The Ultra-339 is for guitarists seeking the power of the Ultra-III's breakthrough electronics in an ES-style guitar, featuring Epiphone's legendary ES semi-hollow body construction in a reduced sized, the new Ultra-339 will take your guitar playing to the Ultra-level!
The Birth of a Legend
First introduced in the late '50s at our legendary Kalamazoo factory, the ES series became an instant rock classic, bringing the look and feel of an archtop to a generation of players who had grown up playing solid body guitars like the Les Paul. The ES-335, the first in the ES series, was an instant success. But for many players who were used to smaller solid body guitars, the ES-335 felt too bulky to play on stage. The new Epiphone Ultra-339 is the perfect remedy, featuring smaller body dimensions while still retaining the bell-like tone the ES series is famous for. And best of all, the Ultra-339 is loaded with Ultra technology!
Great Tonewoods
While the Ultra-339 is packed with cutting edge technology, it still maintains the same basic specifications that made ES-style guitars the choice of two generations of artists from Chuck Berry to B.B. King to Alex Lifeson. The Ultra-339 features a laminated maple body with a solid center block, classic f holes, and a comfortable 24.75" scale SlimTaper™ "D" profile mahogany neck, which is glued-in with a mortise and tenon neck joint. The 12" radius rosewood fingerboard has 22 medium jumbo frets just like vintage ES-style archtops, a 1.68" nut and mother-of-pearl dot inlays. The Ultra-339 comes in three beautiful color finishes: Cherry, Natural and Vintage Sunburst.
Two Great Pickup Systems in One Guitar
At the heart of the new Ultra-339 are two pickup systems. The classic pickup system features Epiphone's new ProBucker™ humbucker pickups—a ProBucker-2™ in the neck position and a ProBucker-3™ in the bridge position. Both are patterned after Gibson's famous BurstBuckers™ and are wound to the same specs as the Kalamazoo factory's legendary PAF pickups.
Epiphone's ProBuckers™ feature authentic 18% nickel silver base and cover, Elektrisola wire, accurate bobbins, slugs and screws and sand casted Alnico-II magnets to give you that classic "Patent Applied For" airy tone that defines rock and roll.
The second pickup system features Shadow™ Germany's patented NanoMag™ pickup embedded discretely at the end of the fingerboard. Featuring three samarium cobalt magnets, an air coil, and active electronics, this low-impedance pickup captures subtle body acoustics and string harmonics. Together, you get powerful humbucker-driven rock crunch as well as shimmering acoustic-like tones and everything in-between.
One-Of-A-Kind Electrics Built-in
Built discretely into the bridge pickup mounting ring is a full-function, chromatic tuner. Just push the ON/OFF button and sound is immediately muted when the tuner is activated. Eleven color-coded LED's identify the note and whether it's sharp, flat or in-tune. Also, to allow quick and seamless changes between each pickup system, the Ultra-339's NanoMag™ Volume control now doubles as an A/B switch. Just push it in and quickly toggle between ProBuckers™, NanoMag™ or both pickup systems with no delay and no "pop." Two additional LED's on the pickup mounting ring provide a visual indicator of which pickup system is active (Red=NanoMag; Blue-Magnetic or Red/Blue=Both).
Hook-Up Directly To Your Computer
The Ultra-339 features three different outputs. By using the standard 1/4" MONO output, both the ProBuckers™ and NanoMag™ are mixed into one signal. Plug in an additional 1/4" cable into the STEREO output, and the ProBuckers™ are routed through one cable and the NanaMag™ the other. In this way, you can send the ProBuckers™ to your favorite guitar amp and the NanoMag ™ to a PA or an acoustic guitar amp. Using the A/B switch, you can now change "on-the-fly" between the two outputs.
The third output is USB. Using a USB cable (included with the Ultra 339), you can plug directly into your computer and use guitar applications such as Native Instruments GuitarRig™ 4LE to play your Ultra-339 through a variety of simulated amplifiers and effects and listen through your computer speakers or headphones. GuitarRig™ also features a recorder, a metronome, a tuner and much more.
Epiphone Hardware
Epiphone hardware is the best in the business and the Ultra-339 features Epiphone's patent-applied-for LockTone™ locking Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece for increased sustain and string changing ease as well as quality Wilkinson™ 14:1 ratio vintage style machine heads with tombstone buttons for tuning accuracy and stability.