Epiphone has been the guitar world’s MVP this year, and we shouldn’t be surprised – the early signs were all there when, back at NAMM, the company promised delivery of bigger and better specs across its entire catalog.
Those promises have been realized and then some. First came the Futura family, with its stainless steel frets and color-shifting finishes. Then we got those Inspired by Gibson Custom acoustics, as well as a host of notable signature guitars, to name but a few.
But a revamp for the Prophecy range, first introduced in 2008, wasn’t on our bingo card. The brand has certainly saved its best ’til last.
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“Our team wanted to completely rethink the series,” says Aljon Go, Epiphone’s product development manager. “As a player myself, these are the upgrades I’ve wanted to see for a long time. Getting the opportunity to build them into the platform was incredibly exciting.”
Launched last month, the new-and-improved series is the company’s biggest launch of a stacked year. Billed as their most advanced guitars to date, the 2026 Prophecy range brought forth a host of new specs and models.
“This collection represents some of the most evolved and premium guitars in our history,” notes senior product development engineer Richard Akers. “And there’s more coming.”
No punches have been pulled: there’s stainless steel frets, custom-voiced Fishman Fluence humbuckers, a new HyperGlide neck profile, and a host of body silhouettes including the first-ever Epiphone Victory – and, most notably, the first baritone Les Paul for more than 20 years.
“Whether at events, on social media, in Facebook groups or talking with artists and dealers, I’ve heard requests for a baritone Les Paul for years,” Go reflects. “The new Prophecy Series felt like the perfect home for it.”
“The baritone Les Paul is something we’ve heard requested repeatedly,” adds marketing manager Lewis McKinney III. “We’re excited that players who’ve been asking for its return can finally get their hands on one.”
The Victory received its Epiphone call-up following a promising return to the Gibson books. The new models join SG, Les Paul and Flying V in featuring the unique HyperGlide neck profile, which promises unparalleled speed performance.
“We wanted our fastest, sleekest neck profile yet – while retaining the support your hand needs for extended playing,” Akers explains. “Hyperglide uses an elliptical D profile, with a controlled change in thickness as you move up the neck. The shoulders matter just as much as the depth. The neck represents the fastest, sleekest profile we have offered.”
Go concurs: “We really wanted to create the most comfortable and fastest-playing guitar neck we’ve ever offered, and HyperGlide is the result.”
The Prophecy-exclusive Fishman Fluence humbuckers are a big deal, offering three distinct ‘voices’ that aim to cover classic Gibson PAF, single-coil and high-output sounds. It all goes back to the brief of engineering the most versatile and technically advanced Epiphones ever made.
We had to reach players we’ve historically underserved while keeping our own identity
“I wasn’t about creating pickups that only do one thing well,” Go says. “We wanted a pickup system that lets players move between styles and applications without compromise. Working with Fishman has been fantastic from the jump.
“We spent a lot of time researching and testing with the Gibson Pickup Shop to understand what makes vintage Gibson humbuckers so special. After all, the humbucker is a Gibson innovation.”
Supercharging these classic designs often felt a bit like a balancing act. Put all the above features on a Les Paul without due care and attention, and you could be left with something less then a sum of its parts. The biggest challenge was making sure the new Prophecy models still felt like Epiphones.
“We had to reach players we’ve historically underserved while keeping our own identity,” Akers says. “A specification can look great on paper – but the neck, scale length, pickups, wood choices and bridge all influence how a guitar responds. Those choices need to preserve the character that draws someone to our shapes.”
But Epiphone has walked the tightrope pretty well: the Les Paul is close to being one of the best metal-orientated baritones on the market. The Epiphone Victory is a long overdue treat. And this is just the start – the Prophecy could be the start of a prolific new venture.
“What I’m most proud of is that we didn’t approach this as a simple update,” Go says. “We challenged ourselves to build the most performance-focused collection we’ve ever offered.
“Today’s players are tuning lower, crossing genre boundaries, recording at home, touring and asking more from their instruments than ever before. We wanted Prophecy to reflect the way real musicians are using guitars today.”
- For more information on the new Epiphone Prophecy range, head to Gibson.com.
