Product: Epiphone AJ-200SCE Price Paid: USD 299.00
Submitted 09/14/2009
at 10:50pm
by Robert Sacramento
Features
:10
First the obvious things: This is a beautiful guitar. Mine is the sunburst. Finish is perfect. Setup is fantastic. Epiphone always has great necks, and the frets are finished to perfection. And yes, it has the E-Sonic system. Sorry to hear the earler person got a bad one, but mine is outstanding! I run it straight into a Fender Acoustasonic Junior. The sound is fantastic. For acoustics I also have a Yamaha with a Fishman, and a Hohner with the Shadow P7 system. The Yamaha with the Fishman pales a lot compared with my Epi. And the Hohner is a distant 2nd place to the Epi.
Dude, serious....mine sounds so great, no pops, etc....I urge you to exchange it for one that works. Oh yeah, setup is great, too.
Sound
:10
Not sure if I mentioned it but the sound is fantastic. Have used it for recording and just plain wow. Unplugged it's great, and plugged in for recording, even better. It's now my favorite acoustic.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:10
Great, great and great. Plays fantastic. Epiphone consistently has comfortable necks, well finished, and very playable. And the finish is great. But frankly, even though it's beautiful, I don't care if it looks like hell. It's all about the sound and playability.
Reliability/Durability
:10
So far so good. I've got a few Epi's (Joe Pass signature, Sheraton, Casino, and this one) and I've never had trouble.
Customer Support
:No Opinion
Never needed them, so I guess that means they were proactive and built a great guitar from the start.
Overall Rating
:10
My favorite acoustic. Sounds fantastic, and plays like creamy butter.
Product: Epiphone AJ-200SCE Price Paid: USD 300
Submitted 05/27/2009
at 10:29am
by Kastrodamas
Features
:10
Good tuners, great neck, and I really like the on board tuner built into the preamp. Strap peg on the neck heel. Cool looking "E" on the pickguard. Tobacco sunburst finish which is flawless.
Sound
:1
Played this guitar at the store, sounded great both acoustic and amplified. Pulled the trigger and bought it right away. Really big sounding guitar; great tone across the spectrum. I got it home and plugged it into my Fishman preamp/ di. After a couple of hours I started getting this popping sound from the guitar when I really dug in. I switched preamps, seemed to go away. Later on at rehearsal, plugged straight into the board it did it again, just much worse. Back to the preamp/di setup. This time the popping got worse, the guitar started distorting really bad. I changed batteries in everything, restring the guitar, to no avail. I'm really disappointed in this guitar.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:7
Besides the poor setup from the factory, and the faulty electronics, the guitar seemed to be built great.
Reliability/Durability
:3
Again with the electronics issue. I just can't justify a good rating here on a guitar that is faulty from the factory.
Customer Support
:6
Called in, got the stock "take it to a factory authorized repair center" answer. Thanks, I needed that.
Overall Rating
:3
I've been playing professionally for about ten years now. I play mainly electric, with the acoustic thrown in the mix here and there. I just can't justify spending lots of money on an acoustic. Seems that if the guitar was setup and inspected thoroughly in the US like Epiphone boasts, they would have caught this. It didn't take long for this thing to crap out, and an untrained setup tech could have said, "you know, this just doesn't sound quite right". Back to the store this thing goes, if they can't fix it, I'll try something else.. gotta hurry though, I've got a show tonight!
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