Anastasios would travel with his father on business trips throughout Europe, observing his trade and learning about different varieties of wood and their unique properties. In 1873, around the time of his 12th birthday, Anastasios Stathopoulo’s family left their home in Greece and settled in Smyrna – now known as Izmir – a bustling seaport in the Ottoman Empire where his father, Konstantinos, established himself as a lumber merchant.

What most people don’t realize, however, is that Epiphone’s history stretches back even further than Gibson’s, beginning 150 years ago in a port on the Aegean Sea in what is now Turkey. The Casino, the Texan, the Sheraton, the Riviera – model names that chime with guitarists everywhere, inspiring awe and desire in equal measure, whether you are a Beatle or a beginner. I've also swapped B3s over to B7s and noticed a significant improvement in sustain, probably because there was so little downforce on the saddles it was dampening string vibrations.From the timeless cool of the jazz age through the looking glass of 1960s psychedelia to the wall of sound of 1990s Britpop and today’s eclectic scene, Epiphone instruments have remained central to pop culture’s “big bang” moments. I've installed a couple with no problems, a couple that were just about ok with some fiddling, and a couple where I've measured up and told the owner forget it, let's do a B7. In practice, on 330s/Casinos sometimes a B3 works and sometimes it doesn't - it depends on the neck pitch of the individual guitar. The reason is break angle, if there's not at least a little over the bridge a B3/B6 won't work for because a top mounted ABR style bridge is typically low to the body you're likely to run into problems. When Gibson first introduced the 330 they offered it with a B3 rather than a B7 but switched to a B7 within 18 months or so, probably because they couldn't consistently get the B3 to work on them. The rule of thumb is if the bridge is raised up off the body on a wooden base, use a B3 or B6, if it's directly mounted onto the top use a B7.

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