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I bought this Epi Hummingbird 2nd hand for real cheap. I didn't want to spend 10x the money for a Gibson at this point of time (mainly because my wife wouldn't allow me to!).
The guitar itself is very well made, and like my other Epiphone's I have and have had, they're a real bang for the buck. The bird's colour is amazing and the finish is great, except for some minor flaws in the binding and purfling but I can live with that.
However, despite it's beautiful appearance and good workmanship, I find the sound pretty bad. Funny how people say "Gibson costs 10x more but the Epiphone sounds almost the same!". It's hard to argue that the price difference does not amount to differences in tone but the Epiphone definitely sounds like a cheap guitar.
You can upgrade parts of the guitar to make it sound better. I threw the disgusting plastic nut, saddle and bridge pins away and put in a bone nut, a TUSQ saddle and bone pins. These removed some of the nasty nasally, tinny tone but it still didn't sound good.
Fortunately, there's another way to make this guitar sound better. Unlike the original Hummingbird and most other dreadnoughts, the Epi HB has unscalloped bracing. It has thick X braces and tone bars which really kill the tone and make the guitar sound nasally.
In this video I scalloped the X braces and there was a huge difference in tone. I feel that the mids are not as harsh and are more scooped, the bass is slightly improved but the treble is still retained. It sounds much warmer and not as tinny. However I'll leave the guitar as it is for now and let the top get used to the new X bracing, and I may decide to scallop the tone bars and maybe lower the back braces to improve the tone further.
Special thanks to Luthier Brian Kimsey who has inspired me to do this. Do check out his videos on KZbin as explains how to scallop X braces on Martins.