My first good guitar was not a semi-hollow. That tag goes onto an early ‘70s Gibson Les Paul Deluxe modded by the first owner (badly) to take humbuckers. I’ve spent time and money on it and it is a lovely guitar, but definitely a Norlin Les Paul with all the downsides that go with them.

No, my first good semi-hollow was an Epiphone Sheraton that I bought new in the mid nineties. I was gassing for a 335 but they were outside the range of affordability so I went with the Sheraton, a really wonderful guitar. But I was younger and still influenced back then by the name on the headstock and about three years after, traded it in on a 1963 Reissue ES-335 dot in cherry. Now that too is a lovely guitar, but it took work by two different superb guitar techs and a change of pickups to Lollar Imperials to make it a go-to. Those pickups only came a couple of years ago, and there was a time that I really lamented trading the wonderful Sheraton for this expensive Gibson that I did not think could keep up with the much better and much less expensive Sheraton.

Recently as regular followers will know, I did a side by side of the Sire Larry Carlton H7 and the Epiphone Inspired by Gibson ES-335. Both were fine guitars, but neither had the sound or feel of my now properly fixed ‘63 Reissue ES-335. The downside to this review is that in my memory, that old Sheraton was better than both of the review instruments and my actual ES-335 has been changed so much that it is now as good to my ears and hands as my old Sheraton.

The Replacement

Well, as I write this, Black Friday has come and gone, and while I was wandering about guitar shops looking for something cool and on sale, I came across an Epiphone Sheraton II Pro in vintage sunburst. It was in “as new” shape, semi-hollows not being the go to grab guitars for many guitar testers in music shops. I saw it twice, and both times it was being played by other customers and then returned to its hook. Good news for me. I called the store on the Sunday and asked them to put it aside if they still had it. I went down and it was gone from its hook. Oh well, I thought, and then found it in another part of the store. With the Black Friday discount, the cost of acquisition was acceptable to me so I bought it after playing it acoustically for a brief time. It sounded terrific, and I knew it would be even better once I replaced the factory barbed wire strings with something of higher quality. I had in my string box a set of D’Addario NYXLs 9.5 to 44. These are nice strings in my opinion and are my go to if I am out of my custom sets from Curt Mangan or Stringjoy. Whether strings from smaller dedicated makers are better is a personal decision. I like them and I like the personal service that you get from a smaller maker. When Curt Mangan himself calls you with a question about an order, that really stands out to me.

So lousy factory strings aside, and in fairness the guitar did come across an ocean and who knows how many people had played it and never wiped the strings down, it’s pretty darn awesome. I know well that auditory memory is short and frequently skewed but this guitar sounded really good. I know that there are folks who put the sound of an electric guitar solely down to the pickups and say that the wood doesn’t matter. I don’t agree and don’t have the interest in arguing the point.

Guitar Details

The guitar that I bought is finished in Vintage Sunburst, what an old fellow like me would have called Tobacco Sunburst before Tobacco became a curse word. Just like the much more expensive Gibson ES-335, this guitar is made of laminated wood, in this case maple for the top, sides and back. This means that they don’t flex much. It’s a gloss finish, which I much prefer. The neck is wood with a 60’s slim taper. The newest models have a Pau Ferro fingerboard, but given it’s considerably darker colour, I think that this one is rosewood. I prefer the look of rosewood over pau ferro but I cannot really feel a difference. I have one of the original Fender SRV Signature Strats and it has a pau ferro fingerboard and plays great. The Sheraton Pro II is a set neck construction and is equipped with medium-jumbo frets. The construction is great with no sharp fret ends pushing on the bound fingerboard. It’s a 24 3/4 scale with 22 frets, beautiful inlays of mother of pearl and abalone and has a Graphtech Nubone nut. The tuners are proper Grover 18:1 Rotomatics and the bridge and stopbar are Epiphone versions of the Gibson bridge and stopbar. The intonation was a bit out, and that was easily adjusted. From the shop the action and neck relief were fine and needed no adjustment.

The neck pickup is a Probucker 2 and the bridge pickup is a Probucker 3. Both have volume controls that can invoke a coil tap. There is the traditional 3 way switch for pickup selection so there are a variety of tones that are available, although I must admit, I only found out about the coil taps when I checked the specifications as I did not expect this on a thinline semi-hollowbody. The only flaw was that the neck tone control was not tightened down and could rotate. That is what a wrench is for and it was fixed in under a minute. There is a decent range of variation in the tone control although when rolled right off, it sounds like the ES-335 did originally, as thick and dull as old mud. That is fixable with a different wiring loom. If over time I decide to replace the factory pickups, although I hear no reason to do so at present, I will change the pots at that time for a set higher than the 250K standards. The jack is a positive fit and unlike some offshore jacks doesn’t lock onto the cable end in such a way that you feel you are going to rip the jack out of the body when unplugging the guitar.

My first play-through at home was through the REVV D-20. I mostly use this as a recording front end, but I have a nice Fender Deluxe cabinet connected for when I just want it to be an amplifier. It sounded pretty good. I tried the REVV originally with the REVV branded cabinet and was not enthused, but since I added the much less expensive Fender Deluxe 1x12 cabinet, it is much more pleasing. Of course when I use the REVV for recording, I can take advantage of the built-in Two Notes Torpedo so I can get the tones of different amplifiers and cabinets.

What cemented things was when I got to play it through another Black Friday item, a Fender Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb in blonde. I had played the regular Tonemasters and in blind tests of recordings, no one could tell the difference between a Tonemaster and an all tube standard Deluxe Reverb. The blonde units were somewhat limited, as I understand, and use a Neodymium Celestion Creamback instead of the regular Jensen neodymium speaker and also have the bright cap removed. Having played a regular Tonemaster beside a blonde Tonemaster, the sound is very discernible and I much prefer the blonde version. Even though this is a digital amp with only two speaker IRs for recording, as a regular amp it sounds awesome. It’s the first pure DSP amp that I have ever owned, having until now been tube biased completely. I have done a full review on the Tonemaster in a separate article.

Because the Sheraton II Pro has a centre block. it is less likely to launch into feedback than a fully hollow instrument. You can make it howl if you want, but its not automatic. I have an older Casino that feeds back if you just speak the word Marshall into an f hole. The Sheraton II Pro is not a lightweight instrument. All that laminated maple adds up and while Epiphone does not specify the weight, I would say it’s about 8.5 pounds, heavier than my ES-335 by a bit. I fitted it with my fave Right-On brand strap and it sits perfectly and does not flop around. The factory strings were 10 - 46 so the switch to 9.5 - 44 required no setup changes. The feel is completely different and 100% better with the new strings though.

Recorded Samples

I recorded the Sheraton II Pro using the Fender Tonemaster Blonde Deluxe Reverb using the amp’s DI out into an Apollo Twin X interface without any UA plugins direct into Studio One v6 because the computer nearest the amplifier is a Windows machine and on Windows I use Studio One. The guitar ran through a pedal board starting with an EB volume pedal, then a Source Audio Atlas compressor. The compressor goes into an Origin Effects Halcyon which connects to an MXR Duke of Tone, then an Eventide TimeFactor, then an Eventide ModFactor and finally a TC Electronic Hall of Fame 2. For the recordings, I did not use any pedal for the first part of each sequence. For the second parts, I did use the TimeFactor and then the ModFactor. I keep these effects pretty subtle in general. In the mixing stage, I added a UA LA-2A Silver Compressor. Otherwise the tones are unaltered. There are two sequences here, the first one uses the 1st IR which is a Shure SM57 aimed at the edge of the speaker cone centre cap. The second one uses the 2nd IR which is a Sennheiser MD421 aimed at the edge of the speaker cone centre cap. Each sequence has two parts. The first part has no effects pedals engaged, and is just the same thing using the neck, middle and bridge pickup selector positions. The second part is a simple sequence of chords using both pickups and with the Eventide TimeFactor and Eventide ModFactor engaged to illustrate the subtle differences in the two built in IRs.

My Conclusions

In conclusion, if you wanted my opinion, and were looking for a thinline semi-hollowbody guitar like an ES-335 without the aggregious price tag, and Gibson’s currently questionable quality consistency, I would direct you to the Epiphone Sheraton II Pro. It is slightly more expensive than the Epiphone “Inspired by Gibson” 335 and to my mind, a significantly better instrument. Thanks as always for reading and please subscribe to the articles as well as the podcast to receive notification of new postings. Until next time, peace.