A musical instrument builder by the name of Anastasios Stathopoulos opened a business in 1873 in Smyrna, deep in the Ottoman Empire. The Epiphone company’s origins lay in the late 19th century. Although today, Epiphone is probably best known as the affordable foreign-manufactured Gibson, the brand has a long and storied history of its own.
Fittingly for a company first founded in the Ottoman Empire, Epiphone guitars are made in factories all over the world.
