The Delta Snake Review: Musical Gear Review and Music Article Archive

Aftermarket Review: 2024 Epiphone Power Player SG

The Epiphone Power Players SG is a 3/4 size electric with a 22 fret, 22.73” scale and a slim profile D bolt-on neck. The SG has a 650R neck humbucker and a 700T bridge. The Power Player SG was introduced in 2022 and is still being manufactured. So, obviously this is a guitar that has already been extensively reviewed on YouTube and the web. I’m reviewing it here since I’ve had a recent experience with it having purchased one back in December 2025.

I’ll stress what I bought it for and you can consider this an aftermarket review about how the guitar has performed since the initial introduction and hype.

I bought it because I was intrigued by the idea of getting an SG that had a shorter scale and no neck dive; I figured the shorter scale one would do the trick. That turned out to be true. It’s a nicely balanced, quality guitar that has the solid feel of a full size. I’m not sure about it being a good travel guitar; the ¾ length is, in my opinion, more suited for a car trip, etc.

After six months, the positives are that the ergonomics are very good, a very comfortable guitar to play. The pickups are good enough to keep on the guitar as opposed to needing to be upgraded.

As far as it being an SG, or more specifically, sounding like one, that is a little difficult to quantify. The earliest SGs had P90 pickups and the next generation with humbuckers sounded different than ones I personally heard later. In other words, you can’t really say that this SG has “the classic sound.” Any model that's been around for over 50 years is likely to have quite a few variations. Telecasters and other Fenders are in a similar situation; there is no one classic sound anymore.

As I’ve said in other blog entries, there are certain types of superlatives and descriptions that don’t really tell the reader what the guitar sounds like. It’s best to simply refer everybody to YouTube or elsewhere on music sites to actually hear the sound of a particular model.

One thing I can do is give you an immediate comparison, or at least the one I noticed, and that's that this particular Epiphone is similar in sound to the Les Paul version. The pick ups are quite good, clear and very articulate, both in clean and high gain.

As we all know the louder the guitar gets the more similar it becomes to other guitars at the same volume level. In this case, my impression is that the sound is more along the lines of what they get in this price range with the Les Paul copies. If you want a sound that's closer to a Gibson SG, I would recommend getting one of the excellent G series models. Also, If you have a particular sound in your head, then definitely try both the P90 and humbucker versions.

In the case of the Power SG, there’s a lot to like about it as a beginner guitar, travel guitar or a second or third in one’s collection. The guitar has excellent pick ups, and sounds versatile enough to cover quite a few different genres. It’s not quite a time machine in the sense that it can reproduce some of the classic 60s sounds, but that’s an esoteric application in 2026. For a lot of players, the type of music they want to play developed a lot later in the 70s onwards.

In terms of the SG sound I was looking for, I went ahead and just stuck with the IYV (reviewed in this blog) because after sitting with it for a few months, I realized that the neck length and any tendency to dive doesn’t really matter that much when you’re sitting down.

The type of sound you get with a full size SG due to the neck length, etc, isn’t going to be present in a short scale version. In fact, the P90 version of the Epi Les Paul Special 1 has more of the sound I was looking for along with the IYV.

As far as any recommendation, it may not have been what I was looking for, but it has plenty of virtues for those who want to use it as an entry level guitar and beyond.

Al Handa

July 22, 2026