Epiphone Bonehead Riviera - Dark Tobacco Burst

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Epiphone Bonehead Riviera - Dark Tobacco Burst

There are signature guitars built around flashy solos, exotic wiring and enough switches to operate a small aircraft. Then there's the Epiphone Bonehead Riviera in Dark Tobacco Sunburst – a guitar celebrating the enormous, driving rhythm sound of Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, whose Riviera helped form the wall of guitars behind some of Oasis's most famous recordings.

This model recreates Bonehead's vintage Riviera, the instrument closely associated with the early Oasis sound and used during the era of Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? And if your immediate instinct is to plug it into a loud amp, grab an open chord and hit it with considerably more enthusiasm than strictly necessary, you're beginning to understand the assignment.

The Riviera body is made from five-ply layered maple, with a solid maple centre block running through the middle. That centre-block construction is a huge part of the appeal: you retain the lively resonance and physical response of a semi-hollow guitar while gaining sustain and considerably more resistance to unwanted feedback than a fully hollow design. Very useful when the amplifier isn't exactly being operated at library volume.

The Dark Tobacco Sunburst gloss finish gives the guitar a suitably vintage appearance, complemented by cream binding around the top, back and fingerboard. A white three-ply Riviera pickguard, nickel hardware and black Witch Hat controls keep the whole thing firmly in classic Epiphone territory.

The neck is a three-piece maple construction with a volute, carved into Epiphone's comfortable SlimTaper C profile. A bound rosewood fingerboard carries 22 medium-jumbo frets and pearloid parallelogram inlays, while the traditional 24.75" scale length gives it that familiar Gibson/Epiphone feel beneath the fingers. A Graph Tech nut helps keep everything moving smoothly at the headstock.

Speaking of which, Epiphone has gone properly period-conscious with the Sloped Dovewing headstock. There's a mother-of-pearl Epiphone logo and Gibson Crown on the front, premium die-cast tuners with oval metal buttons and – tucked away on the rear – a gold reproduction of Bonehead's signature.

The sound comes from a pair of Epiphone Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers. They're a natural match for this sort of semi-hollow machine, delivering plenty of warmth and body while retaining enough clarity and bite for big chord work. Run them clean for open, resonant rhythm tones or introduce a suitably irritated amplifier and the Riviera starts speaking fluent '90s guitar.

You get the classic independent two Volume and two Tone controls, plus a three-way pickup selector, and Epiphone has upgraded the circuit with CTS potentiometers. The controls use black Witch Hat knobs with silver inserts and dial pointers – another small detail that helps the whole guitar feel properly considered rather than merely cosmetically inspired.

A LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and LockTone stop bar anchor the strings at the other end. Interestingly, there's no Frequensator tailpiece here: this signature model follows the stop-bar arrangement of Bonehead's own instrument, giving it a slightly different personality from the traditional Riviera recipe.

And there's a hardshell case included, which is exactly what we'd want to see with a signature semi-hollow designed to be taken out and played.

The Bonehead Riviera isn't merely an Oasis souvenir with a signature on the back. It's a cracking semi-hollow electric in its own right: maple centre-block construction, twin Alnico humbuckers, CTS electronics, rosewood under the fingers and enough rhythm-guitar authority to make a capo on the second fret feel vaguely inevitable.