All user reviews for the Epiphone The Dot

Hollow body electric guitar with internal beam, laminated maple body, set neck 22 frets, 2 humbuckers Epiphone, bridge + fixed tailpiece.

the body of the guitar is very successful: it throws esttiquement talking!
the mcaniques are fairly average quality

UTILIZATION

The handle is not great but it's going when members
contrary to what I read I have not found it so heavy that ca: ca I do not choqubr /> we get a good sound easy? yes and no depending on what you're looking

SOUNDS

Ds branch and that it is starting to scrape away that we see all this guitar is made for the blues which succeeds not too bad I reonnaitre. on the other hand with respect to rock it my not satisfied at all I find the saturation drafts and I have not found that grain old rock that I expected to find. the bridge pickup produces a low, nasal, the neck pickup sound blur that you have in the mediums. is the postion intermdiaire which is interesting.
the sound is clear the road no more. I think for me it lacks a certain dynamism that guitar is almost the opposite of the casino is very Ractive but certainly not in the same price range.

OVERALL OPINION

To me this guitar is interresting for blues sounds to me even when quite positively surprised. Besides, I have not had the time, but this guitar is really explored in the field of blues I think we can really have a good surpise! For cot against the rock I really do not believe more is not very versatile.

Pros: the look! blues sound, the price
ngatifs points: saturation and crunch draft, versatility ...

To play the blues I would put 8.5/10
For other styles 4 / 10

Finally I would say that the report is still interesting qualitprix

2002 Korean made Cherry Red dot. 22 Medium frets, pressed into a rosewood fretboard with dot markers. Neck is made out of mahogany, the body is made of (laminated) maple. Neck has the thinner '60s profile, much shallower than the fat '50-ies model. The finish is a High Gloss Cherry-red. The guitar is designed after the Gibson es335, so it's a semihollow one. Standard Gibson features, like a 24.75" scale length, 2 vol & 2 tones, 3way Switch and two alnico humbuckers. TOM-bridge and stopbar tailpiece. My guitar features Gotoh "Epiphone signature" tuners. Guitar came with an Epiphone case and strap.


UTILIZATION

Access to the upper frets is somewhat hindered by the neck joint and cramped/small lower horn cutaway. It is not too bad, but not the easiest I've played on.
I found the guitar to have a nice even weight - not too heavy and it also has a pretty good balance.
It is easy to get a variety of nice sounds with the two humbuckers anr 3-way switch.
The body is the biggest I've ever played on and it takes a little to get used to, especially sitting down

SOUNDS

I used this guitar with a solidstate Marshall 3100 series amp and stock Marshall cab for a two week fly in set of shows with my old classic rock cover band.
I was looking to get and did get the classic rock sounds from rock to pop like: the Police, ZZ Top, Steppenwolf and VH - it covered a lot of ground nicely!
It really did not have a sound that I did not like and did an excellent job with the classic rock songs we did.

OVERALL OPINION

This was a great guitar to use and fit the bill nicely for what I needed it to do.
The thing I liked least was the upper fret access and the bigger body - but it was not hard to work around those issues.
I liked the overall playability and the classic rock tones it got the best - and it looked cool too!
I borrowed this guitar for two weeks, from the other guitar player, who bought it used for $450. I used his because I didn't want to fly with my expensive guitars. I think it was a nice guitar for the price.
I would have no problems using the guitar again but have so many in my collection that I would not buy it for myself, I just don't need it.
I have owned many guitars and had a number of years where I would buy, try and flip, which enabled me to have many guitars around to try out.
This is a nice guitar for the price.

The Epiphone Dot is Gibsons budget version of their famous semi-hollow guitar. This guitar is made overseas unlike the Gibson model so it is much cheaper but everything is made to pretty much the same specs with slightly lower quality hardware. The shape is pretty much exactly the same. Gibson came up with the Semi-Hollow design to combine the advantages of a solid body guitar with the advantages of a hollowbody. You get the great resonance of a hollowbody with the versatility and ability to play at volume of a solidbody. Hollowbody guitars when played loudly or with any gain will have a lot of feedback because the guitar body will start picking up the sound from the amp and causing it to vibrate ontop of its own resonance. With the Epiphone dot you get a partial hollowbody by having a solid piece of maple running down the center of the body dividing the hollow cavity into two. The dot comes with a maple body with a set maple neck. It has a 22 fret rosewood fretboard with dot inlays. It has dual Epiphone humbuckers with a volume and tone control each and a 3 way switch.

UTILIZATION

The large Gibson Semi-hollow shape means the guitar is not the most comfortable to play. It fits a bit awkwardly around your body. There are new Vox semi-hollow guitars that arch around and contour towards your body. These guitar have a flat shape and you may find yourself reaching around the body a bit. They are a pretty slim neck they arent like 50s Gibson necks. The fretwork can be hit or miss but it is nothing a good setup cant fix. The upper fret access is slightly better than that of a Les Paul just because of the shape but it is not like a shred guitar or neck through guitar.

SOUNDS

Because of the design it is quite difficult to swap out electronics on a semi-hollow guitar. This means unless you know a really good luthier you are pretty much stuck with the stock pickups. The Epiphone pickups are the weakest part of the guitar. The semi-hollow construction gives the guitar a ton of natural tone and resonannce and it just needs a set of nice pickups to really bring out the tone amplified. The Gibson version of this guitar comes with Classic 57 pickups which are some of the best pickups Gibson makes in house but that guitar is also thousands of dollars more expensive. The natural tone of the guitar helps out the weak pickups so you should be able to get by with most whatever you play on this guitar.

OVERALL OPINION

This guitar is good for some one who isnt looking for a primary semi-hollow guitar. This could be a good backup guitar or first semi-hollow guitar to see if you like the sound. I would recommend the Vox 77 semi-hollow guitar over this if you are looking for a mid level semi-hollow guitar that isnt as expensive as a Gibson. If you are just getting into the semi-hollow scene this guitar is great for that.

Provenance:
China

Lutherie:
Same ES335 except maple neck (The Gibson ES335 has a mahogany neck but do not panic, the Gibson Lucille, too, a maple neck and it does not bother BB King). The maple wood hyper-rigid, is an excellent choice for good performance tuning. I imagine that the timber used does not come out of a stock Centennial thus presumably lower quality species to a Gibson USA.

Electronics:
2 humbucker Epiphone Classic 57. The name "Classic 57" may well be comforting, it will have to change the pickups to get a good guitar. Tone knobs on, still no change in manufacturers: These knobs are high-cut filters that deaden the sound, so we need not (especially on the neck microphone). I have the solution for cutting down the tone knobs so contact me and send the wiring diagram. Pdf by e-mail.

Mechanical:
Bridge and tailpiece standard Gibson type (the good old TuneOmatic + Stop Bar)
Grover so no worries.

Look:
Originally, it's a good start, the finish is largely up to the 300 euros spent, with some small blemishes that are not annoying (but hey, we did not have the same tolerance ).

Gibsonisation intensive:
It can seriously change gibsoniser:
The keys by models "tulip" (Schaller ST6KN kind or Grover 135N).
The saddle by Graphtech white.
Mics by two Seymour Duncan 59 (SH1 SH1 B + N) or else according to your tastes.
The pickguard with a real Gibson ES335, which has a different profile.
Buttons knob by SG models.
Ah yes, here it begins to look like a 335 ...

UTILIZATION

As a 335 ...

SOUNDS

When empty, without amplifier, the first impression is "Whaouuu, not bad ... it is sending, for 300 euros! . Like the 335, the Epiphone Dot has a good firepower acoustic, sponsor, body, wealth, with a nice bump up medium (the famous Honk!), Treble rather dry, which contribute to producing a sharp attack and moreover, excellent sustain. In short, a grain vacuum which suggests a good feeling when you go to plug.
So I turn on the amp, and there ... it's the drama: No, I'm exaggerating ... but the original pickups are really not up to par. Lack power, acute stifled, zero personality, no subtlety of play is transmitted in short, is not micro, it's censorship!
But changing these pickups by real (although there is a choice: Gibson, Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Gretsch, + lots of other manufacturers to study ...) then the DOT can speak freely.
I made the choice of Seymour SH1 are copying very successful PAF Gibson 50s and then I left with the feeling that DOT improved Gibson! All the qualities found playing acoustic load can be found in the HP of the amp, with that allows more electricity. This is the class and the idea of ​​leaving my home for Firebird from DOT alone with my concerts I'm not afraid.

OVERALL OPINION

I subscribe to Gibson SG std since 1994 and SG 61 reissue, then Firebird V that I still have so I'm used to working with the grain.
Originally, the Epiphone DOT is a violin, a sort of half-complete with guitar and for the other half, just buy two good microphones.
With the Seymour 59 Epiphone DOT is totally in the spirit Gibson.
It's a great plan for a budget of less than 500 euros.

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.

It dates from 1995 and was much trimballée. I think at the time it was made in Korea.
The headstock is the most current, but is a true copy of Gibson.


UTILIZATION

I used a lot in the 90s. Much less in 2000, because the mechanics started to play tricks on me, and it required revision.
Upon purchase, I replaced the pickups with Seymour (59 + SH4).
The microphones were not really terrible origins.
The handle is quite fine and pleasant, the body not too heavy. It tends to pitch down in the standing position.
I stood out here one year, I reffrettée I changed the mechanics (SCHALLER) completely resolved.
I take pleasure to use.


SOUNDS

Sound (with Seymour) is very versatile. Jazz, Rock, Blues ...
It has more sustain with his 15 years at the very beginning.
I'm a fan of Blues Rock, and it is a nice alternative to Telecaster / Stratocaster.
She keeps some very nice shine.



OVERALL OPINION

With 15 years of hindsight, I can say that the violin does not move. The hardware is not oxidized too. the defects are corrected departures; microphones, mechanical.
To date, I would look more towards a BB King or Sheraton, or certainly to a Nick Valensi already has good mechanical and good microphones.