Epiphone Prophecy Victory FR review: “This is a guitar that is asking you to play it fast”
$1,499, epiphone.com
For the best part of two decades, Epiphone’s Prophecy collection has been the best place in Gibson’s range for guitarists of a heavier persuasion to find instruments that retain the timeless looks of a Gibson guitar but with features and spec that make them ready for the most high-performance shredding demands.
READ MORE: Gibson Victory Floyd Rose review: “this is a fantastic addition to the Gibson line”
You may have also noticed that in recent years, Gibson has been giving heavy guitarists more love than they have done for quite some time – whether that’s through signature models for the likes of Adam Jones, Kirk Hammett and Dave Mustaine, or adding guitars with Floyd Rose vibratos and baritone scale lengths to the standard range.
Right on time then, arrives the brand new Prophecy Collection – Epiphone’s full-bore assault on the world of high-performance heavy guitar, which includes for the very first time a Victory guitar without the USA price tag.
Image: Press
What is it?
The revival of Gibson over the last eight years has, understandably, been driven by the brand focusing on making its most famous and classic as good as they can be, but the Victory stands out as quite a unique part of the story.
This forgotten 80s curio was revived a few years ago as a guitar built for the needs of today’s modern technical players, and has proved a smash hit – spawning various hard-rocking variants including a very impressive Floyd Rose-equipped version I reviewed earlier this year. Its first ever appearance in Epiphone colours then, is a big deal – probably the biggest deal of the five-strong Prophecy revival (alongside the baritone Les Paul).
All of the guitars in the Prophecy collection share several pretty serious features that are worth noting, most notable of which is probably the thermally aged, graphite-reinforced one-piece maple neck. This features the new Hyperglide 10-14 inch compound radius, while the ebony board sports 24 stainless steel frets along its extended 25.5-inch scale length.
Pickups are once again Fishman Fluence units developed specifically for the range, but this time they’re mounted to the body using a new trademarked Dual-Axis Pickup Stabilization (DAPS) system, which Epiphone claims keeps the pickups “securely aligned and parallel to the strings while allowing precise height adjustment”. The humbuckers also feature advanced onboard electronics to offer active, classic bucker and single-coil tones at your fingertips courtesy of push/pull pots on both volume and tone.
The Prophecy Victory has a mahogany body with a rather fetching flamed maple cap. The guitar is satin-finished all over and you can choose between either this Obsidian Storm Satin or the greeny Aqua Smoke Satin finishes. In terms of hardware, the success of the FR version of the Gibson model is reflected with a Floyd Rose 1000 Series locking tremolo and locking nut here, plus locking Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners – all the metal is matt black, of course. You also get a Protector Ultralite case into the bargain.
Image: Press
Build Quality & Playability
When I reviewed the Gibson Victory, I was struck by the level of fit and finish that Gibson’s production line was bringing to the party – it was near-Custom Shop levels, and felt like a guitar much more in line with that sort of price tag.
The Epiphone Prophecy version replicates the same trick in a lot of ways – if not for the Epiphone logo on that hockey stick headstock, I would not have batted an eyelid at this being a USA production guitar, and in some cases even beyond. The satin finish may not be to everyone’s tastes but I think it really suits a mean and moody rock machine like this, and its expertly applied all over, with no blemishes or overspray, while the fretboard is immaculately inlaid, while the bound fretboard is nicely done to avoid any friction or sharp edges.
Stainless steel is a tough material to work with but clearly no corners have been cut here, and every one of the 24 frets here has been expertly installed, polished and filed to make the playability effortlessly smooth.
And smooth is the order of the day here for sure – this new Hyperglide neck is slim without feeling too skinny, while the asymmetrical carve and compound radius means that you can chug in the lower reaches and blaze away without impediment up top. This is a guitar that is asking you to play it fast – like a sports car with a five-speed manual shifter, it wants you to rev it up, hug the corners, and hold on for dear life.
Import Floyd Rose units don’t always have the best reputation, but I find the FR 1000 unit here to be a fine example of the form – you can dive bomb to your heart’s content and it returns to pitch every time, while the general action is very smooth and fluid.
Image: Press
Sounds
Fishman’s Fluence pickups have become hugely popular in heavier circles, and so its no surprise that Gibson tapped Larry Fishman’s company to provide some custom units for the Prophecy when it was revamped a few years ago.
As far as I can tell, the pickups here are the same custom-voiced units found in previous Prophecy guitars, and that’s no bad thing. In practice that means you have a pair of active humbuckers (there’s a mercifully easy battery access on the back of the guitar) that offer three distinct voices: modern active humbucker, passive PAF-style bucker, and a single-coil.
The active mode is, as you might well expect, a more modern sounding voice – one that’s designed for the most brutal amounts of gain, which it accepts with pleasure, while still maintaining note and chord integrity. When other pickups might get mushy, this one continues to provide clarity and power in spades.
The PAF mode is more suited to classic rock and metal tones – if you want to let the amp or your pedals do more of the work, and provide a less overly compressed tone, this is the sound you’ll be drawn to.
I’m less overly taken with the single-coil mode – as is so often the case with any kind of coil tap/split, it just left me wanting more. It’s fine in a pinch, and it frees you up to take one less guitar to a gig if you only need a single coil sound for a few songs in your set, but you’d certainly want something a little fuller and rounder if you wanted to record this sound, for example. Still, it remains impressive that a guitar at this price point can offer so many sounds in one package.
Image: Press
Should I Buy One?
It’s interesting to consider the Prophecy Victory in the context of its Gibson bigger brothers, because they do feel like quite distinct instruments – despite the fact that they look very similar on first glance.
This Prophecy version – like the rest of the line – feels like the brooding, darker sibling to its Gibson equivalent. This is a metal guitar first and foremost – one that is designed to tame vast amounts of gain in a way that its passive-pickup’d sibling could never hope to do. It’s also fast in a way that very few other guitars in the Gibson/Epiphone catalogue are – slinky and unrestrained in a way that you’d normally expect from a Kramer or a Jackson.
And that is perhaps the most encouraging and heartening part about the Prophecy collection, and this Victory in particular. Too often metal guitarists have to make do with instruments from smaller brands or from metal-focused sub-brands of the big dogs. It’s great to see the mainstream Epiphone marque catering so explicitly to heavier musicians – and to see the Victory become a more engrained part of the wider Gibson line.
Image: Press
Alternatives
It would be remiss to talk about affordable metal axes without bringing Ibanez into the discussion, and the venerable Genesis RG550 ($1,199) is a great rock machine – though it doesn’t have active pickups. The Sterling by Music Man Sabre ($1,499) is a rare example of a guitar in this price point that also sports Fishman Fluence humbuckers, while the Schecter Hellraiser C-1 FR ($1,499) offers a Floyd and a pair of EMG pickups.
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