Just bought a Red Gibson Epiphone MM20
for $100 from a guy and trying to find something about it and the history of it if it has any. Any help is appreciated
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Just bought a Red Gibson Epiphone MM20
for $100 from a guy and trying to find something about it and the history of it if it has any. Any help is appreciated
Post some pictures and we can use that to help you.
Not much to know, budget entry level model worth $100. Nothing Gibson about it.
The MM-20 is the "most affordable" line of mandolins available from Epiphone. $100 sounds about right.
Here's an older thread about these.
And another.
Gibson Inc. owns the Epiphone brand. They bought the Epiphone Guitar Company, a separate manufacturer of musical instruments. For years they made instruments labeled "Epiphone" in their Kalamazoo MI factory; some of them were "budget" versions of Gibson models, others were different. Then Gibson stopped making Epiphone instruments in the US, and put the label on instruments imported from Asia. That's the situation today. You can find more models of Epiphone Les Paul guitars, than Gibson Les Pauls. Some of the Epiphone instruments are decent less-expensive "clones" of Gibson models; others are just run-of-the-mill Asian factory instruments.
"Gibson Epiphone" is like "Guild Madeira" or "Martin Sigma," conflating the US manufacturer owning the label, with an imported line of instruments -- perhaps based on the US maker's models, perhaps not -- marketed here under the US maker's auspices. It's a conflation that the person selling the imported instrument would like you to accept, but it surely can mislead prospective buyers as to the imported instruments' origins -- and, perhaps, quality/value.