After taking over his father's business, Epaminondas Stathopoulos named the company "Epiphone" as a combination of his own nickname "Epi" and the suffix "-phone" (from Greek phon-, "voice")[2] in 1928, the same year it began making guitars.

Epiphone began in 1873, in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now İzmir, Turkey), where Greek founder Anastasios Stathopoulos made his own fiddles and lutes (specifically, the oud and the laouto).

Stathopoulos moved to the United States in 1903 and continued to make his original instruments, as well as mandolins, from a factory at 35-37 36th Street in Long Island City, Queens, New York.

Epiphone's first foray into the guitar market came in around 1928, with the release of the "Recording" range, styled models A through E. These guitars featured an unusual asymmetric body shape with what was in effect a strongly sloping cutaway on the upper treble bout, and either a trapeze tailpiece or a pin bridge, together with pegheads and tuners reminiscent of the company's banjos.

[7] These instruments were initially offered in acoustic, non-cutaway form, with cutaways appearing (often with the additional designation "Regent") from the late 1940s onwards, and with the addition of pickups, by the added designation of "Zephyr", thus an "Zephyr Emperor Regent" would indicate the (top of the line) Emperor model with added cutaway and pickups.

Other archtops appeared solely in the amplified form, being the Zephyr, Century and Coronet (all 1939), Kent (1950) and a signature model named for Harry Volpe (1955).

None of these instruments survived the termination of manufacturing of Epiphone instruments in Gibson's Kalamazoo plant in 1969, at least in their original form (subsequent Japanese models, some even re-using Kalamazoo-era model names, were of generally cheaper construction, for example using laminated woods and bolt-on necks as compared with their U.S.-made predecessors).

[12][13] From the 1970s onwards, production of Epiphone guitars has largely taken place in Japan, Korea and China (refer section "Manufacturing", below), with a very small number of models also produced in the U.S.A.

Epiphone began producing amplifiers in 1935 with the Electar Hawaiian Lap Steel Guitar Outfit.

This outfit was an amplifier, case and lap steel guitar stand all rolled into one unit[17] and was supplied by a suitcase manufacturer of the time.

The Valve Senior offers 20 watts of power, with a full equalizer, gain, volume, reverb, and presence control.

Solid body guitars with flat tops and backs were made at the Eleanor Street plants (both Gibson and Epiphone).

Epiphone also continued its production of archtop guitars using the same patterns and molds from Epi's New York era.

[citation needed] The Paul McCartney Texan was produced in 2005, and in 2009, the Epiphone Historic Collection was created, beginning with the 1962 Wilshire, built by Gibson Custom.

Several other models, such as the Sheraton and John Lennon Casinos, were built in Japan and assembled and finished by Gibson USA.

[citation needed] In the early 1970s, Matsumoku began to manufacture Epiphone instruments in Japan[2] with the production and distribution being managed by Aria, in cooperation with Gibson.

For the first several years of production in Japan, Epiphone guitars were actually rebranded designs already produced by the Matsumoku Company.

These guitars were of higher quality than that of the previous years of production in Japan and included models such as the Wilshire, Emperor, Riviera and Newport bass.

By 1976 new designs of higher quality were being introduced for export but did not include the current Japanese market models.

[citation needed] Gibson and Epiphone guitars all use Titebond resin glue, which is simple carpenters' wood glue, and were finished in hard, quick-to-apply polyester resin rather than the traditional nitro-cellulose lacquer used by Gibson[citation needed] Epiphone guitars assembled or made in the US use lacquer finishes unless it's a san lacquer (SL for short), but those made outside of the US use a polyurethane finish because of pollution requirements.

Those particular budget considerations, along with others such as the use of plastic nuts, and cheaper hardware and pickups, make for a more affordable instrument.

Production was moved back to Nashville and Bozeman for a similar limited run of instruments (250 each of Sheratons, Rivieras, Frontiers, Excellentes and Texans).

The Nashville and Anniversary Collections were intended as reintroductions of original, USA built Epiphone models.

In 2002, Epiphone began producing a range of higher quality instruments under the "Elite Series" moniker which were built by Terada and FujiGen in Japan.