Epiphone's Version of the Gibson SG Standard

This super little guitar (12 3/4 inches wide) weighs in at a comfortable 6.80 lbs. and has a very fat nut width of just over 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body, one-piece mahogany neck with a nice, medium-to-thin profile - very similar to that of a late 1961 Gibson SG, Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and inlaid pearl oval position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Epiphone" script logo and pearl cloud inlay. Three-layer (black/white/black) plastic truss-rod cover. Individual single-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with double-ring tulip-shaped Keystone plastic buttons with "D-169400/Patent No". stamped on the underside. Serial number ("42854") impressed into the back of the headstock. Two PAF mini-humbucking pickups, with black plastic surrounds and outputs of 6.92k and 7.34k, set into the original clear plastic batwing with silver Epiphone stylized "E" log and two color white underneath. Each of the pickups has a rectangular black label on the underside with "Patent Applied For". Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way pickup selector switch, all on lower treble bout. Black plastic bell-shaped knobs with metal tops. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic non-retainer bridge with nylon saddles and Epiphone 'Tremotone' vibrato tailpiece with rosewood plaque with the Epiphone stylized "E" logo in silver. The pots are stamped "134 62 02" (Centralab January 1962). This amazing two-owner guitar (the last owner purchased it from a fellow band member in 1964!) has been expertly re-fretted with slightly chunkier frets (.01 inch as opposed to the original spec .0075 inch) and is otherwise in totally original and near mint (9.25) condition. Housed in the original Epiphone five-latch tan hardshell case with burgundy plush lining (9.00).

Introduced in 1958 (with two New York pickups), and then from 1959 with two mini-humbucking pickups, the $325.00 (1963 catalog) Crestwood Custom was Epiphone's two-pickup equivalent of the $310.00 (1963 catalog) Gibson SG Les Paul Standard and was produced with this body and headstock shape only until early 1963. Gibson made 2,811 Les Paul SG Standards in 1961 and 1962, but the exact number of Crestwood Customs produced by Gibson during the same period is unknown. What we do know is that the total production run of Crestwood Customs made between 1959 and 1969 was 1,349 instruments. Allowing for the fact that the largest production figures of this period was in the mid-sxties, it is fairly safe to assume that less than 400 Crestwood Custom's were shipped between 1959 and early '63.

The Epiphone solid-body range can be directly correlated to the Gibson SG range and shares many common features; hardware, pickup configurations, body and neck woods, construction and controls. This is not surprising as all of these guitars were all made at Gibson's Kalamazoo factory. The Crestwood Custom corresponds to the Gibson SG Standard in terms of woods and construction, pickup configuration (although the Epiphone used smaller humbuckers) and ornamentation. Early sixties Epiphones were most certainly not regarded as second class Gibsons, which was clearly demonstrated by the fact that the Crestwood Custom actually cost more than the SG standard, $325 vs $310 (1963 catalogs). The total number of Crestwood Custom's shipped between 1959 and 1969 was just 1,349 guitars - and for the record that's fewer than the Gibson SG Standard sold in any one year during the same period.