Epiphone Guitars

It is believed that Anastasious Stathopoulo began making violins, lutes and traditional Greek instruments in the 1870’s. He and his family moved to New York around 1903. Stathopoulo made instrument with labels that read A Stathopoulo.
Anastasious Stathopoulo died in 1915. His sons Epaminondas (Epi), Orpheus (Orphi) and Frixo continued the family business and in 1917 began using the name House of Stathopoulo. They incorporated in 1923 and focused on making banjos. The company changed its name to the Epiphone Banjo Corporation in 1928. In the 1930’s they were making guitars for other distributors under the names Sorrentino and Howard so keep your eyes open for those vintage names.The company eventually changed its name to the Epiphone Inc. in 1935. epi991 The C.G.Conn Company took partial control over distribution and production and in 1953 moved some production to Philadelphia. The Chicago Musical Instrument Company which owned Gibson at the time acquired Epiphone in 1957 and moved production to Kalamazoo Michigan. In 1969 Chicago Musical Instrument Company was taken over by the ECL Company. ELC was renamed Norlin and started outsourcing Epiphone production to Japan and eventually Korea. In the 1980 Epiphone and Gibson were acquired by Gary Zebrowski, Henry Juszkiewicz and David Barryman.