting gives the guitar a different sound. Some are smooth and designed for jazz players. Others are overdriven and suitable for rock style music. Others give a twang traditionally used in country music.

The final unique hardware on the Lucille is a micro-adjustable bridge. Instead of doing the traditional fine adjustment using the tuning keys, there are 6 knurled knobs on the bridge of the guitar for fine tuning each string. As the knobs are turned, the pitch of the string is adjusted with a very high degree of accuracy allowing perfect pitch. Mr. King preferred this method and I do also. It makes tuning a guitar very accurate and easy.

The Lucille is clearly a unique guitar but it is also beautiful to look at. It features a high-gloss ebony finish and all gold hardware. It has mother of pearl inlays on the fretboard and the word Lucille on the headstock. It also features a gold plated truss rod cover with B.B. King in very tastefully done script letters.

Construction of the Lucille is laminated maple and my example was very well constructed. Finish was almost flawless and the fit and finish of the wood was very good. The set neck was perfectly seated and all binding looked nice and clean with no rounded edges or finish overruns.

All in all, the Lucille is a unique guitar with a warm yet versatile sound all its own. It is one of the more expensive guitars in the Epiphone line but worth every penny.

Edited to add more details about how the guitar plays:

Regarding questions about how the guitar played and sounded: First I must say I am no B. B. King. So I can not even try to copy his beautiful tone. The man is a musical genius and if you have heard him play you will know what I mean. He can literally make his guitar talk to the audience. I can say this though the varitone circuit did its job of changing the tone from clean smooth jazz flavor all the way to a cutting overdriven tone. To really understand what it does, you would have to hear one which I would encourage readers to do whether they want to buy it or not. It is just a fun guitar to play. But again, play it thru a vintage tube amp to get the full impact of what it can do.

As for play, the action was not quite equal to a Gibson. It was both higher and the frets were not perfectly uniform all the way up the neck. It was pretty good right out of the box but I wanted it to be just like the Gibson so I took it to my local guitar repair shop and had them do a fret level and polish. For less than $100, the guitar action was lowered and the frets evened up and polished. Afterwords, it felt very close to the Gibson. So even after spending the money on fret work, it was still a tremendous bargain compared to the Gibson. I'd say if you can afford the Gibson, go with that one. If you can't, the Epiphone will get you close and with a bit of work, will play like the Gibson.