The Epiphone Company is a guitar manufacturer. Before being bought out by Gibson in the late 1950s, Epiphone was Gibson's main rival in the archtop market. Their professional archtops, including the Emperor, Deluxe, Broadway and Triumph, rivaled (and some contend surpassed) those of Gibson. Aside from their guitars, Epiphone also made bass guitars, banjos, and other stringed instruments. However, the company's weakness in the aftermath of World War II allowed Gibson to absorb it.
The name "Epiphone" is a combination of proprietor Epaminondas Stathopoulos' nickname "Epi" and "phone", Greek for "sound". There has been some amount of confusion surrounding the pronunciation of the name, with some people pronouncing it 'Epi-fone', while others tend to pronounce it 'Epif-uh-nee', similar to the English word "Epiphany".
