Before solidbody electric guitars existed, if you wanted to plug in, you attached a pickup to one of the many archtop guitars being made by Gibson, Stromberg, and, yes, Epiphone. Electric jazz and country of the ‘30s and ‘40s was performed on a variety of these fully hollow instruments. Charlie Christian and Chet Atkins revolutionized the sound and techniques of guitar playing on archtopped axes. Even into the ‘50s and ‘60s, big-bodied electrics were still being used for country and rock-and-roll purposes as well as jazz—Scotty Moore, George Harrison and Ted Nugent, anyone?

Starting in the ‘70s, Les Pauls, Telecasters and Stratocasters pretty much relegated archtops to the trad-jazz ghetto, save for some die-hard, rockabilly revivalists. Recently, we’ve begun seeing these big boxes edge back into other arenas, with, among others, the Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante and Canadian rocker Luke Doucet proudly wielding Gretsch White Falcons (hell, Doucet even named his band after it), and Matthew Followill from the Kings of Leon sporting a Gibson ES137.

The Epiphone Emperor Swingster ($699 street) seems positioned to take advantage of this revival of interest among players who don’t know Charlie Christian from Charlie Parker.

The G-Word
From the neck up, the Swingster is all Epiphone, with the headstock shape and mother-of-pearl “vine” inlay instantly identifying it as an heir to the ‘30s instruments that came out of the original Epiphone factory in New York. The multilayered headstock and fretboard binding, combined with mother-of-pearl block fretboard-inlays, recall the kind of fine workmanship that has been an Epiphone tradition since the beginning.

From the neck down, however, there is an elephant in the room, and that pachyderm’s name is Gretsch. Though the body is not shaped like a typical Gretsch, it is hard to ignore the G-word when gazing on the Bigsby-licensed tailpiece, with its Chet Atkins-style “wire” vibrato arm, and the split covers on humbuckers that appear to be aping the look of Filtertrons.

The issue was brought further to the fore by the fact that the review model came in a gorgeous orange color, invoking the classic look of the “G” company’s 6120 and Rancher models. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and there is no sense that Epiphone is actually trying to fool anyone. (The Swingster is available in Sunburst Orange and Wine Red finishes.) The SwingBucker humbucking pickups are not trying to sound like Filtertrons per se, and similar style Bigsby arms were not unknown on Gibsons and, well, Epiphones, back in the day.

The bottom line is that the Swingster looks great. The review guitar’s spruce top was unsullied by knots or marks, and the flame in the laminated maple back and sides was gorgeous. The one thing I would change is those pickup covers—I say, let humbuckers look like humbuckers, but then I am not fond of the similar ones on the Gretsch Electromatics, either.

Better Than Budget
Though the Swingster prices out closer to an Electromatic than a 6120, the build seems more comparable to the latter—an instrument costing close to three times as much. The 20 medium jumbo frets are well finished over the binding, and the paint and sealer are flawlessly applied. There was one place where the binding join was a little rough, but I have seen that on much more expensive instruments. Only the minimal arch of the top hints at its affordability.

The quality continued when I stopped looking at the guitar long enough play it. The Swingster’s maple neck felt comfortable—shallow, yet with some heft to it. The professional setup allowed for low action with no buzzing. The guitar came strung with what felt like .011s, and a wound G string. I was tempted to switch them out for my usual .010s with a plain G, but the guitar felt so good the way it was, I was loath to take a chance on messing up the setup. In addition, the 24.75-inch scale and the height of the frets made bending even the wound G possible—albeit only a half step. The “pinned,” roller-saddle bridge stayed solidly in place through any kind of manhandling. Even before plugging the Swingster in I could hear the warmth and presence of the spruce/maple combination and experienced a surprising amount of sustain for a hollow-body with a Bigsby. Thanks to the well-cut 1.68-inch nut, the roller saddles, and a superior setup, the guitar stayed in tune through a fair amount of whang-bar wrangling.

Variety Show
I played the Epiphone Swingster through Egnater Rebel 30 and Orange Tiny Terror heads, into a 1 x 12-inch cabinet sporting an Eminence Texas Heat speaker, as well as through a small Alamo combo. The variety of sounds available from this two-pickup guitar was impressive, but before I get into them, a word about humbuckers and the Epiphone’s wiring system is in order.

For the less technical among you, humbucker-style pickups are made by essentially combining two single-coil pickups. The two single-coil bobbins are reverse magnetic polarity and wired in reverse phase. Consequently, when the two coils are wired together in series, the system cancels any 60-cycle hum (hence the name) and doubles the output of the pickup. You may be familiar with humbucker-equipped instruments that come with split-able pickups. On those guitars, when you split the pickup using toggle switches or push-pull pots, you are just getting one of the two coils for a thinner, brighter sound—more like a Stratocaster. You are unfortunately also reinstituting the hum you get from single-coil pickups. In most twin humbucker guitars, when you engage both the bridge and the neck pickup the two pickups are wired in parallel, effectively halving the output; that is why, on a Les Paul, when you have both pickups on at once, the volume is lower than when playing either one alone.

What Epiphone has done on the Swingster is to offer two push-pull tone pots that change the wiring of the coils in each of the two pickups from series to parallel. The effect is to halve the output of the pickup, while retaining the hum-canceling characteristic, as you are still using both coils.

The results, in this case, are fantastic. With the pots pulled out, the pickups are in Series mode, sounding like the full, warm, but not muddy humbuckers that they are. In this mode, the neck pickup mated with the woody character of the hollow body to offer up the perfect jazz-box tone for be-bop, through both the clean channel of the Egnater or the undistorted Alamo. The bridge pickup in series served up enough juice to easily drive the solo channel of the Egnater or the preamp-cranked Orange into singing sustain, while retaining plenty of definition.

Parallel-wired pickups can be problematic. On the surface, it would appear to be a great compromise between a single coil and a humbucker, but that is occasionally what it sounds like—a compromise. The parallel sound on the Swingster is the best I have ever heard; it doesn’t sound like a compromised single-coil, but rather like a great sounding Filtertron. The parallel bridge pickup offered up fat, biting twang on clean settings and plenty of crunch on distorted ones, perfect for getting my Neil Young on. The neck pickup in parallel stayed warm but tamed the low-end for soul-jazz or focused distortion. When combining the two pickups, the series/parallel option gave me a total of four distinctly different sounds. The SwingBucker pickups sounded perfectly matched to the acoustic properties of the Swingster, and every setting was very musical, with no harshness or murk in evidence.

Howl
Having touted the variety of genres coverable by the Swingster, the question is begged: What about feedback? One of the Swingster’s strong points is the wonderful acoustic resonance afforded by its hand-scalloped braces and sound post, and its fully hollow construction—it was a joy to play for hours before plugging in.

The downside of such acoustic sensitivity is an instrument that feeds back at higher volumes. If you play be-bop or rockabilly, at ‘50s volume levels, you should be fine—as long as you don’t stand too close to the amp. If you want to venture into Neil Young Crazy Horse territory, punk-a-billy, or Queens of the Stone Age hard-rock, you will need to stuff the body with foam so as to dampen it enough to keep the howling at bay when using distortion and playing at stadium volumes.

Majestic Archtop
For quite awhile now, Epiphone has been cranking out offshore instruments that rival, and often surpass, domestic guitars costing up to five times as much. The versatile Epiphone Emperor Swingster is emblematic of this tradition. Whatever your music bag, if you have a need for a great playing and lovely sounding hollow-body electric that will leave money in your wallet, look no further than this guitar.

Pros: Fine workmanship. Easy to play. Sounds great in a variety of musical settings.
Cons: none.

Michael Ross in a New York City-based guitarist/producer/music journalist. He contributes articles to Guitar Player, Premier Guitar, Guitar Edge, EQ, Sound On Sound, and Gearwire.com. He is the author of the Hal Leonard books Getting Great Guitar Sounds and All About Effects.