I pulled the trigger. Not on either of the guitars I’ve been GASing for, but I really like what I’ve gotten at more than half the price of an Epiphone 1962 Sheraton E212T or a Fender Modern Player Starcaster. I got a 1995 Epiphone Sheraton VSB.
I’ve started cleaning it up. First I took the old, grimy strings off. Then I cleaned the bridge pieces and polished the body. Next I cleaned the fretboard with a little elbow grease and lemon oil. Then I checked out the pickups. The bridge pick up didn’t really line up with the posts.
All I had to do was push down on the cover and it lined back up.
I should’ve polished the frets next, but I got impatient. I put new strings on. Tuned it. And played it.
It feels really good and I still haven’t checked the neck relief, intonation, and pick up height. And I still need to track down some gold strap lock buttons. I hope to do all that this weekend.
Confessions of a Wanna Be Guitar Player 
Super acquisition!!
Thanks for the complement! So far it has been great fun to work on and play, but I feel I am just getting warmed up.
Beeeeeeeeautiful.
I know! I really like the late 80’s-mid 90’s vintage sunburst Epiphone Sheratons over the more current sunburst Sheraton II’s of the 2000’s. The browns just seem richer than the strongly contrasting yellow and black of today. And it does play great! Thanks for the comment!
Nice guitar – I had one of these that I picked up super cheap when I was 19 – used. I think it got stolen out of a van at sometime, more likely I sold it for next to nothing. I had a hard time getting it to play well – but it sounded nice and funky with just a slightly broken up tone. If it is good enough for John Lee Hooker I guess it should have been good enough for me. I’d play it at this super weird club where I had a weekly gig that had a laundry mat on the one side and a bar on the other. It was in the basement of a bank so there wasn’t a single window and it was pretty damp & dank.
The Wash & Slosh
I think it’d pay $40 and we’d get lots of beer. I played to lots of empty chairs in that bar.
Sounds like a lot of good memories. Or at least memorable moments! I’m still trying to dial in the best sound for this guitar. I can pull of a great John Lee Hooker on the bridge pick up, but the neck pick up still sounds muddy. It’ll just take a little more time to dial in…but maybe I just need to play it at the Wash and Slosh!
I’d agree about the neck. Maybe time to pull a Malcolm Young and just take it out and leave it open?
What do you play it through?
It sounds like JLH just had his amp turned up to full blast and played so lightly that all that gnarly string noise, fingernails&whatnot would come out super loud.
Ha! I do tend to use the bridge pick up more than the neck, but not enough to remove the neck pick up entirely. I actually really like the sound of the two pick ups combined. That middle selector position gets a great blend of what I like in each pick up individually.
As for what I play through, I have a hodge podge collection of a pedal board that is plugged into a Frenzel Champ Super Sportster which is driving a Celestion Vintage 30 in a 1×12 pine speaker cab I made.
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Nice acquisition! I’ve been checking out the Epiphone electrics lately and it seems like a quality guitar. Good to know that even after a couple decades they can still be polished up to sound great.
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