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#1
03-05-2022, 05:51 AM
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EART E335 or similar 335 - Discussion?
This thread is intended to find any AGF members who might have bought an ES335 style guitar recently (any Chibson 335). In particular, I mostly hope to find anyone who bought an EART E335. If you are not familiar with the EART E335, I do not blame you. I doubt I can place a link here, especially within my first post. The E335 can be found with a quick search. It is available at Amazon for ~$400. I am looking for other people who would like to discuss this guitar OR this type and your experience with these 335’s.
Hello to everyone at AGF. My name is Marde and I live in Arizona. This is my 1st post at AGF. I spent only about 2 hours surfing & reading before posting. Most of my 1 or 2 hours reading caused me to be amazed by your collective knowledge, experience, -and also by the recent forum activity of AGF musicians. I am very happy that I found your Forum. I have not been involved in any other guitar forum before today. I am 57 years old and I started to learn guitar in 1981. As with most AGF people, I have a long story with guitars & music, but I will do all of us a favor by not starting to tell my guitar journey –especially not today. The guitars I own today are two Gibson Les Paul’s and a 2007 Taylor 814CE... and now this EART E335. I could not find anyone else previously talking about the E335 at AGF. Please reply if would like to talk about the EART E335 or a similar type of 335. Cheers! 
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#2
03-05-2022, 07:05 AM
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Marde, Welcome to the AGF! I've heard of EART before, perhaps initially on Phil McKnight's Know Your Gear YouTube channel? I've seen some on Amazon Canada's website... just checked now and there are some. I've never seen one before in person before but it would be great to get your review.
BTW, I'm a big Les Paul fan. What are your models and years? Here's the amazon link and pic: https://www.amazon.com/EART-Semi-Hol.../dp/B08R3GZ6Z4 
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#3
03-06-2022, 04:53 AM
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Quote:
I do not have a written review of the E335 yet (maybe never will) but I have lots of thoughts about the E335 which could be/should be a good review of this guitar. I can confirm the EART E335 guitar is built well-enough to deserve very serious consideration to AGF-type-enthusiast. The E335 is worth the price, and it is likely worth more than the store price at ~$400. I would not sell my "defective" E335 for less than I bought it for ((long story below)). I do not have enough guitar experience to compare the EART E335 to other similar 335 guitars OR WITH Gibson ES335 owners. I did own an Ibanez George Benson GB10 (Blonde) for 12 years, so I do have this (expensive) comparable model inside of my head. I sold my GB10 about 7 years ago. I wanted another 335 style recently, so I bought this cheap EART E335. I did not have the money needed to get back to a Gibson ES335 or similar money to get back into my old GB10. I was excited to learn about the EART E335, it has a lot of great features. It does. It is a great guitar. It is also a cheap guitar. If you have time to read my (initial) lengthy review, you should at least find it amusing...? Quote:
2015 – Studio, Sunburst, Stock, plus Grover tuners + TUSQ nut. This guitar is worth about $900 at Reverb. 2016 – Studio-T Brown with Pearly Gates PUP's, copper-tape cavities, fully rewired, push-pull coil taps, bumble-bee caps. Re-fret by Rich Beck 2020. Guitar is worth $250,000.00 and is not for sale. <wink>. The EART E335 is somewhat detailed at my 2-26-22 review at Amazon. It is also described very well with some of the other product reviewers. There are also 2 or 3 good Y-tube reviews too. My amazon product review is only the starting point for my E335 review. I will detail my full experience with the E335... maybe sometime after this post. Shown below is the text of my Amazon review. I cannot apologize for the long-length of the amazon review because it is already a shortened version of my full E335 experience. My Amazon review of E335 is pasted below: ((I will also attempt to insert a link to the Amazon review here)). ************************************************** **** Maybe this E335 deserves 5-stars? -Just not today. I have two of these brand new EART E335’s. Both of these were delivered to me via Amazon during Nov and Dec 2021. One of these guitars will be sent back for a refund & I have a valid reason to do this. I do like or maybe love the E335 as a whole, but each guitar has a problem or two or three. Because of the E-335 problems, and my curiosity, I ended-up removing (just un-mounting) the pickups on both of these guitars. I did this to inspect the over-all build quality inside the PUP cavities and to record the pickup type/part number installed. Note: Each of these 4 PUP’s have the same mfr date of 6-25-2013 = very strange that these PUP's are so old, -right? What I found inside of each of these guitars was shocking. These two guitars are built different from one another. One guitar "neck tongue" is embedded into the body; the other guitar neck tongue is not embedded into the body at all. This might sound hard to believe, so I have included some pictures to show you the differences between these two guitars. Here is a summary of my E335 dilemma: The 1st E335 (aka E1) has a light colored fretboard. This fretboard is crazy smooth and it has almost no visible pores in the wood. The E2 guitar has a very dark fretboard and it has a much more porous wood. In the attached pictures, E1 is on left side and E2 is on the right side. E1 has better looking routing cuts inside the pickup cavities. The E1 pickup cavities are good looking and are somewhat (better) sealed with some type of wood sealant. The E1 guitar has the neck tongue exposed and it is almost floating inside the neck pickup cavity; the bottom-side of the neck is obviously glued-down into the guitar body. This tongue is not recessed or embedded into the guitar body. Despite the good looks inside of E1 cavities, this guitar includes a unique flaw created by the manufacturer. For some unknown reason, EART added a "wood & glue patch" that I can barely see while peeping into the lower guitar F hole. The only reason I found this flaw is because the PUP Selector Switch was sideways (not proper orientation). I loosened the PUP Switch to turn it into proper orientation, and only then found out why the PUP switch would not turn. EART installed a wood & glue patch that was blocking and preventing the PUP Switch to turn. This wood patch was attached to and is parallel to the internal body truss wood; this patch is located just above the PUP switch. When I found this manufacturer installed wood-patch and realized I would not be able to turn the switch into proper orientation... I thought this guitar should be returned to Amazon. However, after finding this flaw, I received my 2nd E335 (aka E2) in late Dec 2021. E2 has a dark (and more porous) fret board. This neck tongue is fully RECESSED or EMBEDDED into the body at the neck pickup area. This guitar is not just different, it is a different build-type compared to the E1 guitar. I must have got very lucky in order to receive two different E335 guitars during Nov and Dec 2021. This also makes me wonder what E335 build-type you guys received or will receive. My coin-flip guess today is the E2 build-type is the more common one, and if you bought an E335, this should be what you have in your hands (with neck tongue embedded into the body). Also, my E2 has a crack in the neck; this is seen only inside the neck pickup cavity, and it is all the way across the neck tongue. This crack is parallel to the string frets and it looks like it is more than just a surface crack. Another flaw or "feature” purposely done by E335 builders is the neck tongue is beveled or leveled down some; this results in some valuable “wood meat” of the neck tongue was lost. You must see these two guitars in-person to fully appreciate all the flaws or differences between these two guitars. All I can do here is to offer a few of my E335 pictures and hope you can begin to see what I am attempting to describe. My pictures could be better, but at the time, I did not fully realize my pictures would be used at Amazon Reviews, in order to help others & show others, the guitar flaws or uniqueness that I found. I planned to keep the E2 guitar (with dark fretboard) but I decided to keep the E1. This decision is largely based on the playability and the string action I achieved after setup of both guitars. The E2 guitar had too much string buzz at the lower register & mostly located on G,B,E strings. I will keep the E1 and the problems with E1->> (1) the PUP Switch orientation remains sideways -plus- the wood-glue patch that EART installed inside this body (2) E1 guitar needs very low and/or MAX low bridge screw setting in order to achieve proper string action across the fingerboard (3) E1 has some very ugly soldering connections at the switch (pots too! -but I could not capture pictures of those while mounted); pix of this I might include. I have so many other thoughts about these two guitars, but I should not keep typing and make this review longer than it is already. This guitar is good or great initially and was much-much better after my setup work. The story or details of my guitar setup work is not detailed here. Any new guitar of this type/price likely needs (1) truss-rod adjustment (2) nut file for each string slot (3) bridge height adjustment (4) other stuff. Please do not return any new guitar that might need some setup work to make your new guitar play right or better for you. Lastly, I really wish I would have bought a 3rd E335… in order to kinda-sorta-almost figure out which of these two I received are the unicorn, the E1 or the E2? I also wish I knew where we could talk about these E335’s. I just signed up with acoustic-guitars-forum today; so maybe I will get involved with this AGForum and ultimately talk about my EART E335 journey at that location. TBD. Cheers! Last edited by Marde; 03-06-2022 at 05:01 AM.
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#4
03-06-2022, 04:03 PM
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EART E-335
EART E-335
Hello, my 1st post as well. I purchased the EART E-335 at the end of January 2022 after seeing some reviews on the net. First my background, I have been building Vacuum Tube Amps as a hobby since my dad taught me in 1965. So, my only actual guitar playing was limited to test my amps, sort of like Leo Fender (the Man). Recently at age 70, I have decided to properly learn guitar, mainly to keep my hands working and fingers moving as they started to deteriorate. I mention this as my comments are more towards build quality of things as opposed to those of an accomplished player. I have owned a number of Fender Strats both American and Korean. My favorite for playing (amp tests) is a 1996 Squier Pro-Tone, made in Korea – very nice for my use. But now to learn guitar I wanted something lighter, bigger than a strat, something easier to hold. The E335 style guitars fit the bill but I needed a budget guitar to get me started. The EART reviews sold me to at least give the E-335 at try. I ordered direct from EART and was pleased with the process. They communicated well and I received within two days as I live within an hour of their Ontario, CA warehouse. It arrived well packed with no damage. The finish of the guitar is very nice and overall did not see any sloppy workmanship as mentioned in some reviews. I immediately went through a setup. Action was set high so I adjusted the bridge height but then picked up some fret buzz. Saw that the neck had some slight back bow, a slight tweak of the truss rod solved that and it has played well for the last month. Pickups were set low, adjusted them closer to Gibson specs and seem to work well for now. So overall not much work to get it playable for me. Your comments about build after you opened up the cavity have me thinking, Ill have to open it up and let you know what I find. I could not find your review or photos on amazon, are they posted anywhere else or can you direct me to your review? The 3-way switch seems cheap and clicks when using, will replace soon. Don’t know the quality of pots yet but will check out. EART says the Pickups are Alnico 5’s, neck PU measured 8.4K and Bridge at 8.56K. I'll considered upgrades, maybe to Alnico II, but this is only because I can’t stop tweaking any guitar I own. Again, I am a builder not much of a player. I will follow your thread and let you know what a find inside…. Archman
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#5
03-08-2022, 01:01 AM
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Hello Archman. Thank you for joining this discussion.
I was thrilled to hear about your history as an amp builder. While I was never an amp builder, I am a long time electrical engineer, mostly inside the world of aviation. I have plenty of hands-on time with electronics and soldering too. I have a soldering station at home, but too often I find my soldering work to be sub-par and it fails my own quality control. Soldering can be a fickle beast when working a new-to-me job. The many types of components to be soldered can sometimes be resistive or difficult (with flux or to a given material) at least until after I have done a particular job once or twice. Sorry… I am drifting off of the topic, -the E335. Like you, I have never been a working musician, and my guitar skills are uniquely poor compared to most other guitarist. I also have several large time gaps of not playing guitar at all. Despite these gaps, I have a love affair with guitars. Like you, both of my E335’s needed an adjustment of the truss rod. Additional details of my set-up will come in a future post, -if and when needed. I gotta run at the moment, another project is calling me, and I will return later tonight or within next few days. Yes! When you have time, please look underneath your neck pickup to find which type of E335 you have. Types are: (1) neck is embedded into the body OR (2) neck is exposed and not embedded. The E335 I kept is the not embedded type. Quote:
Separately, you can also find my review at the Amazon EART E335 product page, at the reviews section, there is a pull-down-menu to switch from “Top Reviews” to “Most Recent” reviews. My review (and my E335 photos) will show up at the top or near the top AFTER you select “most recent”. The review is titled “Which E335 did you get OR will you get? I got both types”. Hope to catch you later. Cheers!
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#6
03-08-2022, 10:24 PM
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Marde,
I pulled the neck pickup and can see that the neck sits in a pocket or cavity that is routed into the body. I assume that this is what you refer to as “embedded”. Can’t figure out how to post the photo as yet. Both the Neck and the Bridge pickup are labelled the same: “57 Classic + “, with the numbers 860-31505-L and “wound by PS” along with a PAF sticker. I looked up this designation along with the number shown and found one person that showed a pickup in an Epiphone guitar, however it had Epiphone stamped in the metal back plate. The Gibson designation of a “57 Classic Plus” indicates that this has an Alnico II magnet. I hope it is an A2 but the EART website shows that Alnico 5's are used. The measured output of mine are about 8.4K which is less than A5's that I have used which have been. So I'll assume they are A2's at this point and just enjoy them as they do sound nice. I think that Gibson used a Classic in the neck and a slightly hotter Classic PLUS in the bridge. Interesting that mine are both the same PU, both +'s. (I took photos but cannot figure out how to load them right now. I am in the middle of setting up my new laptop as well!)
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#7
03-09-2022, 11:00 PM
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Quote:
The pickup ID and stickers? I have mostly or entirely given up on what the sticker says; except for the manufacture date seems to be valid (?) date is 6-25-2013!!?? These pups are likely built in China and they are what they are. The summary is they are identical (correct?) and they are also likely old stock, and they magically found a new home inside the 2021 E335. I forgot to measure the resistance of these pickups when I had them exposed, but I have also never done this with any of my current or prior guitars. Yes, the same stickers say 57 Classic+ & PAF, so I will take that with a grain of salt and some truth that EART wants these pickups to sound like those. Your comments about the E335 pups (resistance & sound quality) verses A2’s verses A5’s is something that deserves to stay in the discussion, -maybe on the back burner, -and to return to. Side Note: I will DVM resistance check mine within next few weeks. Quote:
FAILED attempts to post a picture shown below. First Left Bracket removed to allow others to see this attempt-> IMG]https://imgur.com/RqHTrAO[/IMG] WAG and Second attempt shown here->IMG]<a href="https://imgur.com/RqHTrAO"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/RqHTrAO.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>[/IMG] Catch you later Archman!
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#8
03-10-2022, 01:54 AM
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The photo, the one I was not able to post inside this thread, and talked about above... it is here... or it is kinda here. Use this link to view the photo. Also note the same photo also shows my unique not-embedded/not-recessed neck.
https://imgur.com/RqHTrAO -or- the same link is CLICK HERE to see that photo. Sorry about my multiple attempts MOSTLY because I am working within my own stupidity or working around the limits regarding posting a picture verses the rules applied to a new AGF user account. Cheers! 
Last edited by Kerbie; 03-10-2022 at 03:15 AM. Reason: Embedded your photo for you. You are not restricted from posting pics.
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#9
03-10-2022, 03:11 AM
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Quote:
How To Post Pictures on the AGF. Quote:
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#10
03-10-2022, 09:34 PM
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Quote:
Note to Self: Use the BBCode link from Imgur, when posting a picture via "Insert Image". @Archman: If the photo (shown here at AGF) is not big enough for detail or not able to zoom-in, click the photo and go-to the Imgur site, then download the photo from Imgur site (if you want to or need to). The downloaded photo is much larger and allows you to zoom-in. Example picture is of two EART E335's side by side. 
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#11
03-11-2022, 11:21 PM
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Marde - Thanks for the help on posting photos I appreciate you taking the time to assist. I used the Imgur site and it worked well, good to know about it as I was not familiar with it. I was able to see the neck connection, seems odd to me, looks like the pickup cavity was routed too deep and they went ahead and mounted the neck anyway.
Take care, if anything of interest turns up with the EART, I will post. I have to say that I am enjoying playing it very much and am having fun learning some blues on it.  Archman
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#13
03-13-2022, 10:32 PM
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Some of the info I described earlier might be difficult to understand, not appreciated, because of my wording, it might have easily caused some confusion. Because of this, I created a photo that shows many of the things I was attempting to describe. This photo should help.
This photo likely requires a Tap-on or Mouse-click to view the small text & details of it. If needed, the photo should be available for download at Imgur. Here is the bulk of the text that I inserted into the photo: The WHITE LINES show a slice or a section of wood that was removed and/or planed-down from the neck-tongue. I believe this slice of wood should not have been removed from the neck. This picture shows the "embedded neck" type of E335 guitar (gtr returned) as opposed to the non-embedded neck type (gtr I kept). I assume EART removed this slice of neck wood in order to allow the pickup to fit inside the cavity(?). The other E335 type = non-embedded neck type has LESS material removed at this exact spot. If you find these comments confusing it is because EART made two different guitar bodies and/or HOW THE NECK MATES TO THE BODY styles within the 2021 E335 model year. Also, the "Love Rock" on the headstock, slowly-magically faded away during the 2020-21 production year. The EART E335 guitars do not have a year or serial number stamp. Without a Serial Number, it makes these guitars less valuable and cheap? Sad. This guitar is actually very nice! The E335 deserves a serial number. Marde@AGF on 3-13-2022 
Last edited by Marde; 03-13-2022 at 10:51 PM.
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#14
03-14-2022, 01:45 AM
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I thought I should come back here and post again in order to add some additional thought about what I said in post#13. The “slice” section of the neck tongue wood I said was “removed or planed-down” in the photo COULD BE only a shim or block of some type(?) and it is not actual neck tongue wood that was removed?? Despite this second-guess of mine, I believe my initial inspection is correct, but I am also placing this subject out to you guys for doubt or for debate. As I remember it, too much material is hidden within the glue/stain/wood-seal residue at this spot. It was too hard to clearly identify what-is-what WITHOUT some destructive circumcision of the guitar body & neck at this spot. Until more info or more truth is made available, I will assume the info I shared at #13 is accurate. What-ever is ultimately discovered or decided about this…at least one fact remains. The 2021 E335 does have at least two types-> Neck tongue is fully embedded OR neck tongue is not. These are two separate guitar build-types, and each of these two types were delivered to me during Nov & Dec 2021. Lastly, this guitar, despite my examples with flaws, is still a great playing guitar. It is for sure worth the $400 price tag. It feels great. The amplified sound is TBD, mostly because I have no other similar type to compare it with. It is not fair or right for me to evaluate the amplified sound & tone of the E335 here today. It sounds good, and all pots work... and I should not comment further about the amplified tone of this guitar.
Cheers! Last edited by Marde; 03-14-2022 at 03:21 AM.
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#15
04-21-2022, 12:53 PM
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EART E335 String Grounding?
On my E335, I replaced all of the Bridge and Tailstop bushings/studs and never came across a groung wire. So I wondered how the strings are grounded. When I put my meter on the jack ground and touch the strings, bridge and tailstop all show "grounded". Does anyone know how this grounding occurs? Where is the wire?
Thanks, Archman
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