Since the most common means of amplifying your acoustic guitar, for the majority of the acoustic market, is by the piezo electric pickup/preamp systems, I understand and agree with Epiphone on this. The market already has a load of "hollow body" archtops with magnetic pickups. The magnetic pickups interact with the strings. The piezo pickups have more sensitivity to the guitar body as a whole, thus the notion of keeping it acoustic. I have heard one demo of the Zenith played very shortly, mic'd by a ribbon microphone. I do not think the piezo takes anything away from the acoustics of the guitar. Mic it, amp it, mix the two methods together. The guitar has promise to be a versatile instrument. You won't even see the preamp/battery box when your play the guitar and you won't have to have the pick guard on to house the volume and tone pots on a magnetic system. Only thing they could have done would have been to make the piezo system passive and you could plug in to the preamp of your choice, from my perspective. The intent of these guitars seems well thought out to me. But it follows what Interests me in a new acoustic based archtop design.
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