Epiphone Emperor II Hollowbody Guitars

I am writing this because it would be unfortunate if anyone failed to give a serious look at this guitar based on the other review. The Joe Pass is probably the most widely-recommended inexpensive archtop jazz box made. The reason for that is that it provides terrific bang for the buck to the beginning jazz musician.

If you are not a jazz musician, this guitar makes no sense for you to purchase. However, if you are looking for the Joe Pass (or Jim Hall, or Kenny Burrell, or ...) sound, you can get it with this box once you develop the chops. There are other laminated archtops that are worth considering, too. A list of the main ones can be found in the rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz FAQ, available here:
http://users.wpi.edu/~kgh/rmmgjFAQ.html

One thing worth emphasizing is that this is a laminated archtop -- the sides and back are laminated maple and the top is laminated spruce. Virtually all archtops that list for less than $2000 will be laminates. A laminated guitar lacks the rich acoustic sound of a solid spruce top, but it's a lot less trouble to maintain. Laminates are not particularly touchy about humidity, for example, and do not need to be kept in controlled environments. Moving up to a solid top guitar involves a huge increase in commitment to the care and feeding of your instrument, in return for a relatively modest improvement in sound. For any but the very serious and accomplished musician, a solid top is probably more trouble than it's worth -- and you risk destroying a fine instrument if you do not give it the care it requires.

On the down side, laminates will exhibit a fair amount of variation in tonal quality from instrument to instrument. You need to play the particular guitar that you will be purchasing to know with confidence what it will sound like. On the other hand, laminates don't change much with age. So, unlike a good solid top guitar, a laminate will sound just about the same after years of playing that it does now. Of course, unlike a laminate, with a properly-maintained solid top the sound becomes richer and more nuanced with age.

If you will be purchasing your guitar from your local music store, you can try it out and decide for yourself whether you like the particular instrument you might purchase. The only "gotcha" with a Joe Pass on this is in the bridge: the Joe Pass has a floating bridge, which means that it is not attached to the top fo the guitar. If your local music store is one of those junk "megastores," they probably won't bother setting up the floor models. In that case, the intonation will almost assuredly be off on the Joe Pass. My advice is to refuse to do business with any store that doesn't set up its floor model guitars -- you can save a lot of money by ordering through the internet, and any store that doesn't set their floor stock up for you is providing no more service than Musician's Friend -- they're just charging you more money.

Another word on the floating bridge: the Joe Pass comes with a solid wood bridge that some folks love. It supposedly sounds warmer than a tune-o-matic to some people. On the other hand, because it is a solid piece of wood, it does not allow your luthier to fully adjust the intonation. The final intonation will be a compromise to get all six strings close to properly intoned. The difference is slight, and some folks will never notice that it isn't precise. This is espeially true if you tend not to play above the sixth or seventh fret. But it is audible if you use the entire fret board. You can replace the bridge with a floating tune-o-matic from StewMac for about $20 if you so desire.

Another word on the floating bridge: I made a small mark on the opposite corners of the properly-intoned bridge using a brown colored fine-tipped marker (my Joe Pass is a tobacco finish). This allows for realignment of the bridge if you remove all the strings for cleaning the fretboard without having to pay someone with a stroboscopic tuner to set it back up.

A final word on set up: make sure that you have it intoned using the strings you normally play with. There is a difference in the tune-o-matic adjustment between a medium round string and a medium flat-wound, for example. So there's not much point in replacing the bridge and then changing the string type unles you get it realigned.

Now, if you really want to get a good deal on a Joe Pass, you'll want to buy it used from e-Bay. But, given the variation in laminates, how can you do that with any confidence at all? Well, it turns out that the biggest source of variation in the Joe Pass models is traceable to who made them. Originally, Epiphone had Samick make all their Joe Pass guitars. As the guitar became increasingly popular, they added other Korean manufacturers, and finally, Indonesian factories. The general rule of thumb is that the Joe Pass guitars made by Samick are of uniformly high quality; the other Korean manufuacturers less so; and the Indonesian factories are truly awful as a rule. You can tell which is which by the serial number on the guitar. All serial numbers that begin with "S" were manufactured by Samick; those that start with "U" were made in Korea by another company; and those starting in "I" were made in Indonesia. If you wish to bid on an e-Bay guitar, make sure that the serial number starts with "S" and you will probably get a decent Joe Pass, assuming that it has not been abused by the owner. If you order through Musician's Friend or Music 1-2-3, I don't know how you'll be able to find out before-hand what you'll be getting.

The cheapest thing on the Joe Pass is the three-way switch for selecting between the bridge and neck pups. You might consider just having the luthier swap it out with a decent one when he's doing your set-up. It should add very little to the cost of the set-up to have it done then. Otherwise, you'll need to get it replaced in a couple of years -- after it fails on you during a performance!

One last word: if you are concerned about resale value of the guitar, get a natural finish. That is the most sought-after finish on the Joe Pass models. The least desired is the cherry sunburst.

All in all, this is a great guitar for the money if you are interested in developing your jazz skills. By the time you outgrow this box, you'll be ready for the big time.