Epiphone 635i

Made in Korea in 1987. It has a Jackson solo looking body. It has a 24 fret neck with the hockey stick headstock and dot inlays on the top edge of the fret board (instead of centered). I don't know what kind of wood the body is but it is solid and has a carved top like the newer Jackson solo bodies. It has 1 volume, and 1 tone "push pull" pot. It has plastic covered passive pickups with a humbucker in the bridge and singles in the middle and neck. The pickups have an "i" on them. The humbucker can be switched to single mode with the push pull tone pot. Mine came with a Kahler Spyder tremelo, however I have also heard of these guitars coming with Floyd Rose trems. It has a standard nut, then a locking nut after the standard one. Mine is ruby red colored with metal flake and black headstock and hardware. It has a screw on neck, but instead of neck plate the screws have recessed gromets and the back of the guitar where the neck hooks on is carved out so the body is thinner there.

When I got the guitar is sounded pretty bad. The stock pickups were junk and real microphonic and got feedback like crazy. It also sounded like a piece of tin. I fixed the problem by pulling all of the wiring and the humbucker and replaced it all with new 500K pots, wiring, and a newer humbucker out of an Epiphone Les Paul that measured real strong. Now with such a strong humbucker in it, it is almost impossible to get a good clean sound out of it, but it rips hard with distortion. I cranked the singles right out of the way they were so weak compared to the humbucker. It still has a bright sound, bright enough that I usually turn the tone knob back a little. My rating here is before I changed the electronics and humbucker. Now it would be closer to a 7 or 8.

The action is pretty close. When I got the guitar it had quite a bit of fret buzz but there was no neck relief and the bridge was adjusted real low. I put a little relief in the neck and raised the bridge 1/4 turn and now there is hardly any buzz and the action is still pretty low. The original fret job is pretty nice. The big Kahler Spyder is comfortable to rest my hand on. The ruby red finish is still bright and real nice, especially with the carved top when lights hit it. It just has a couple chips around the edges and some paint missing where somewhere along the way someone made a left handed guitar out of it and moved the front strap button to the bottom horn.

I think it would do fine with live playing, as long as you play all hard rock with no clean songs with it. The hardware has lasted 20 years and it is still solid. The only hardware issue was the trem arm that came with the guitar when I got it was not the stock arm. It was some skinny arm that just slid in and the only thing holding it was this little set screw on the trem. I just emailed a guy who I found on the internet that makes guitar parts like solid brass trem arms, I will be buying a new arm. When I got the guitar it had strap locks installed so no problems there. It would work fine at a gig without a backup(if you don't have a backup), but I wouldn't use it myself unless I had the need for a tremelo in a song or two. I have an Epiphone Les Paul Custom, and Epiphone Zakk Wylde signature that are my gigging guitars.

Who knows? Probably not much for a 20 year old guitar. Although my buddy that sold me the guitar had contacted them before I bought it from him for some info on it since there isn't much on the internet about them. He found out from Epiphone that in the mid to late 80s Wayne Charvel designed these guitars for Epiphone, but they had no records of any having a Kahler trem on them, they only came with Floyd Roses as far as they could tell. But I noticed the Kahler fits perfect in the rout on the top of the guitar and I found one of these on Ebay and the seller said he pulled the stock Kahler Spyder and installed a new Floyd, but included the Kahler in the auction. The one in the auction was black, so I know they came in Red and black.

I picked this guitar from a friend on a whim. He wanted to unload a couple guitars to buy a new one (you know how it goes) and it was like nothing else I have hanging on my walls. I had gotten rid of all my shredder whammy bar type guitars a long time ago. I switched over to Les Pauls and Explorer type guitars.
But everything on this looks like new even though it is 20 years old and it is hard to stop staring at so I bought it. With a carved top soloist body the guitar seemed ahead of it's time, plus who doesn't love hocky stick head stocks! The main reason I did this review was because there is virtually no info on these guitars on the internet and am hoping to start something. The problem is, since there is nothing on the outside of the guitar that says 635i that I think people don't know what they have so it's hard to find with a search.