Beginning in 1997, Epiphone moved its production to China and Indonesia. By the late 1970s, Epiphone production began moving to Korea, and by the mid-1980s, all Epiphones were Korean-built. In the 1970s, Epiphone's parent company (now Norlin Corporation) began outsourcing production of Epiphone instruments to Japan, while maintaining Gibson production in the US. In 1957 the company was acquired by Gibson parent company CMI, who merged Epiphone operations with Gibson. In 1951, a four-month-long strike caused a relocation of Epiphone Headquarters from New York City to Philadelphia. After Epi died in 1943, control of the company went to his brothers, Orphie and Frixo. The company produced its recording line of banjos in 1924 and, four years later, took on the name of the 'Epiphone Banjo Company'. Just after the end of World War I, the company started to make banjos. Anastasios died in 1915, and his son, Epaminondas ('Epi'), took over.Īfter two years, the company became known as 'The House of Stathopoulo'. Stathopoulos moved to the United States in 1903 and continued to make his original instruments, as well as mandolins, from a factory at 35-37 36th Street in Long Island City, Queens, New York. Aside from guitars, Epiphone has also made double basses, banjos, and other string instruments, as well as amplifiers.Įpiphone began in 1873, in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now İzmir, Turkey), where Greek founder Anastasios Stathopoulos made his own fiddles and lutes (specifically, the oud and the laouto). Today, Epiphone is still used as a brand for the Gibson company, both for budget models of other Gibson-branded products and for several Epiphone-exclusive models. Over time, as Gibson moved its own manufacturing operations to other facilities, Epiphone followed suit Gibson has also subcontracted the construction of Epiphone products to various facilities in the US and internationally. Gibson relocated Epiphone's manufacturing operation from its original Queens, New York, factory to Gibson's Kalamazoo, Michigan, factory. was purchased by Gibson, its main rival in the archtop guitar market at the time. After taking over his father's business, Epaminondas Stathopoulos named the company 'Epiphone' as a combination of his own nickname 'Epi' and the suffix ' -phone' (from Greek phon-, 'voice') in 1928, the same year it began making guitars.

Electric, acoustic, archtop & resonator guitarsĮpiphone is an American musical instrument brand that traces its roots to a musical instrument manufacturing business founded in 1873 by Anastasios Stathopoulos in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire, and moved to New York City in 1908.

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