Epiphone Genesis Lovers: History

The History of the Epiphone Genesis Series Guitar

(Automatic translate from spanish version)

The History of Epiphone Genesis is full of mysteries and perhaps that is just one of its charms. Currently much discussion about where they were manufactured and wood were used, which is beyond dispute is his high quality, and for many people it is without doubt, the best "solidbody" guitar built by Epiphone.

The Epiphone Genesis was designed by Jim Walker, who was Director of Marketing for Gibson Guitar Corporation between 1977 and 1983. This Guitar was created in order to revalue the Epiphone brand and reposition it as a manufacturer of high-quality instruments. At that time Epiphone belonged to Gibson and are his "second label" and built only instruments of lower quality.
This is how the "Genesis" is born, as a new "beginning" for the brand Epiphone and hence its name.
According to J. Walker's idea was to build a quality guitar, versatile, powerful and durable that will remain in history and put back to Epiphone between large.

The Epiphone Genesis is a solid body electric guitar with excellent sound quality and construction, which can be used for the most diverse styles (from jazz to the rock most extreme) is made of heavy timbers and the first ones were built in Japan ( where the labor cost in half and was of exceptional quality to even better than in USA) probably at the Matsumoku factory; and later in the plant of the renowned maker of drums "Pearl" in Taiwan.
It is a heavy guitar, about 5 kg (11 pounds) like the Gibson LP of this times, with a warm sound full-bodied and powerful, with an extraordinary sustain.

Construction:
It is composed of two parts (body / neck) of Mahogany, the top of the fingerboard is rosewood and has a beautiful vintage elongated headstock with 3+3 excellent performance tuners, apparently made it by Gotoh,(beacouse of its quality).

One of his design "highlights" is the double cutway that facilitates access to upper tones on the last frets & on the 6 strings (a great advantage over the Les Paul) and the coiltap switch which converts the humbuckers on single coil pickups giving to the guitar more crystal clear sound, like the stratocaster. (another key advantage over the Les Paul) in other words one could say it is a Les Paul with "small improvements".
They had two powerful Alnico V Humbucker pickups (similar to that used the Gibson Les Paul and it is believed that they were also made it by Gotoh) The Genesis came with the renowned "Tune-o-Matic" bridge, 2 volume controls and one master tone control.

Models and Features:

Genesis Series had 3 models

-"Standard"(Base) Binding simple on top, dot markers (points) on the fingerboard, Chrome Hardware

-"DeLuxe"(midrange) Binding on Fingerboard and simple Clavijero, double binding on the front and rear trapezoidal fret markers and chrome hardware

-"Custom" (top of the line) simply binding on the fretboard , double binding on the headstock and triple binding on the front and rear of the body, at the top of the fingerboard the rectangular "block" Abalone markers and chrome hardware on 1979 with covered humbuckers, on 1980 y 1981came with golden hardware and and without cover humbuckers , a truly luxury guitar.

The Epiphone Genesis came in three colors: Sunburst, Cherry and Black.
In Sunburst was 2 options, black sunburst and red suburst.
This guitar had "no commercial success" and only was manufactured for 3 years, 1979 - 1980 and 1981.
In 1980 its production was moved to Taiwan because of the low sales.

This Guitars today are quite sought after by some collectors and guitar players because the big brands have fallen sharply as the scarcity of tonewoods, the most valued are the "Custom" of "1979" for being the "top end" model and Japanese manufacturing.