Epiphone 1942 Banner J-45 Reis.VS LH

The guitar sounds fantastic. It has that deep, musical low end you expect from a good dreadnought. It feels great in the hands, too. Fingerpicking brings out a beautiful warmth, while playing with a pick gives it plenty of bite, projection, and width. I bought this guitar completely blind, based only on reviews, and I have to say they were right.

The included hard case is an excellent addition, as is the soundhole cover, which is something I don’t see included very often. So, thank you, Epiphone, for that.

However, not everything was perfect, and I think these issues are worth mentioning because this is not exactly a budget guitar anymore. At this price point, we’re already entering the upper mid-range territory, and I expected better quality control.

Unfortunately, the guitar I received had several small QC issues that I honestly don’t understand how they managed to slip through Epiphone’s quality control.

First, the third fret under the B string had a small notch in it, almost as if someone had made a tiny cut with a knife. Whenever I tried to apply vibrato on that note, the string would catch in the notch and stop vibrating properly, making vibrato practically impossible in that position.

Second, the fret ends were not finished particularly well. Along the lower edge of the fretboard, you could feel that some of them were slightly sharp when running your finger along the neck.

Finally, the bridge was resonating on certain notes, producing an annoying buzzing sound.

I took the guitar to my local luthier and had all of these issues sorted out. It wasn’t an expensive repair — around €50 in total — but that’s really beside the point. On a guitar in this price range, I believe these things should have been caught during quality control before the instrument left the factory.

As far as the actual sound and playability are concerned, the guitar is absolutely fantastic: warm, defined, powerful and very musical. I really love it. I just think Epiphone needs to pay a little more attention to quality control, because receiving a guitar that isn’t exactly cheap with issues like these can definitely take some of the excitement out of buying a new instrument.