This 1948 Epiphone Zephyr Deluxe just received a professional refret and plays beautifully. The guitar comes from the era when Epiphone was still experimenting with how best to make electric guitars for their clientele. This one shows the early version of the Tone Spectrum pickups with the mounting surround. The mid-position pickup placement as this one has was seen in some Epiphone and Gibson guitars up through the 1960s. In the case of this guitar, the pickup used and the placement yields an electric tone which comes remarkably close to the acoustic tone of the instrument which is a wonderfully pleasant surprise. This guitar really sounds great. My personal guess is that it is a combination of the unpotted, single-coil, top-mounted pickup placed right onto one of the most resonant areas of the body.
The woods used are beautiful with a laminated spruce top, a 5-ply flamed maple neck, and most remarkably a maple back that displays both flame and birdseye figuring. The fretboard on this one displays the desireable cloud inlays typically associated with the Deluxe model, rather than the Emperor style inlays seen on some Zephyr Deluxe models.
As noted before, the guitar has just been professionally refretted and plays great. The original frets had been played so that they were almost flat to the board. We wanted to make sure this beauty went out into the world ready to go, so we had to make sure that the new owner had a beautiful new set of frets on it. The neck has a full, soft V-shape that transitions to a C-shaped carve as one moves up to higher frets.
It's had a few modifications over the years that did not affect the original hardware of electronics all of which remain intact. The include four repaired holes that had been drilled into the headstock, a secondary output jack installed in the side, separate from the original, and an on/off switch that goes to the secondary jack. The on/off switch and secondary jack appear to have been for something added to the guitar, completely separate from the original electronics.
Weight - 6.75 pounds
Nut width - 1.74 inches
1st fret depth - 0.94 inches
9th fret depth - 1.03 inches
Scale length - 25.5 inches
The guitar comes with the original Lifton hardshell case.
Ships free in the United States and for reasonable rates worldwide.