“My first impressions were that it felt good to hold and to play. It looked well and the neck was comfortable to use. I wasn’t totally mad about the shape of the head, which seems different to me from the Epiphone shape I’m familiar with, but everything else about it was fine. They’ve gone back to the look of their 1930s guitars with the new Masterbilt series, so it looks more ‘old-school’ than it sounds. I tried both playing chords and doing a bit of finger-picking and it sounds very good both ways. I reckon it could be good for slide guitar as well, although I didn’t get to try slide on it. I’ve played a lot of acoustic guitars over the years, and I’ve used a similar model before, in that I have an Epiphone Jumbo which I really like.

“When I’m trying out a guitar I haven’t used before, especially an acoustic one, my main focus is primarily with the sound. But I also want to check out the feel of the body, and this Epiphone scores really well on both counts. To all intents and purposes it’s a straight-forward basic guitar, so you don’t have to make any changes to your own technique to play it. The top is made from solid sitka spruce and the body is solid mahogany. It comes with a vintage sunburst finish, and its shape goes back to that early Epiphone style which a lot of people really liked. The strings that were on it when I tried it were pretty heavy, so if I was using it again myself I’d probably prefer to use lighter gauge strings on it. But the type of strings and even the plectrum are both ultimately down to each guitar player’s individual style and taste.
“I probably wouldn’t use it live with The Brothers Movement. Although we use acoustic guitar on the track ‘No Compromise,’ I’d probably keep an instrument like this for writing a song on, or for rehearsing or just fooling around with at home. I don’t think there are any effects I’d want to use with it in that way. But I could see myself miking it up and maybe doing some home recording with it too.”