For over 140 years, Epiphone has been making guitars for every style of popular music. The company, founded by the Stathopoulo family in 1873, moved from the mountains of Greece to Manhattan in the early 1900s. For the first half of the century, Epiphone was a leader in manufacturing instruments. Everything changed with the war, and by 1945, customer confidence in the company's craftsmanship and innovation was failing. Gibson, then Epiphone's greatest rival, purchased the company in 1957, a landmark merger in music history. Currently based in Nashville, Epiphone guitars have since then experienced a reemergence as a leader in the guitar industry, setting the standard for affordable quality and innovation.