The Epiphone Sorrento was a thinline electric acoustic guitar, produced by Gibson at their Kalamazoo factory during the 1960s. It was, in many ways, an equivalent model to the Gibson ES-125TC and ES-125TDC; many Gibson instruments had an Epiphone version, and some, like the Sorrento, were very similar indeed. But the Sorrento was also very similar in style to a slightly earlier Epiphone, the Epiphone Windsor, first shipped in 1959, though without the Windsor's gold-plated hardware.
It sold moderately well in the first half of the 1960s (although nowhere near as well as the ES-125TC and TDC), with 1966 the peak year. Sales dropped off considerably in the later part of the decade. The published shipping figures are reproduced below, with several inconsistencies, and unknowns included.
The model numbers have the following meanings T - thinline, N - natural finish, D - double pickup, 3/4 - three quarter size, V - vibrato. A lack of colour code implies a Royal Olive or Shaded/Sunburst finish. For this model, C stands for Cherry finish, however some other guitars (specifically the closely related ES-125 thinlines) C stands for cutaway - to differentiate between the cutaway and non-cutaway versions (ES-125TC and ES-125T, respectively). The statistics below list 'E452TC' and 'E452TC Cherry' as separate instruments. It would seem that this is an error, presumably based on the ES-125 nomenclature, and in all probability they represent same instrument.
The grand total of 2631 Sorrentos shipped in the 1960s corresponds to just under 10000 ES-125TC and ES-125TDC guitars over the same time period (see ES-125TC shipping stats.
double pickup | single pickup | |||||||||
E452TDC | E452TDN | E452TD | E452TN | E452T | E452T 3/4 | E452TV | E452TC | E452TC Cherry | TOTAL | |
1960 | 42 | 10 | 64 | 116 | ||||||
1961 | 2 | 110 | 25 | 209 | 12 | 9 | 367 | |||
1962 | 15 | 85 | 13 | 190 | 22 | 325 | ||||
1963 | 10 | 96 | 11 | 199 | 21 | 337 | ||||
1964 | 3 | 74 | 5 | 198 | 280 | |||||
1965 | 15 | 110 | 16 | 196 | 337 | |||||
1966 | 1 | 287 | 15 | 272 | 1 | 1 | 577 | |||
1967 | 48 | 4 | 104 | 45 | 7 | 208 | ||||
1968 | 12 | 19 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 42 | ||||
1969 | 24 | 12 | 6 | 42 | ||||||
Total | 84 | 50 | 939 | 95 | 1386 | 55 | 10 | 11 | 1 | 2631 |
The Sorrento has had several limited reissues from the 1990s onwards.
$2800
$3750
$4895