The Casino felt a bit uninspiring and cheap, and the Gibson, although beautifully finished (I just love the mahogany grain on the body and neck) just did not move me as much as I would have expected (I guess I created a sort of Gibson hype in my head). So after playing all three I was sold on the Sheraton, it completely blew the other two away. Luckily they had all of these models in store, even a very well priced secondhand LP studio. So last week I visited Mars Music in CPT to test the Casino and Sheraton, and if possible a LP studio. (I still had the Gibson LP studio as a wildcard option in the back of my mind). The Gretsch models I could afford did not appeal to me, I think mostly because of looks (yep, I'm a bit superficial like that with guitars - especially since my fenders aren't exactly amazing 'lookers').įollowing a lot of online research I excluded the Dot (don't like the pickups) and the Wildkat (body a bit too small). Did not look at Ibanez since I felt it was too Jazz orientated (I might be very wrong). I considered the Epiphone Casino, Epiphone Dot, Epiphone Wildkat and Epiphone Sheraton II Pro.

Ideally I would have loved to own a Gibson ES335, but since I don't know any Guptas, I had to look for the better priced alternatives. (On a side note, I also considered a Gibson Les Paul Studio due to the fairly good price/quality/sound combination)

Recently I started to feel the urge to explore different sounds and started looking around for specifically semi-hollow/hollow body humbucker guitars, I really like the extra dimension added to the sound by the hollow bodies, and it's something completely different from my fender tones.

I briefly owned an Epiphone Les Paul Standard a few years ago, but hated it, I think the Epiphone Alnico Classics fitted to it at that time was just terrible. I've always played fender single coils, and mostly never felt the need to get a humbucking axe.

Epiphone sheraton ii vs casino