MIKE CONROY: This is an Epiphone Blues Deluxe. Three P90's. I put the Bigsby on myself, and I love it. It's a lot of fun to play. It plays really...

[MIKE CONROY STRUMMING A CHORD ON THE EPIPHONE BLUES DELUXE]

...really nice.

[MIKE CONROY PLAYING A LICK ON THE EPIPHONE BLUES DELUXE]

I don't think they make them anymore, which is a shame. This one.

[MIKE CONROY TUNES A STRING ON THE EPIPHONE BLUES DELUXE]

I think this is like maybe an early 90s but it sounds great. It's a lot of fun to play. I get a lot of compliments on it.

PATRICK OGLE: It kind of looks like, you know, it does have the same sort of, you know, the Gretsch and some of those like the harmony rocking kind of thing.

MIKE CONROY: Yeah. Kind of. It's a -- It's modeled after an ES-5.

PATRICK OGLE: When you play that, what sort of like, you know, sound you get out of it?

MIKE CONROY: I play that with my country band pretty well. It's not my country band anymore but the country band that I used to play with. That was my main axe. It's got a great twang to it. It's got -- It's pretty flexible. I can get a nice smooth sound or I can get a lot of bite out of it, that P90. My favorite position were these two together, and it's just -- it sounds really pretty.

PATRICK OGLE: One thing, every time I see f-holes, I say when you're playing it you get feedback. I mean what kind of feedback.

MIKE CONROY: Well, I was playing country so it was --

PATRICK OGLE: It wasn't loud.

MIKE CONROY: It was clean. Yeah.

PATRICK OGLE: Yeah.

MIKE CONROY: No distortion or anything but it was nice and responsive which is it helps a lot when you're playing clean.

PATRICK OGLE: Now I've ragged on Epiphones a lot, especially some of the acoustic ones. I mean what makes this different from a lot of them? Stuff that they have put out, let's face it, haven't been fantastic.

MIKE CONROY: Yeah. I think for me, I changed out the tuners. Usually, I've had a couple of Epiphones before and I'll change out all the electronics and the tuners, and it's usually that does the trick. So these are Grovers, and aside from now, I can pull this out of its case in probably about six months, but with the Grovers and even with the Bigsby on it, this things stays. I like to keep fresh string on it. I change my strings for every show and this thing will stat in tune all night. You know, I'll never have to go to the tuner.

PATRICK OGLE: Which is a fantastic thing.

MIKE CONROY: Oh yeah. Yeah, and I bend a lot and I use this thing. This isn't, you know, this isn't a dive bomb. Vibrato but it's [MIKE CONROY PERFORMS VIBRATO USING A BIGSBY TREMOLO ON THE EPIPHONE BLUES DELUXE], you know, I'll do that kind of thing a lot.

[MIKE CONROY PERFORMS VIBRATO USING A BIGSBY TREMOLO ON THE EPIPHONE BLUES DELUXE]

You know, I do that kind of thing, and it'll stay in tune all night, and I do -- it does need to have the pots replaced. I think that’s where that the problems with the electrics for Epiphone. That's if you're going to run into that problem too is that they're just it's they're nice bodies with just kind of lower quality parts on them. If you can replace the parts, you got a pretty decent guitar.

PATRICK OGLE: Which is kind of not the bad thing because if you think about it, I mean you know, really replacing some of the hardware and some of that stuff really isn't that expensive

MIC CONROY: No. Not at all. Yeah.

PATRICK OGLE: Right. And you don't worry about like buying some really expensive guitar and you're changing the pickups and you just destroy [OVERLAPPING]?

MIC CONROY: Right. Exactly. Yeah, I mean I'll drill holes in this thing, you know, I do stuff like that all the time, that's why I don't buy nice guitars, so I have a house full of junk because I like to take things apart.