All user reviews of 3/5 for the Epiphone The Dot

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USE

The +: the round handle but slightly flattened at the center, comfortable and short scale. easy game, even with a strong pull +

sound: mostly blues, nice neck pickup, micro pitched a little sour

mechanical inaccurate, it tightens a little, but not say (maybe 1/8)
the guitar is heavy and too large for moua sitting.

SOUNDS

Like I said, rather blues!
I play more bocou
I changed the pickups (gibson ceramic hot to handle and nothing more easel side)

NOTICE GLOBAL

Bin, I've had almost 11 years itchi.C'était my second guitar purchased at the time neuros 500 (the first was too pourrave, bought new at 75 euros) Manufacturing is serious, this is a nice guitar who loves the blues, but to buy knowingly. Already a les paul, it's in the top comfort seated, but there better be great to play with sitting, moua, it tires me and I play with solid body, so it drags on its stand, but good I thought being smart and having bought a guitar to play autchi not connected, but if like moua, you are pity and prefer metal, skip yer way! otherwise the sheraton is better, better finished (handle 3 parts and finished abalone).

Made in korea

Tune o matic bridge
Handle fairly late
2 humbuckers epiphone
2 vols, two tones, a three position selector

UTILIZATION

Handle pretty nice. A handle is always subjective and sometimes it depends what you are accustomed.

Handle heavy, guitar stings a little nose.

Access to acute rather easy despite a quality medium frets that does not always play in this area here.

The sound is quickly convincing, quite attractive although limited with all the default found in guitars in this price range (no tone knob fine, loss of sharp decline drastically as soon as a volume knob)

SOUNDS

At first it was me. Treble through the neck pickup is quite beautiful, round, lovely.

Not bad for the blues.

I played a lot on a Fender Blues Jr.

OVERALL OPINION

Used nearly 8 years I think, and then replaced by a vintage Mustang, a Univox, a Cort 1980s, all the better sound quality.

I tried a lot of stuff before buying it, it was my first electric guitar, she had seduced me immediately.

It is heavy, so thick the veneer of plastic that looks up the handle, the chrome hardware is banal and shoddy, cheap electronics too.

The normal value for money: it is not expensive, especially in Cygnus, so to start a lot.

I customized mine, to improve it with some success, but it does not become a marvel.
Please note that the mine was manufactured in Sammick in the 1990s, a generation older, and each room was out of the templates in use usually replaced parts has been the horror. It is no longer the case of current models.

I've only been playing guitar for a bout 5 years now. I got into it after seeing Green Day live. I'm in a band now, and we do some punk copies, but also write our own stuff.

I actually found this guitar on ebay. It was used and a few years old, but I only paid $280 or something close to that. Can't remember exactly. I've always been looking for a semi-hollow to add to my collection and I've always been a fan of the look of these Epi's and I've always heard they have some cool tones.

I like the sustain I get from the semi-hollow body. The three way switching is a nice feature and basically lets you go from the front humbuckers, to both mixed, to the back humbucker so you get sort of a chorusy mellow tone from the front and a nice lead type cutting tone from the back. I like the look of the guitar and the neck is real comfortable to play. It's nice and wide and helps me finger chords a lot more easily because of my fat fingers.

I've been having a little bit of a challenge keeping the G (3rd) string in tune. I don't know if it's the nut or the bridge, but it seems to go sharp a lot. I don't know if this is a problem with all of these guitars or just this one, or if it's something that I did to it, but just wanted to throw that out there for you to chew on. It's probably nothing, and I should probably just take it to a guitar store to have it checked out. I also don't like how the cord jack is on the face of the guitar, although I'm guessing they're all like this by design. I've pulled the cord out a few times accidentally.

Construction is decent. It's an Epi so it has a nice balance of cost versus quality. The fit and finish are pretty good and probably only a trained eye could tell the difference between one of these models made overseas and ones produced here in the U.S.

Overall, for the price I paid, I think it's a really sweet 6 string. It's not the best quality, not the worst, and it does have a few issues that bug me, but overall not bad. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a backup axe or a semi-hollowbody that they need for a specific purpose, song, or recording project.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

The Epiphone Dot was designed to be a close approximation to the original late 1950s Gibson ES-335 "dot neck" version of the classic semi hollow body instrument. It features the following specifications:

Semi-hollowbody
Laminated maple body and top
Body binding
Set maple neck
22-fret rosewood fretboard
Dual humbuckers (based on Gibson '57 Classic humbuckers)
3-way pickup selector
2 volume and 2 tone controls
LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece add more sustain and easier string changing
Chrome hardware

It's a very basic hollowbody guitar and feels much like a 335, except without the classic craftsmanship and attention to detail that getting one from Gibson Custom Shop would get you. I've owned one and played several and they're of varying quality. Epiphones in general tend to lack consistency, which can be a problem when shopping for guitars like this.

UTILIZATION

Playing this guitar was definitely something to get used to! At the time I owned it, I was accustomed to much lighter, more ergonomic solidbody guitars, with the occasional foray into fully acoustic guitars. The particular example that I owned was on the heavier side (probably about 9 to 10 pounds) and felt a little bit clunky and odd to get used to at first because of the very large body. The upper fret access was not stellar on this guitar either, but I can't be too picky about that considering that the guitar was not designed to play lightning fast Yngwie or Guthrie Govan tunes. For being designed how it is, the ergonomics and upper fret access weren't terrible by any means, just not nearly as good as many of the solidbody guitars that I've owned.

Getting a decent sound out of this guitar is not too difficult. It's wired exactly the same as a Les Paul or SG, with dual humbuckers, each with its own volume and tone control, and then a 3 way toggle switch to go between the pickups. The pickups in this guitar are definitely a weak point, so the tones I dialed in were often muffled and/or muddy sounding, so that was a bit of a crutch, but again, for a $400 guitar I can't be TOO picky about the stock OEM pickups.

SOUNDS

I used this guitar with my main rig at the time, a Mesa Boogie Mark III head and Basson 2x12 speaker cabinet. Like I stated above, the pickups in this guitar really are not very impressive. From what I've read in some places, they were based on '57 Classics, but I would argue that they really don't do that sound. I have '57 Classics in my main Gibson LP and they are a MUCH more articulate and dynamic pickup than the OEM copies in this guitar.

The clean tones were the better sounding ones. The neck pickup had a nice bassy sound for jazz and cleaner blues tones and the bridge pickup had a thicker, wooly sounding tone, again great for bluesier textures. The muddiness is unfortunately fairly apparent with this sort of tone, so I had to compensate by using more treble on the amp than I would normally, which made it a bit piercing if I switched over to the overdrive tones. However for just playing cleaner tones with this guitar, if I adjusted the amplifier settings to dial out a bit of the muffled character, it was great.

The overdrive tones were quite honestly not much to write home about. The neck pickup was very bassy. There wasn't a whole lot of note definition when using this pickup, so it really only worked for single note lines or doom rock/metal type tones (IE: Sabbath, Sleep). The bridge pickup wasn't too bad, but again the lack of definition in the pickup relegated it to a much bassier sound than I'm used to using, and such a sound wasn't really one that fit the music I was playing at the time.

OVERALL OPINION

All in all I think Epiphone has a great idea with this guitar. The construction is decent and the feel of the guitar is nice for a hollowbody. The biggest issue for me was that the electronics were basically junk, and being that it's a hollowbody, pickups and electronics are much harder to swap out, so I was stuck using the stock pickups and electronics for the time that I owned it. The other big issue I have with Epiphones is consistency. I've played many great ones, many average ones and many total dogs, without any rhyme or reason as to which would be great and which wouldn't. I would say that my particular Dot (2004 model) was on the average side, not amazing but far from a dog.

These guitars are cool for $400, but to me the pickups are fit for the trash unless you want bass heavy mud... so factor in another $150 for new pickups. At that price point with upgrades, it's really no longer as good a deal, so I guess it's up to the end user to decide what works.