Gibson acquired the Epiphone company in 1957, along with all the tooling, and shipped everything over to Kalamazoo when production ceased on the East Coast. At that time, the quality of Epiphone guitars was on a par with Gibsons and – according to Gibson’s current vice president of product, Mat Koehler – Epiphone was purchased in order to tap into new markets.
Epiphones couldn’t be seen as mere rebranded Gibsons, and one way to establish the difference was to equip them with an exclusive pickup. Earlier in the 1950s, Epiphone had developed a single-coil pickup with off-centre pole screws and a rectangular metal cover.
