Epiphone and Alex Lifeson have unveiled a replica of the Rush guitarist’s iconic ‘Whitey’ ES-355, and it is as high-end as Epiphone guitars get.
Based on the Alpine White 1976 ES-355 that can be heard right across the Rush catalogue, this Inspired By Gibson “reissue” comes with Gibson USA pickups, a signature hard-shell guitar case, and stays faithful to the original design with a Varitone and the guitar’s dual outputs.
The gold hardware isn’t to be sniffed at either, with a gold Harmonica-style Tune-O-Matic bridge paired with a Maestro Vibrola. This is Epiphone going premium, so there are all kinds of specs that you would typically associate with high-end electric guitars, such as the CTS pots and Mallory capacitors, the Switchcraft jacks and pickup selector switch, premium sealed die-cast tuners with metal tulip-style buttons.
Also, the Gibson Custom livery is all over the instrument, from the split-diamond inlay on the headstock to the block inlays on the fingerboard, plus multi-ply binding to the body’s top and headstock.
Lifeson had hinted that something special had been in the offing, and that he had been working with Epiphone on a signature guitar. And it could only really be the ES-355, aka Whitey, aka the electric guitar that – arguably – most Rush fans would first think about when they think about The Ultimate Rush Guitar