First commercialized in the late 1950s, semi-hollow electric guitars have been played by some of the greatest musicians of all time, including BB King, Barney Kessel, John Lennon, Larry Carlton, Johnny Marr, John Scofield, Freddie King, George Harrison, and Cream-era Eric Clapton. The legacy of the semi-hollow was then continued by modern arena rockers such as Dave Grohl and Noel Gallagher. Not only do semi-hollow guitars offer an additional acoustic response, they deliver great tones when plugged into a guitar amp, too.
With that being said, Stratocaster and Epiphone have their own semi-hollow models. Both the Squier Affinity Starcaster and Epiphone ES-335 are two popular models that a lot of guitarists go for, but which one is better for you?
| Features: | Epiphone ES-335 | Squier Affinity Starcaster |
|---|---|---|
| Price: | £549 ($640) | £249 ($290) |
| Inlay Design: | Inlays Dot | Black Dot |
| Pickup: | Alnico Classic PRO | Standard Humbucking |
| Frets: | 22 | 22 |
Epiphone ES-335
The addition of acoustic and semi-solid models from Epiphone, Inspired By Gibson series, is both inevitable and welcome. Epiphone has given players much more of the Gibson look and feel but at an affordable price and, in common, with the Inspired By solid bodies. Epiphone ES-335 has a Kalamazoo headstock and hand-wired CTS control pots. The block markers and impressively flamey maple on the front and back is marked out as the ES-335 Figured model.
Build
Epiphone’s ES-335 model uses LockTone Tune-o-matic bridge and the stop bar tailpiece is nickel-plated to a high standard while the bridge is easy to adjust thanks to screwdriver slots in the posts. The Alnico Classic Pro humbucker covers perfectly match and are mounted in black rings to coordinate with the reflector knobs.
Performance
The addition of acoustic and semi-solid models from Epiphone, Inspired By Gibson series, is both inevitable and welcome. Epiphone has given players much more of the Gibson look and feel but at an affordable price and, in common, with the Inspired By solid bodies. Epiphone ES-335 has a Kalamazoo headstock and hand-wired CTS control pots. The block markers and impressively flamey maple on the front and back is marked out as the ES-335 Figured model.
The ES-335’s unplugged tone is bright and rings clearly with long sustain. With that being said, the overall sound and dynamic response is more like a loud, solid body than a vintage semi. The woody mellowness you hear from an old ES-335 isn’t particularly apparent while the neck profile doesn’t have an old-school feel. Regardless, its playability is excellent, the fret wire is well chosen, and the tuning is very stable.
Starting in the position of the neck, it has a vocal tone that’s rounded and sweet, but pleasingly well-defined even in the lower registers. It provides contrast, while the bridge has a convincingly vintage midrange quack, wiry bite and a touch of twang to balance out the grunt.
For many owners of the ES-335, the middle setting is where you’ll find much of the magic. This Epiphone model displays a funky phasiness with a more compressed response. It’s a superb rhythm tone and great for textured chord arpeggios. All of this is enhanced by its controls, which offer plenty of useable range.
Its overdriven tones can be backed off to get vibrant and clear clean sounds and, just as you would with a vintage Gibson, you can roll the neck volume back a little from the middle setting where you can achieve the ‘quack point’. Doing this helps to deliver vocal and expressive lead tones for solos or provides a fuller alternative to bridge-pickup rhythm tones in a band mix. As for its tone controls, they have rolled the treble back evenly and smoothly, meaning that they prove useful throughout their entire range rather than just a narrow band towards the bottom.
Squier Affinity Starcaster
What is the first thing you think of when you see or hear the word ‘Fender’? It may be your favourite Stratocasters or Telecasters, or perhaps it’s the image of Jaguars, Mustangs or Jazzmasters that has left an impression on you over the years.
With that, the Starcaster has always been deemed as the ugly duckling in the Fender family tree. Although the Starcaster sadly went out of production only six years after its 1976 debut, an unlikely revival came after its adoption by indie-rock musicians who preferred its brightness that originally put the majority of its intended target market off – bands like Radiohead, The Killers and Arctic Monkeys harnessed the Starcasters jangliness to their own advantages.
Build
When comparing guitars, build quality is probably the most important factor to focus on, as build quality is the hardest thing to change or fix on a guitar, it’s for that reason, making sure that it has the right feel and that it’s put together properly is vital.
The Squier company prides itself on its great build quality, and even though there are better-made guitars out there, very few of them are within the price bracket of the Affinity.
Overall, Squier’s Affinity Starcaster guitar is made very well. For the kind of money, you’ll be looking for the basics to be done to a good standard – nothing else – you should be pleasantly surprised at just how solid and well-made the Affinity is when played. Regardless of what world you’re in of budget and beginner guitars, the only thing you need a guitar to be is easy to play–the Affinity provides an enjoyable and easy playing experience.
The hardware on the Affinity, the pickups sound good, and there aren’t any sharp fret edges, sharp saddles sawing through strings or splintery spots on its body or neck. The actual finish on the guitar – its paintwork and lacquering etc – are decent, and the Affinity series does come with a number of colors and other options that are available to the player.
Performance
While Squier Affinity pickups aren’t high-end by any stretch of the imagination, they definitely have a bit more life in them. The pickups of the Affinity are ceramic, so regardless of the pickup configuration, there’s a bit more low-end and more of a mid-presence there that guitar players enjoy. For beginners, it’s infallible – and even for intermediate players, the tones of the Affinity are satisfying and pretty addictive. The extra tonal versatility and pickup output means that the player is ready for most musical scenarios.
The Squier Affinity is also the cheapest Squier, which offers to feature a full-depth, full-weight body – and the difference that this makes is huge. The tones you’d expect to hear from a Strat or Tele are clearly in abundance, and especially when paired with some gain, life feels pretty good when playing one. For the money, it’s still well within the ‘budget’ price range.
Conclusion
So which guitar is right for you? Well, generally they’re not considered to be the same animal. They have a different sonic space tone-wise even though they’re very similar in how they were constructed. The Affinity Starcaster is lighter with a slimmer neck profile, while the Epiphone 335 is heavier, with a much chunkier neck.