Epiphone G-400

One of my friend actually wanted this guitar.

Epiphone G-400

For Epiphone guitars, I prefer SG guitars rather than Les Paul. The reason is because of the neck profile. SG's neck allows me to reach to the last fret at ease without any strain on the hand.. Les Paul, on the other hand is different. Despite being a set-neck construction for most LP, the neck and the body is joined at 17th fret for most cases. To some, there might be difficulties in playing the lower frets due to this.

My initial plan was to drop by Swee Lee to buy a microphone for Musicians' Club. Coincidently, I happened to see this guitar so I give it a try.

Neck
A set-neck construction. Comes with a rosewood fretboard. The neck of G-400 is rather huge, as expected from Epiphones/Gibsons. To me, it is definitely not a good shred guitar. I sometimes wonder why does she choose G-400. While I may not have any trouble playing given my large hands, it might be difficult for a girl's hand.


Body
It is a mahogany body.


Tone
Clean sounds rather superb. Very warm feeling, especially with the neck pickup. Played it clean for quite long before I decided to try with distortion.
Distortion-wise, I find is a little too muddy. The lead notes will sound alright on this guitar but the tone is a bit muddy when I was playing chords. This muddiness can be reduced by using the bridge pickup of course but if you can feel it, the muddiness will still persist. Those who can't hear the difference, just ignore it.
The set-neck construction gives G-400 a good sustain, too.

Overall: 4/5
While I like G-400 because of its easy accessibility to low frets, its muddy tone is what I would normally avoid. It can be improved by changing its stock pickup, I guess. Moreover, I prefer a brighter tone from a guitar, which is why I like Alder. Even though mahogany is a good wood, it doesn't appeal me. Apart from that, everything else of the guitar is fine.