1940s Epiphone Triumph Carved-Top Archtop Guitar

Overview: This guitar is an absolute bruiser of a trad-jazz-box. It's loud, forward, punchy, and aggressive but has good bass response as well. The neck is fast and easy and, despite its (also-bruised) appearance, Ancel has put a ton of work into it and so it's a superb player's guitar. If you are after a Triumph and it's associated big-band thunder but want one on a budget -- look no further. Unfortunately, the original label inside the body is long-gone so it's hard to date it accurately.

This was sent-in for repair years ago and sat for ages due to the huge amount of work needing to be done to get it going. Ironically, just as Ancel was finishing-up work on it, the owner asked if he could trade for one of Ancel's instruments, and so they made the deal -- how about that? All's well that ends well...!

Repairs included: Ancel replaced a bad truss rod with a new, aluminum-channel truss with access under the fretboard (just like the original), fit a new rosewood fretboard to it and hand-cut replacement inlay for it and fit binding as well. After that there were a number of hairline cracks on the top and back to repair, many wonkily-repaired seam fixes to re-repair, and then setup work and tweaking to be done. A new board means fresh frets, too, and they feel great. It's playing bang-on and ready to go.

• Weight: 5 lbs 13 oz
• Scale length: 25 1/2"
• Nut width: 1 5/8"
• Neck shape: medium C
• Board radius: 14"
• Depth at first fret: .89"
• Depth at seventh fret: .89"
• Body width: 17"
• Body depth: 3 3/8"
• Top wood: solid carved spruce
• Back & sides wood: solid carved flamed maple
• Bracing type: tonebar
• Bridge: adjustable ebony
• Fretboard: rosewood
• Neck wood: maple
• Action height at 12th fret: 3/32” bass 1/16” treble (fast, spot-on)
• String gauges: 54w-12 lights
• Truss rod: adjustable
• Neck relief: straight
• Fret style: medium-jumbo modern

Condition notes: Suffice to say, it had a lot of old "repairs" and a refinish job to natural done at some point. The bridge and pickguard (which is nice-quality) are unoriginal but the tuners and tail appear to be, for sure. There are a number of repaired hairline cracks here and there. The top has a patch of replacement spruce in the "usual pickup placement" at the end of the fretboard and a bit of fill where a second pickup had likely been fit near the bridge. The back edge seams were quite wonky and so Ancel had to do a lot of fitting to get them to behave. There's a little missing binding at the headstock. The fretboard, board binding, and board inlay is all new. It has a new truss rod. The strap button at the heel is not original but is period. The back of the neck has a little "texture" to where the 5-piece laminations meet -- we can leave as-is or smooth-down per the next owner's desires. The bridge is a little on the lower side (still some adjustment room, though) because we didn't want to get into dealing with a neck reset as some JB Weld is apparent in the fretboard extension reglue job from yesteryear.

It comes with: While it has no case or gigbag, if I have something at the time of sale I will include it.

Consignor tag: ACBN