Epiphone WildKat

transparent finish,semi-hollow, bigsby tremolo, grover tuners, cheapo p-90s, finished neck. good looking, not to tough to set up. mine came set up pretty well from G.C. I especially like the smaller body. Blows away all but the best of the new Gretsch guitars. You could go with the Gibson ES-135 for similar sound and features, but you'd spend at least 2 or 3 times as much. Truth be told this isn't my main guitar. I have a couple of modded strats and a tele. The Wildkat is usually my back up. If I wanted to use a semi-hollow for my main instrument I would probably spend the extra money and go with the ES-135.

I play in a greaser rock and roll/r&b band. We do everything from jump blues to hillbilly bop to proto-soul. The Wildkat has the look and the p-90s/semi-hollow combo gives a pretty good variety of sounds that are well suited for the music that I play. Bare in mind that I aspire for pretty raw 50s-ish guitar tones like you hear on old Sun,Chess,King,Federal etc records. I use a Fender Reverb Deluxe reissue or a Fender Pro Jr depending on the venue. I do use pedals: A Boss TU-2>Guyatone ST-2>Jauernig Luxury Drive>Tech 21 Double drive>Voodoo Labs MicroVibe>Danelectro Dan Echo. When I use the Pro Jr I lose the double drive, add a Boss TR-2 tremolo and Fender 62 reissue reverb tank.

Yeah I like gear.

The p-90s can be a bit noisy, but every guitar with p-90s that I've ever played are noisy. So are my fenders for that matter.
A little noise comes part in parcel if you're going for the kind of sound that I like. If your going to use the Bigsby I'd recommend a graphite nut or using some nut sauce.

no complaints. The construction on this is good. If you can get this for less than $400 and it is in good shape then you are getting a heck of a lot of instrument for your money.

I play aggressively and we do long sets. I've used this all night. This thing can take it. I always have at least one backup. I don't think I'd ever do a gig on any guitar without one, but a less aggressive player could definately do so.

never dealt with them. I have had 3 epiphones- a dot 335, a 56 goldtop and the wildkat. I've never had any issues with any of them.

I've been playing guitar for about 5 years. I have quite a few guitars, pedals and the 2 amps that I've named above. I like variety so I sell and trade stuff regularly. The only guitars that I'd not consider dumping are my strats and my tele and the danelectro guitarlin that my gal bought me. I wish that it didn't have a finished neck --I'm a Fender guy really. I'd take some steel wool to it, but I may trade or sell it someday and it doesn't really bother me that much. It's a fun guitar. I enjoy it, it's well made, looks and sounds great. I ain't married to it though.

Initially I bought this guitar just for its appealing look and because I liked to own a guitar with P90 pickups. Now I've owned it for almost one year and I observed it under any points of view.
Maybe its made of more narrow pieces of wood (the back and the sides of the body) compared with Gibsons' and expansive guitars , but I have to say that they are very good assembled and very finished in every details everything works fine, just one little note : the bigsby arm tends to loose its solidity with the mechanism and sometime its necessary to screw up the screw-nut. The small body is very comfortable to keep in your legs during practicing.

Taking it in your hands ... you'll immediately get a great feeling with this guitar, the P90 pickups are amazing and very usable in every their combination. Their "compressed" sound combined with the single coil brightness gives you a great compact distorted sound or a glassy sound when in the clean channel ... I use it with a Fender twin amp and the system works perfectly. Great sustain...
Really it is a very usable guitar , not less than my Gibson ES175D.!!!
And its price is tiny!!! I have to say that also in acoustic it sound nice ... the body vibrates very well with the strings vibrations. Surprisingly for a semi hollow and small bodied guitar!

Everithing is fine ... a very solid (and heavy) guitar (even if small bodied) ... I tried to low down the action alot ... and I partially managed in it ... I got a "low action" without buzzs , not a "very low action" ... but for the rest I met the same problem for my Gibson, so I guess I were asking for a too low action ;)

It got much better when I changed strings ... it is wonderful with ErnieBall regula slinky .10 set (the one with yellow-green package)

Until now ...it works fine !

I didn't need any customer support

Its an amazing guitar for its price!! In fact I'am buying also an AlleyKat ...the same mechanic but different pickups ... its a very well built guitar I think (and I'am a guitar collector that own many guitars)

Made in November of '03 (bought at Daddy's Junky Warehouse sale for $320, because it has a postage-stamp-sized stain under the finish on the upper bass bout).

Flamed Antique Natural top with Mahogany sides and back, Grover tuners, Bigsby, and "Designed-by-Gibson" P90s.

Everything you need.

Very good to excellent P90 tone. The sound brightened up considerably when the polepieces were raised and balanced, as is typical with P90s and other pickups.

The tone quality really jumped when I replaced the aged (blackened) strings with 11-50s.

Nice fat P90 sound, ballsy on the neck pickup lower strings (no mud). No need to change the pickups out.

I found out the (unpotted) P90s squeal when switching effects. This is not normally a problem for me, since I don't use overdrive, but I may pot the pickups anyway, to eliminate any microphonics.

Excepting the one blemish, was virtually perfect (I lowered the nut on the top two strings a bit). Neck is arrow-straight, fret ends smooth (actually rounded). Bridge was properly located and nut spacing correct (unlike a Casino I tried recently).

Solid design (that's why it weighs 8 pounds), including hardware. Tuning is stable, even with Bigsby use.

With it's large "sustain soundpost," it's rugged (top is 3/16", but still sounds like a hollowbody).

The neck didn't move when changing from 10-46s to 11-50s. Very unusual.

No experience with this guitar. My experience with Gibson has been very good overall (mostly excellent; a little bad).

Interested me in a retro way, but ended up sucking.

Decent for clean, reverbish, complex chording, no way for singing leads, forget it. No 3 dimensional sound here, unless howling, hollowbody feedback is your thing. Think bassman, twin or deluxe fender gain structure and this may work for you if your into the Cliff Gallup twang...but it doesn't twang like a Gretch, twangs like a Korean import of sub-standard material put together with skilled mass workers. P90's and bigsby would appear to be aimed at early rock primalness a al' Link Wray. The use of the Bigsby knocks this guit promptly out of tune. May work for the Peter Gunn theme ad-nauseum. If you can figure out the trick this pony may work. But play lot's of em' cause their cranking these things out like Hundai's, and remember, Buddy Holly played a Strat.

Action was blah, no spring to the strings, setup poor, fretted out at 10th fret and buzzed someplaces. I raised the action to be even across the board and it helped a little...at least it buzzed out evenly. The rest of the workmanship was pretty darn good. I think solid wood materials other than laminates make a huge difference in a instrument. The thing strums loud because it's semi-hollowbody, but due to poor materials makes no difference when amplified. The p90's hum like a substation and grind quite well, overdriving my 65 champ with ease. It still can't help the laminate materials the thing is construted of. Save your hard-won rockabilly money for a Setzer Gretch or Gibson.

Unknown, took it back.

N/A

Solid body rockers, beware. This thing is for clean, low-to-no gain situations. Being primarily a skanking strat rthythm player and gary moore type searing soloist, I was looking for something different. I either lack the skills or don't have time, patience or extra $$$ to make this work for me.

Bigsby tailpiece, p-90, i think the body is made of mahogny and the top is made of maple. A very good finish which makes the guitar look much more expensive. My wildcat has a original bigsby, not one of those epiphone ones. The features on this guitar are just great. I give it a 9 because of the tuners which tend to get out of tune quite quikly.

The sound of this guitar is just great. I play mine through a kustom tube 12a and juse a zoom707, and even through this crappy equipment the guitar sounds great. I have also tried it through a cube 30(with one of my friends.
I am 16 years old now, and this is my second guitar. I used to have a squier strat, and the diferense between them are just scary. I play mostly rock. Zeppelin and pink floyd kind of stuff, but i've also started to get interested in jazz, and this guitar suits me perfectly. It has a very fine clean sound, and good overdrive sound. But it is not really that good at playing metal, but im tired of that kind of musik anyway.

I hated the way the guitar was setup wen i bought it. The intonation was terrible, and it just didnt feel right to play on it. I was this close not to buy this gutiar because of that, but the sound was just so great and it looked so good. So i bought it, and read a lot on the net about how to set up the guitar. The first thing i did was to change the strings to 0.11 and then adjusted the truss rod so the neck did not have any relief(f?) then i lowered the action til the verge of fret buzing, and then adjusted the intonaton, and that did it. The guitar is now so comfortably and set up, in my point of view, perfectly. the finish was also breathtaking. i Give it a 6 fore the way it was when i bought it, but it is a 10 now!

I don't really know, ive only had it for 7 months but it looks as if it will last some time.

never dealt with them

I am not really that experienced when it comes to guitars. I'm only 16 after all, but this guitar is truly great.

Features are well documented already. It has Grovers and the whammy bar is a Bigsby. My guess is that it's licensed by Bigsby but made by Epiphone. The wildKat is a thin guitar - think ES335 - NOT ES175. Also, the WildKat is heavier than you'd think - just as heavy as my solid body 5 string bass!

I've been wanting a hollow body electric guitar to add to my collection for a long time. As much as I wanted one, it never seemed to get to the top of the "Needs" list - it just stayed on the "Someday" list. Then to my surprise, my wife said I could order one up for Valentines Day! Woo hoo! I wanted a guitar to do Brian Setzer rockabilly sound, early Beatles (Day Tripper, Nowhere Man, Ticket to Ride, etc), Sun Records rockabilly/country sound, and still pull off blues and jazz standards. I'm not a heavy duty jazzer - more the thing when Clapton does "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." To sum up, I guess I'm looking for a poor man's Gretsch. I had to decide between the Epiphone WildKat and the Ibanez AFS75TD.

Both guitars seem to be designed to fill that need. After 5 months of routine to heavy usage, I have to say the WildKat nails that stuff. The clean, chimey tones are very Beatles 65. I recorded some slide parts and it just nailed the distorted blues sound. All the rockabilly/country stuff was very authentic sounding. I like my jazz tones a litle brighter than most, so the P90s give me a clear, pure tone I may not get with a guitar made for jazz. I've played rock, jazz, country, blues and it just gets the sound - distorted or clean.

Action - very playable right out of the box. I waited to tweak it - it was that close. The tone knob was a little scratchy at first, but I worked it out by working the knob back and forth. Not a biggie. There was minor problem with the 13th fret. I didn't notice it for months - but the guitar was fretting out at the 13th fret, but if I pushed harder it would play clean! No big deal - I had a tech shave down the frets. He charged me less than he quoted because it was even easier than he thought. More on this later. Another issue - the metal cover on the neck pup started to peel after 3 weeks. See comments under Customer Support.

Epiphones have a consistency problem. Off the rack, some of their guitars are gold and others are firewood, so you have to be careful about what you buy. I look at Epi's as potential fixer uppers: I take the purchase price and figure what the potential upgrades would cost so the guitar was up to snuff. On the Wildkat, I had $400 to start, $200 or less for redoing all electronics, if the Bigsby was no good, I would return the guitar - that and a bad neck were deal breakers. Tuning keys were another judgement call. Doing all those things had well under the price of similar guitars from Gibson, Gretsch, Guild etc. and there's no guarentee what they're like off the rack either.Turns out any electronic upgrades, fixes would be less than $50 maybe even less than $20. I expect to play this guitar for many years.

I called them about the peeling pickup. The guy told me they normally don't support finish type problems, but since I'd had it so short a time that he thought they should. I expect them to send me a pickup cover - instead, the sent a whole new pickup! It took 2 weeks to get it. I was very pleased.

I started playing music 30 years ago. I now write songs in my home studio and have an assortment of guitars, basses, and keyboards. The guitars are Carvin and an old acoustic. I also hava a Carvin acoustic bass, 74 Fender Jazz, 79 BC Rich Mockingbird bass and a Dean 5 string bass. If this were lost etc, I'd definitely replace it. I'll definitely consider other Epiphones as well. I AB-ed this guitar with the Ibanez AFS75TD. Sound wise they're only subtley different - the Ibanez has humbuckers instead of single coils and I preferred the extra bite. If I played more jazz than rock and country, I'd have the Ibanez. I prefered the feel of the Epiphone, but you can't go wrong with the Ibanez - quality control may be better. If Epiphones consistency problems concern you or if you don't have access to a good tech, the Ibanez may be the way to go.

2002,Black transparent, you know the specs.
Mine does have grover tuners though.
Some bad fit around the f holes in the binding,nothing to major.
Great neck, feels alot like my Les Paul. Very comfortable.

Great guitar for just about any style.
p90s are nice and clean when I roll off the volume
or can grind with the best of em.
Use a 59 Bassman LTD with boss gt6.
Sounds like p90s should, not too much noise much less than some I've owned. I like p90s so I take the good with the bad.
This guitar sounds great on all pickup settings, I even use the bridge pickup which has never happened before on any hollowbody I've owned. I love the tones I get from it... early beatles to SRV.
Stray cats, buy this guitar with some slapback delay I'd put it against any Gretsche.

Poor setup when I got it, set the neck to perfectly flat, strung it with ernie ball 10s, Raised the action just enough to stop fret buzz.
One of the few guitars I own that I have been able to set the neck this flat without having to file the last 6 or 7 frets down. AMAZING.
Plays almost as well as my 72 SG. The bookmatched top does look nice
but doesn't match up at all. All controlls work well and I love the master volume, it is placed nicely wish I had it on allmy guitars.

I belive it will hold up nicely its built well. I like the Bigsby,
stays in tune as long as you behave.
It is heavier than I had expected,but does have excellent sustain.
It will feedback if you crank your amp so beware. I have found I use the master volume alot to help controll this, but I will keep playing this at all my gigs. It is now a part of my main line up. It is also great for those early stones tones Sticky fingers, etc.

Don't know.

Been playing guitar in cover bands for 17 years.
Have a LP,SG, Gibson Acoustic, (john lennon model)
Fender Bassman LTD, Hot Rod Deluxe, Boss GT6,(an excellent multi effects)
If this was stolen, I'd replace it but not sure if I'd be able to get
one that plays this nice.
I played the Ibanez and Samics, I bought this guitar solely for the master volume feature and I wanted a hollowbody but not an ES type.
No Regrets at all. For the money you cant go wrong, I have hardly touched my LP or SG since I got this guitar and it has been three weeks.

Korean made with P90s. The torquoise finsh is absolutely stunning. One of the prettiest guitars I've seen in awhile. It surpassed my expectation. Despite other comments, I like the controls. I'm a simple guy and this thing lets me set up the way I like and adjust volume from there. A lot of people think it has the Gretsch vibe. I think it's more a hollow or semi-hollowbodied relative of a Les Paul. It certainly has the weight. Think Gibson/Epi's version of a thinline - at least in my opinion. The tuners are great but the Bigsby is a bit dissappointing but I've been told that all bigsbys work the way this one does - it's my first. The best whammy barred guitar I ever owned was a Reverend Avenger but that's another story for another time. It has a fat C neck and came with no accesories.

I play all kinds of styles and this seems to do the job admirably. I play it through a Fender Blues Jr and though it doesn't have the power to roar - it certaily has a mean mean growl. It's a rich full sound through the Fender and it especially likes the Adrenalinn II and Big Muff PI. I guess I rock wioth it more than anything. I love everything about this guitar except the Bigsby which is great to dive bomb with but I like to pull out of a dive and climb high as a rule. Again, I've been told that Bigsbys are not for that purpose.

It played fine upon arrival. I had it professionally set up upon receipt and it makes a huge difference. It plays like butter and sounds like thunder. I'm not sure what all the cryingis about in the other reviews. This is one of the most playable instruments I own. The finish as mentioned above is spectacular. I noticed that's a common with everyone else too. Just beautiful. I love this guitar.

So far it seems very solid and reliable.

no opinion

I've played since 4th Grade in the early 60's. I own about 9 guitars right now, paired down from 15 or 17. If I can't get around to playing them, they need to be in the hands of someone who will. I currently own guitars to fill specific purposes for me. I have Alvarez 12 string and classical 6 string, acoustic electrics (surprisingly fabulous), A Guild JF30 (American 90's made), Fender Nashville Power Tele Deluxe with Fishman's (maybe my fav), A Fender Custom Shop 1960s Esquire reissue (Sunburst), Ric 620/6 and model 1997 in Fireglo, A Fender Strat XII (nice alternative to a Ric), Hamer Echotone (killer guitar for the twice it's value), A Faded SG (I looked 20 years for the perfect SG no matter what the price- this one is the one for me).

I play Friday night garage jams, it's less work than trying to be a pro and I compose/record. This guitar fits a specific grind, and reallylikes going through the various modeler effect boxes out on the market like the POD and my old Digi RP1.

I'm not sure I would replace this immediately if lost or stlen but there would be a hole in my musical life. It's a lot of fun to play and has fast action. The only thing I wish it did was have a bigsby that can Scream upwards. I don't think I'ld change anything about it.

2 - P90 single coil pups, maple top, mahogony back and sides, semi hollobody, a thick block of some type of hardwood runs length wise inside the body, grover tuners, Bigsby Tremolo. Les Paul looking guitar but with the Bigsby and F holes, Sunburst top, mahogony back and sides. 1 Tone , 1 Volume for each PUP, 1 Master Volume, one selector switch as controls.

Awesome sound!! The P90's are music just strumming the guitar! Good range of tone though somewhat limited due to 1 Tone control, experimenting with the 2 PUP volume controls varies tone somewhat.

PUPS being single coil do hum somwhat, not as bad as my Fender but it is there. The PUPs are microphonic, you can hear picking and other articulation, great for blusey music though probably not to everyones taste. Great sustain!!! May not be good for heavy metal, which i like to play, but excellant for Blues, esp. Southern and Chicago style blues which i love to play :-))

Excellant fit and finish even though i somehow jabbed a screwdriver into the back of the body near the output jack trying to adjust the height leaving an impression of the driver's blade. :-(,,,,.

Fret buzz is another issue, as much as I tried get rid of it,,I can't. The strings are adjusted to a happy medium, strings are set a little higher than I like but the buzzing is diminished. My Fender and es335 knock off do not have the problem quite as bad as this guitar, too bad considering the sound of the guitar.

7 for the fret Buzz,, 10 for the finish

Very solid, somwhat heavy, I'm guessing it would hold up to live playing if the bigsby was not used

Been playing for a few years. This is really an excellant guitar, sans the fret buzz. I think the fret buzz may be just more apparant on this guitar because of the hollowbody design and the it is relativly loud unplugged. Almost as loud as an el cheapo, plywood acoustic I have!

BTW I consider any guitar off the rack as used since they are played by other people!!

An Epiphone Wildkat 2003 version. Real Bigsby Trem and Grover tuners. The guitar has an awsome light natural finish, a laminated top. 3 volume controls (one master volume at a very good place, 2 normal volumes), one tone control and a 3 way toggle switch. 2 great sounding p90 pickups. The body style is kinda 'Gretsch'.

It suits my music style very well. I play music from bands like; Stray Cats, Beatles, Elvis, Green Day and Oasis. This guitar can do almost any music style, really it can sound bright, warm, clean, distorted ect...

The action is great! no complains about that.
The guitar contains no flaws at all! This is amazing.

it's just great.

The guitar withstands all my live concerts and jamsessions, it never lets me down.
The hardware will probably last and the finish is good.
This is a guitar you can depend on and, yes you can use it without a backup, but it's always smart to have a backup.

Never dealt with the company.

I've been playing for about 12 years now.
I also own: Epiphone SG g400, Washburn D12, Aria Pro 2 TA 61, Essex Jazz bass, Richwood RE62 strat.
If it were stolen I defenitly buy the same kind of axe, maybe a Gretsch, A Ibanez Artcore or A Epiphone wildkat,flamekat or alleycat.

It's a good guitar for a fair price, try one, but try the new types with the real bigsby and grover tuners.