Epiphone Emperor Swingster Forest Green Metallic Semi-Acoustic Guitar

The Epiphone Swingster in Forest Green. To look at this guitar is very bling. A combination of the gold hardware and the gold sparkle binding means it shouts out loud. some might prefer the blue or black alternatives but this one is has a very unique look. This is quite a large guitar both in terms of body size and depth, accordingly despite it being totally hollow it has some real weight . The body is 100 pct maple with a 7 ply top and back. Neck is mahogany with Indian Laurel fingerboard which is new to me but looks and feels like rosewood. Overall build quality and setup out the box is remarkably good for a guitar available at under £600. Despite some comments from others I can’t see that the recent move to manufacturing in Indonesia has done any harm. Acoustically there is enough twang to be able to practice without an amp if you wish. It comes with a set of 10-46 Strings with a wound 3rd and is therefore easier to play than the 11 and 12 strung semis. String bending is smooth and easy right up the neck. Medium jumbo frets are prefect for this guitar and comfortable to play. The guitar has 2 Swingbucker humbucking pick ups which I’m told are overwound and each has a different number of windings. To get mellow Jazz tones you do need to wind down the tone on either guitar , amp, or both. Bass is huge. However you can wind these pickups up too, and push them through and overdriven amp and they can get surprisingly ugly. Blues and crunchy Oasis tones coming quite easily. The tone controls are push pull type and switch the pickups from series to parallel wiring ( not regular coil taps ) however you still get 2 distinctly different sounds from each pickup both in terms of tone and volume. So you have a traditional 3 way switch for pickup selection and each pickup has individual controls for volume and tone and well as the push pull wiring option. This means the range of sound/tones combination is almost endless. The name of the guitar maybe suggests 40’s swing and 50’s rockabilly. It does all of this very well but so much more. The Bigsby trem works well and the strange shaped wire handle falls to hand quite nicely. The grovers and bridge seem to hold onto the tuning quite well even when the bigsby is used. Negatives, just a couple for me. The tone switches don’t have a great deal of effect until wound down below about 3 or 4, something not uncommon with cheap tone pots. I’m guessing upgrading would be a challenge given the guitar construction. Also whilst you would expect feedback to be an issue with a fully hollow body and had not expected it to be quite such a challenge . Even at relatively low practise volumes I can’t sit in front of my amp which I can with my solid bodies. I have had to turn my combo by 90 degrees to sideways on to solve the problem. I guess if you sit with your back to the amp you might be ok. Not had a chance yet to play and gig volumes with the amp further back. I guess this is the trade off you have to accept to get a true hollow body sound. So given those comments it will be 4 stars. At the price I suggest this is amazingly good value with good decent build quality and hardware and offering a pretty versatile instrument.