Epiphone DR-100 Acoustic Guitar Review

The Epiphone DR-100 is one of the best acoustic guitars for beginners. Whether you are buying your first guitar or struggling with your first song, this is a perfect choice for you. The easy playability with a gorgeous appearance and affordable price are three prime aspects that make it the prominent music instrument on the market.  This in-depth Epiphone DR-100 review will help to understand the features of this best beginner guitar.

Epiphone Brand Reputation

Epiphone is an American manufacturer that was founded in 1873 by Anastasios Stathopoulos. The company was purchased by Gibson in 1957. Besides guitar, Epiphone is best known for producing banjos, double basis, and other string instruments.

Epiphone DR-100 Acoustic Guitar Review

Quick Features

• Select Spruce top
• Classic go-to Dreadnought Shape
• Mahogany Body
• Slim Taper Neck Profile
• Premium Machine Heads

Body

The guitar comes with laminated plywood assembly on both sides, including spruce laminate for the top and back. The sides and back are made from a mahogany laminate. Such laminate construction is excellent for producing rich tones. Unlike solid wood, there are few humidity effects for the tuning.

Featuring a Select Spruce top, it helps to improve the tone because the wood breathers more with more use. The classic shape has no cutaway but a symmetrical style. You can choose from vintage sunburst, ebony, and classic natural colors.

Neck

The neck of this dreadnought guitar is made with mahogany. It is glued in at the 14th fret along with a rosewood fingerboard. The headstock has been equipped with the prominent Epiphone logo and completed with premium quality mechanical tuners.

Bridge

Epiphone has carved rosewood to manufacture the bridge. The selection of rosewood enhances the longevity and overall strength of the DR-100. Featuring Rosewood Bridge strengthens the neck from the tension when tuning, which may cause the headstock to fall away from the nut in guitars of other guitar manufacturers.

Overall Sound

The Epiphone DR-100 comes with a decent acoustic guitar sound in beginner musical instruments. It is very easy for beginners to create some good sounds. It is effortless to do all sorts of acoustic guitar work from straightforward strumming to picking notes and also doing lead runs.

Hardware

The guitar has a select spruce top to provide a lot of tone out of it, especially in such a price range. The spruce top is popular for producing nice sound for acoustic guitars. It also comes with a rich sound mahogany body.

The tuning pegs are nickel and help to stabilize the tuning of the Epiphone DR-100. There is an elegant Pickguard to protect the top from damages. The guitar also has a set of D’Addario 12 strings, but for beginners, it is recommended to go with low gauge strings.

Build and Finish

The appearance of the guitar with its full-sized dreadnought style is excellent. The headstock has a decent Epiphone logo and also added details such as lettering on the truss rod cover. Overall guitar, the guitar is well finished, supported by the braces inside. The build quality is excellent for the price and can comfortably last for years without causing any troubles. However, you have to take care of the maintenance.

Playability

Remember, the DR-100 has no cutaway, so it can be hard to hit the higher frets. If you are looking to play a lot of lead acoustic guitar, then this is not your instrument. DR-100 acoustic guitar is made for simple rhythm strumming and also for learning basic chords.

The neck is nice and smooth, and you will not face any issues with playing basic chords at the beginning or even strumming barre chords. In simple words, the easy playability of the guitar makes it an ideal choice for beginners.

Appearance

Featuring a large dreadnought classical styling, the guitar comes in ebony, vintage sunburst, and natural. The rosette is ornate in style along with the herringbone border within decent silver concentric circles. Its dark fingerboard is offset with the classic inlaid fret dots.

Product Specifications