Epiphone Masterbilt Esonic2 Bites It

[Fran Guidry]

I bought another Epiphone Masterbilt EF last June, my fourth, and my third RCCE. (Two got passed along to friends, one stays in a different tuning). I've chosen this model as my beater because it is the only sub-$1K guitar I've found that has the wide bridge spacing I prefer, and I've been pretty pleased with the EFs I've owned over the years.

This new one was my first with the factory electronics, the historically problematic Esonic2 dual source system. My research on this pickup had me both intrigued and concerned, because many users were very positive regarding the performance but many others reported failures, sometimes multiple consecutive failures.

Still, my curiosity is stronger than my caution so I went for it. And now I'm trying to reach my behind with my foot - kicking myself would make me feel a bit better. I plugged in today to do a bit of recording and heard some crackling noise (uh oh, that's a common symptom I've read about). Just for jokes I changed cable - no help. The battery light isn't on, but maybe they're crudded up - pulled the dual watch batteries, cleaned them, put them back. Oh, that fixed the crackling all right, now the mag pickup doesn't work at all. Push the blend knob over to the mag side - silence. Fortunately the undersaddle is still working, doesn't sound near as good as the blend but it works.

Interestingly, the mag is still delivering a slightly weak and noisy signal to the second output jack, but nothing through the blend system. So I'm diagnosing this as a preamp failure, which seems to be the common failure mode in these things. I'll see what kind of warranty I have, I guess. But I have a feeling this guitar will be on the block before too long. No way I want to get on stage with a tool that has proven to be unreliable, and I'm not at all enthusiastic about spending half the cost of the guitar on another pickup/preamp system.

Fran

[roylor4]

Fran, I have an ef500rcce that was bought refurbished, abused and w/ bridge reattached. Tone - great! Intonation - horrible. My electronics haven't failed yet (to my knowledge - gave it to my wife). The e-sonic system sounds great but is extremely prone to failure. The other, now defunct incarnations (ef500m & r) were better sounding to me. Wish idda kept one and had electronics put in.

[Tony Done]

I can't really help with your problem, except to suggest turning the barn door into a sound port, and buying a soundhole pickup. - Baggs M80?

However, I did look up the guitars specs to find out more about the pickup system. I noted that they specify the neck jointing system, which is resettable. I'm really pleased with that, and wish more makers would do it. - It is certainly enough to make me think about buying one (not that I'm going to), regardless of the dodgy pickup system.

I hope it won't long before we see Taylor-style bolt-on necks on Chinese guitars.

[Fran Guidry]

I'm happy to report that by pulling the strings and reaching inside the box I found that the mag connector is a threaded construction of some kind (can't see it, just feel it). Most unusual in my experience. In any case, it was unscrewed pretty far, so I screwed the bits back together and now the mag works again.

I'm glad I resisted the momentary urge to do a Pete Townsend with this thing, although I'm not likely to return to being a fan of the Esonic2 any time soon.

And now the Grover branded open back tuners are doing something weird so the space from the string hole to the bottom of the shaft is too short for two wraps on the A string. Scratch head bemusedly.

Fran