Epiphone Masterbilt AJ45 Plugged In Tone

Wellington · #1 01-19-2020, 10:17 PM

One of the worship leaders at my church plays a Epi AJ45, I’m always blown away by the tone, they played today again, he was plugged straight into a loudbox mini which was run into the pa, I didn’t tamper with any effects on the mixer, just friggin unreal tone, those guitars must have the real deal pickup states or the guitar itself has unreal tone (I’m also really digging mahogany tone these days) I’ve played some masterbilts (not the aj45 though) and I’ve never been very impressed with the sound acoustically but maybe it’s the models I’ve played.
Anyone have one of these?

SalFromChatham · #2 01-20-2020, 06:30 AM

I don't have one... but I played it back and forth against Takamine 3 series in a Sam Ash for over an hour before choosing the TaK. It wasn't an easy decision - it did sound great plugged in. The Tak Just sounded better unplugged.

The AJ45 was also extremely well set up right from the get go.

PetesaHut · #3 01-20-2020, 02:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by d.loseth

One of the worship leaders at my church plays a Epi AJ45, I’m always blown away by the tone, they played today again, he was plugged straight into a loudbox mini which was run into the pa, I didn’t tamper with any effects on the mixer, just friggin unreal tone, those guitars must have the real deal pickup states or the guitar itself has unreal tone (I’m also really digging mahogany tone these days) I’ve played some masterbilts (not the aj45 though) and I’ve never been very impressed with the sound acoustically but maybe it’s the models I’ve played.
Anyone have one of these?

Consider the contribution from the loudbox mini, I have one and it's awesome.

RalphH · #4 01-20-2020, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PetesaHut

Consider the contribution from the loudbox mini, I have one and it's awesome.

There might be quite a bit in this. I had an Epi AJ-500RCE (same pickup + preamp - I think - very happy to be wrong, sit down and shut up

and epi change their specs regularly too when it comes to pickups it seems ) and plugged straight to a computer USB interface it was pretty quacky. It wasn't unpleasantly harsh, just very flat and very piezo sounding. Just about the opposite of my Taylor.