My Epiphone Texan Guitar

I've had this guitar since 1968. I bought it after I got out of the Army, as a replacement for another one just like it that I had traded for a camera before going into the army. I got it for $80 at a place in Norman Oklahoma called Norman Music. My friend Adam Granger knew I was looking for one of these and told me about it. Adam's friend Pop Wagner in Minneapolis Minnesota also uses one in his cowboy music act.

In the 38 years since I got it a lot of things have happened to it. It has a burn scar on the back it got when it was leaning against a wall and an outlet behind it short-circuited. I replaced its original white plastic tuning pegs with gold Schallers very early. The Silver "E" on the pickguard fell off before I got it. The original adjustable bridge with its metal bolts has been replaced with a non-adjustable rosewood-and-bone bridge. Jeffrey Elliot, a luthier in Portland Oregon, shaved the struts under the top to give it a better sound, but after a few years these weakened struts collapsed and I couldn't play it anymore. Then I sent it to the Taylor Factory in Lemon Grove California, where one of luthiers had agreed to work on it in his spare time. He corrected the structural problems.

It has never been refinished and still has lots and lots of scratches and dings on the surface, but I love to play it. This is a guitar associated with the Beatles. Paul McCartney used one of these when he performed "Yesterday" for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965.

I've seen him using one in lots of other situations too. He probably owns a dozen of them. The model was reproduced in a special Japanese edition in 2004. They are very popular now, but when I bought this one (and its predecessor) people always told me it would have been better to get a Gibson. They believed this even though this Epiphone guitar was also made by Gibson in the same Kalamazoo factory.

Click here to listen to it

posted by johncgreen@gmail.com @ 9:42 AM