I'm surprised I haven't ever opened this thread in two years, but I had some time today due to recovering from surgery last Friday and would love to chime in with some thoughts!
Gibsons are kind of a complicated thing to me, as someone who is from Kalamazoo originally, and has grown up with all sorts of lore about the original Kalamazoo factory which still looms large in the city as a location with historical significance, as well as of course the Heritage guitar company. But throw that in with a very strong culture of Midwest utilitarianism, 90s punk-rock ethos, and just sheer economics, and Gibsons were not guitars that were generally practical for or seen often in my cohort of late Gen-X/early Millenial indie rockers of the day. You know, for all the same reasons everybody else generally used cheap Fenders in the 90s.
And so my guitar lust was usually confined to Fenders of a general sort, and mostly the kind that were financially attainable but really more about what kind of sounds were possible and whatever kind of combo of affordability + utility that I could find. And so I started with G&Ls, etc etc, but I never felt like I absolutely
had to have a
FENDER, and I think the Squiers of the last 10 years are such great guitars that I honestly can't justify spending more money on the Fender version of nearly any of them. I have three Fender-style electrics and two of them are partsmasters that started as either 100% Squiers or Fenders that I've swapped many parts out of due to ergonomic and sonic preferences, and one is a custom-built Fender-alike that was handmade by my dear friend who is a luthier who actually cut his teeth building guitars for Heritage. Anyway, my electric guitars are 100% dialed to my specifications and I want for nothing in that department, mostly, and it just does not matter to me what the headstock says.
Whenever I'm considering a big purchase, especially with music gear, I have to be able to justify that whatever it is fills a need or a sound that I can't currently accomplish with the gear that I have, which means I haven't even really thought about a new electric guitar purchase for quite some time, with the exception of a guitar with P90s. Even then, the need hasn't been strong enough to justify a P90s Gibson and I'm pretty good at talking myself out of stuff I don't
really need. You can probably imagine where this is going.
But I've never felt about Epiphones the way I do about Squiers - they really seemed like cheap knockoffs that were almost intentionally compromised in one or two specific ways (for a long time it was that awful slim-taper D neck profile) in order not to siphon too much market share away from the more expensive Gibson models. I just never played one that I liked, but I also never played a Gibson where I was like "oh fuck I have GOT to have this". Too picky, too frugal, and the fact that you can't swap out a set neck if it doesn't feel right made it a pretty tough to justify proposition for something I wasn't 100% in love with.
But all that changed when I bought an Epiphone "Inspired By Gibson" J45 on a whim last year. Great guitar, especially after I did some work to it, so definitely not perfect out of the box, but I knew it was in there somewhere and I was able to bring it out after spending a few hundred extra dollars on it. I ended up recently ordering a "real" J45 (although that's a bit of a different story), but just to say that this experience made me much more open to the Epiphone brand again and so I started checking out the IBG models whenever I'd run across them in a guitar store. Like many here, I don't even bother to plug electrics in at the store because it's generally immediately apparent whether or not the guitar is going to work for me just by feel and unplugged sound alone, and I have to say that every single 335 and SG I've played in that line has been nearly flawless by my standards. Well-built, excellent fit and finish, and really amazing price points all coming together to actually make me think "Damn, I gotta figure out a reason not to bring this guitar home with me". Like others have said on this thread, I actually like having gear that's a little different than the standard compliment because it feels a little more like my own thing. I'd be 100% comfortable gigging with any of these IBG Epiphone electrics and feeling great about it and not just for the price. Check 'em out. I think if you can get over the "headstock-itis" there is very little difference between them from a sound and feel perspective, which will always trump aesthetics for me.