The purchase was ostensibly made to provide the jigs and equipment to make a line of stand up basses. Quickly though, the original Epiphone company made guitars first in New York starting c.1927 and then in about 1953 production was in Philadelphia for a few years until Epiphone was sold to Gibson in a sale which Gibson announced on for the princely sum of $20,000. I'm not going to go into a thorough history of Epiphone manufacturing as there has been some good information already offered in this thread. The ES-335 had full size humbuckers, while the Sheraton & Riviera had mini-humbuckers. Only the ES-330 & Casino were fully hollow w/P-90s.

Just for a little more clarity, here are the initial release dates: Oh, now I see what you meant, and indeed, the Casino design does sometimes get incorrectly attributed to the original Epiphone company. I probably needlessly complicated my original answer. I just meant that the ES-335 was the grandaddy of Gibson/Epiphone thinline semihollow doublecuts. But yes, you are right, the ES-330 was the Gibson equivalent, being fully hollow. The Sheraton (and Riviera) on the other hand had the center block. Well, I meant the Casino, rather than being a design of the Epiphone company that pre-dated Epiphone's purchase by Gibson, was made from parts of the Gibson ES-335 (the 335 being the first guitar to have that shape body), and it had its top, back, and sides (but not its center block). In 1984, Gibson moved from Kalamazoo to Nashville, TN.

In 1970, Epiphone production was moved from the United States to Japan, and later South Korea, Indonesia, and China, and even Czechoslovakia. The Casino, for instance, shared the top, back, and rims of the Gibson ES-335, and had Gibson P-90 pick ups The Sheraton was a near copy of the ES-335, but with some cosmetic differences. Later, Gibson would introduce some solid bodied Epiphones of unique design, like the Crestwood. At first, these were Gibson-derived instruments (basically rebadged Gibsons or new models based closely on existing Gibson designs, as opposed to the models Epiphone had been making in New York and Philadelphia when they were located there).

Gibson bought the Epiphone brand name and some of their manufacturing tooling and parts inventory in 1957, and began making Epiphone branded guitars shortly after in the Gibson factory on Parsons street, and later an adjacent building. They were made in Kalamazoo, Michigan, by Gibson.

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