Epiphone Hummingbird Acoustic Guitar Review

Aloha!

The law of diminishing returns turns out to be true in almost every case where it is applied, and the cost of musical instruments is no exception. There are some very nice budget guitars out there, and as you add hundreds or even thousands of dollars to the price the improvements in tone and playability are not commensurate with the amount spent. Don’t get me wrong, there is no substitute for a Santa Cruz acoustic or a Sadowsky bass, but there are some great values out there for short money.

One example of this would be the Epiphone Hummingbird acoustic guitar. Surely you know of Epiphone, they produce the entry-level Gibson brand instruments that get re-sold for almost nothing as soon as a guitarist can scrape up enough dosh for a real Gibson. Though much maligned, these imported guitars can be quite good.

The Hummingbird was Gibson’s first square-shoulder dreadnought which was introduced in 1960. This flat-top has been adopted by plenty of high-profile players over the years, including Keith Richards, John Mellencamp, Sheryl Crow and Tom Petty. It is pretty much Gibson’s answer to Martin’s D-series guitars.

The Epiphone version here was made in Indonesia and it is chock full of good materials and parts so the labor costs must be almost non-existent. Human rights advocates be warned…

The woods are surprisingly good, with a solid spruce top and a bound mahogany body and neck. The fretboard and bridge are made of real rosewood, which is amazing when you consider that Gibson is using all kind of bizarre stuff for Les Paul fretboards instead of rosewood. The body is sprayed in a bright Heritage Cherry Sunburst, which is probably my least favorite part of this guitar. It is very bright and unnatural looking.

Oh yes, and it has the signature hummingbird-decorated pickguard, which I am quite fond of. For the life of me I cannot figure out Gibson puts a plain guard on the Hummingbird Pro models.

The slim-taper profile neck is quite good. It has a 1.68-inch wide nut and 20 frets with a 15 ½-inch scale. The rosewood fretboard has pearloid parallelogram inlays and there is an adjustable trussrod. On one end there are chrome Grove tuners (though the factory calls them nickel), and on the other end there is a compensated synthetic bones bridge saddle. One welcome piece of hardware is two strap pins. Why do so many manufacturers only give you one?

And the Epiphone Hummingbird is really well put together. The finish quality is good, and the frets are as good as the ones that you will find on a new Gibson Les Paul (which is not saying much, I guess). The tuners hold well, and in general the intonation is good. The neck can be adjusted for a low and fast action, though a little nut filing may be needed. And best of all, this guitar has a gloriously loud tone and a relatively balanced sound from string to string. Keep in mind that this is not an expensive guitar, and everything is relative…

I have saved the best for last, and that is the price. The Epiphone Hummingbird has a list price of $499, and a street price of $299. If you look around you can find even better deals online, and used ones are embarrassingly cheap. But if you buy a new one you get the Epiphone Limited Lifetime Warranty and Gibson 24/7/365 customer service. This is really the best acoustic deal on the market right now. Trust me…

Mahalo!

Gibson Hummingbird Pro EC Cutaway Acoustic-Electric Guitar Review

Hiya!

For years I have been very disappointed with the playability of new Gibson electric guitars, but have never really used any of their acoustic guitars. But, I recently had the opportunity to play a Gibson Hummingbird Pro EC acoustic-electric guitar for a few weeks, and thought I would share my thoughts on it, because it is a pretty neat guitar.

Introduced in 1960, the Hummingbird was Gibson’s first square-shouldered dreadnought, and is an iconic guitar that has been played by oodles of popular artists over the years. The American-made Pro EC model we are looking at here is exclusively sold through Guitar Center and their Musician’s Friend website.

These guitars are different than the traditional Hummingbird guitars. The Pro EC is a cutaway guitar (a non-cutaway version is also available), and the body shape falls somewhere between a square-shoulder dreadnought (like the Hummingbird Modern Classic) and a round-shoulder dreadnought (think J-45). There is also no signature Hummingbird pickguard, so I am not even sure why they continue to call it one. The Pro EC comes in about $950 cheaper than the standard models.

The body has a Sitka spruce top with solid mahogany sides and back and the whole thing is sprayed with a thin nitrocellulose vintage sunburst finish. The builders did a fantastic job on the rosette inlay, white must be made of 10 concentric pieces. Like their other models, the Pro EC has scalloped and radiused top bracing. And like the original Hummingbird (and the original J-30), this model has an X brace to provide a balanced tone. As I said before it is a cutaway so there is really nice access to the frets that I never use.

The neck is the best part of this guitar, and it plays better than any new Les Paul I have tried -- they got the frets level on this one and it is super comfortable and beefy. It has a glued dovetail joint with the body, so there are no bolts involved and it has a solid feel to it. There is a 1.68-inch wide nut and a 12-inch fretboard radius with a nicely-rounded profile to the back. It has a 25 ½-inch scale and 20 frets sunk into its rosewood fretboard, along with the ever-popular mother of pearl split-parallelogram inlays. The neck is bound, with the binding extending over the fret ends.

The headstock has the crown inlay that Gibson has been using since the 1940s. The back of the headstock looks exactly like the ones on other Gibson models that break if you look at them funny. Well, a quick search on the internet showed that almost every used Hummingbird Pro that is up for sale has a repaired headstock joint. Hmmmm. The factory installed Grover Rotomatic tuners, which are a nice choice. They have a 14:1 ratio so they are very precise, and they really hold nicely. A helpful extra is that these tuners have user-adjustable tension, using a countersunk screw.

And there is a great electronics package too. The Hummingbird Pro with the cutaway body comes with the Fishman Prefix Plus-T preamp system. This system has volume, Bass, treble and semi-parametric contour controls, as well as a brilliance control, a Phase switch and a notch filter. Oh, and an on-board chromatic tuner too. By the way, the non-cutaway model gets the L.R. Baggs Element Active pickup system, which I have not had the opportunity to try out.

These things all combine together to make a very good guitar that plays well and sounds great. The thick neck might not be for everyone, but it is smooth and there is not fret buzz. The tone is well balanced with a bit of a bias towards the low end, making this a very full-sounding instrument with a high end that can still ring like a bell. The electronics sound very natural with no added noise, and there enough adjustments available to really dial in the tone. This guitar sounds great when played through an amplifier or directly into a PA. It is a viable alternative to a Martin dreadnought, for sure, and it is easy on the eyes too.

Though it is cheaper than the standard models, the Hummingbird Pro EC cutaway is still pretty spendy with a list price of $3599, and a street price of $2299, which includes a nice TKL/Gibson hardshell case. As I said, these guitars are only available through Guitar Center or Musician’s Friend and they both have good return policies, so it might be worth trying one of these out and comparing it to a Martin before making your final decision.

Mahalo!