Description
Whoa..Ted Nugent…there, I said it…Ok so Teddy didn't play an Emperor, but he sure as hell wailed on a Gibson Byrdland…For some of us, this Emperor may be closest that some of us get to owning a guitar in the same vein as a Gibson Byrdland. Say what you want about Ted Nugent, he ruffles some folks, but the man sure can play the guitar.
So, about this guitar we have here.
It's an early '70s Japanese-made Epiphone, made soon after Gibson shunted Epiphone off overseas. Gibson shipped a bunch of things over to Japan in the shuffle, including the blue Epiphone labels...which Japan used and simply printed Made In Japan at the bottom. These ran out or were binned sometime around 1975 putting this blue label Emperor firmly in the 71-75 bracket (serial #'s are kinda non-sensical in this period)
It's been stop tailed at some point but is currently running with the cool as tailpiece. Pickguard is AWOL and the original pickups have been removed and replaced with Dimarzios (we suspect they are Super Distortions owing to the healthy 11k reading). The gold original covers have been put back on the pickups. There is a small finish only crack between the bridge and the naked stop tail studs.
How does it sound..bloody rad, it's definitely got that early John Lee Hooker kinda vibe, it'll kick any good tube amp into submission in such a nice way. The blonde, natural finish and thinline body is rare to see outside of Japan..this well could have been a non-export Japanese market only model.
The first person to play 'Stranglehold' on demo in the shop gets a free pack of strings (While stocks last)
Oh, yeah, I should mention, this guitar is currently strung up with a set of flatwounds.
Made in Japan with a killer serial number of #777311 (feel free to consult your own independent numerologist).
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