i have extensive experience with only 2 epis-
pr-7e:
all-laminate electric acoustic. beautiful, with cherry (or is it flame?) burst bird's eye maple top. plays very easily, with a decent cutaway. tends to rattle kind of easily, but disassembly and reassembly with a little rubber cement takes care of most of that. saddle and nut are fairly cheap, but a little file work makes them usable. tuners are just fine, fit and finish are great. excellent live guitar, a little thin but nice jingle unplugged.
emperor:
this is the baddest electric/acoustic bass i've ever played, the only one i've played that can feasibly keep up with an acoustic guitar in a live room and no amplification (i've never played a smaller/shmancier acoustic bass-i'm guessing that a nice goodall will cut even better)-easy enough to play, though the scale is long enough to shy off the short of arm.
the sheraton is not considered by most to be a second-brand guitar-by that, i mean that it is considered a classic by the guitar community at large. that really says something.
i think that the gibson remakes (like the SG variants) vary from a good deal to only so-so, but epi offers pretty good value on the whole-if you get a good one (i guess i've had decent luck overall), you've really just saved money by not buying gibson. i presume most, if not all, have lifetime warranties (
my pr-7e does, at least). as good a brand of guitar as gibson on the whole, i think, considering that gibson does not exactly make the killers they used to.