Epiphone WildKat Review – Epiphone Electric guitar

Epiphone WildKat Guitar Review :: Electric Guitars Reviews

will swing its way into your heart with its sexy lines and sound, getting wild

The Epiphone WildKat Guitar will swing its way into your heart with its sexy lines and sound, get wild with this archtop fom Epiphone. This is Epiphone’s version of a Thinline style guitar, the body style is kinda ‘Gretsch’. The guitar features two chrome humbuckers ( Alnico V P-90’s which are fabulous, better than humbuckers), one in the neck position and one in the bridge. There are 4 knobs for control, two for volume and two for tone. Also, on the top corner of the body is a switch which effectively gives you a choice of each pickup, or a combination of both and is labeled Rhythm or Treble. You get volume for each pickup, master tone and master volume. Epiphone WildKat has a solid body that has been routed out about ¾†from the edges except for a solid area from under the bridge rearward and the areas under the master volume and pickup switch; both pickups are floating over air, not set into solid wood. These musical instruments have clear gloss polyurethane transparent finish, thinline body style, Grover tuners, 24.75″ scale, jumbo frets, ebonized rosewood fingerboard, fast neck, semi-hollow, not too tough to set up. The bridge is set with a Bigsby style vibrato bar and the action on this guitar is to die for, playing is effortless.

Ephiphone Wildkat sure gets tons of compliments on looks. It comes in antique natural, turquoise, translucent Black, metallic red, transparent white (limited deluxe guitar with gold hardware and features a “Limited Edition” logo on the back of the headstock). The neck is maple and is set into the finish with a Rosewood Block fingerboard. The body of this fine archtop guitar is mahogany and the top is laminated maple. Fine ingredients went into making this dish and she plays as good as she looks.

Sound of Epiphone WildKat Guitar -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. -The Wildkat has the look and the p-90s/semi-hollow combo gives a pretty good variety of sounds that are well suited for different styles of music, it is extremely versatile: will punch and growl like a good rockabilly hot rod should, perfect for rockabilly, blues, jazz, country, hard rock, 50’s-60’s rock – you cannot beat this guitar for those essential pre-sixties sounds and all kind of music. But not good for heavy metal, subtle sounds far too complex for the metalheads, too much feedback in the hollowbody. -Bring the uncommon master volume control all the way up and you get a mild overdrive, or you can turn it down and get a very clean and jazzy tone; around 7-8: the sweet spot where you get a nice smokey bluesy sound tone that slightly breaks up when you really nail the strings. The treble pickup sounds ok but since the neck pickup sounds so great you’d might want to hardly ever use it. You can back off each pickup’s volume to get a little more brightness, or put them all the way up to darken the tone.

Pros of Epiphone WildKat Guitar

• great fit and finish, it gets tons of compliments and will punch and growl like a good rockabilly hot rod should;
• the size is also just right: it’s a little bit bigger than a Les Paul, but much smaller than most ‘traditional’ archtops;
• P90s give a clear, pure tone you may or not get with a guitar made for jazz, the P-90 single coil pickups have a real bite;
• for its price, this electric guitar really sounds more expensive, good guitar for this price;
• the tone is very true, and can hold tremolo very well;
• neck is very fast and frets are well set and even; neck is good for bending and left hand vibrato(a la Mr. Soul by the Buffalo Springfield), and is a natural when it comes to chunky rhythm.
• comes with Grover tuners and a very useful and uncommon master volume control (some old Gretsches had it);
• the master volume control – all the way up and you get a mild overdrive, or you can turn it down and get a very clean and jazzy tone; around 7-8: the sweet spot – you get a nice smokey bluesy sound tone that slightly breaks up when you really nail the strings. The treble pickup sounds ok but since the neck pickup sounds so great you’d might want to hardly ever use it. You can back off each pickup’s volume to get a little more brightness, or put them all the way up to darken the tone.

Cons of Epiphone WildKat Guitar

• the p-90s can be a bit noisy, but every guitar with p-90s seems to be noisy;
• good range of tone though somewhat limited due to 1 Tone control;
• PUPS being single coil do hum somewhat;
• fret buzz might be an issue in some cases, the strings are adjusted to a happy medium, so just raise the action just high enough to eliminate the buzz, and reset the intonation and the buzzing will be diminished
• the guitar doesn’t always stand up to repeated bashing out of chords;
• the knobs seem kind of cheap and rickety, but they can always be replaced, so it’s not a big issue.

Suggestions

• might want to change the potmeters and selector on the WildKat to better quality and you’ll have a guitar for ever;
• the sound brightens up considerably when the polepieces are raised and balanced, as is typical with P90s and other pickups;
• the Ibanez may be the way to go too;
• the solution to the little inconveniences might be replacing the nut and string saddles with GraphTech ones (made from Teflon) which could help considerably;
• you’d might also want to replace the tuners with Sperzel locking tuners for further tuning stability and you’ll get an improvement as well. This is a great electric guitar that shouldn’t disappointment once you’ve made some minor upgrades such as these;
• the sound of this Epiphone WildKat is unique, it should just be one more guitar in a player’s arsenal. It isn’t good for everything – but neither is a Strat!;
• if the fret buzz is an issue,just raise the strings high enough to eliminate the buzz, and reset the intonation and the buzzing will be diminished;
• might want to change the 0.11 strings with 0.9 /0.10;
• but switching to heavier strings really brings out a much better tone from the woods and pickups, and makes this electric guitar noticably louder and more stable as far as tuning goes.

Amps & Effects used by users – Behringer digital effects amp, Roland Cube 30-60, Fender Reverb Deluxe, Fender Pro Junior, Boss TR-2 tremolo, Fender 62 reissue reverb tank, Kustom tube 12a, Peavey Classic 50 watt amps, Peavey Classic 30 amp, Solid State amps, Tube amps, Tubeworks Tube Driver Combo,Boss ME-30 for compression delay and occasional chorus Fender Ultimate Stereo Chorus, Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Line6 POD, V-AMP, Marshall Amp, Marshall VS65R with no overdrive on channel 2.

Click below on page 2 for more photos