2012 Masterbuilt Smokers - NEW 30" & 40" Models!

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Best of luck with the replacement unit.  Hopefully someone at MB is following the various forums, especially this one and will take the necessary steps to once again produce a product without any safety or reliability issues.  I did not mean to suggest that the secondary AMAZN smoke device was  or is not a worthwhile investment.  On the contrary, it was the MES I was referring to that based upon the many posts seems to have some rather serious problems.  And the MES is not an inexpensive throwaway smoker. I meant no offense and hope my comment was not taken that way.
 
No offense taken.  Hopefully the new cabinet will be better and, at least, I'll have some spare parts to play with.  First on the menu is to drill out the chiploader holes and dremel the vent.  Either that or pull the vent completely and get 3" pipe like Todd has and put a butterfly in it.  This should help with AMAZN box to stay lit, keep smoke from sitting in the cabinet and even fix pillpushers heat rise on the high end.  (BTW pillpusher, a 20 degree swing is not too bad for most smokers, but electrics are usually more precise.)  I know my last MES would start to drop back down after just a few degrees above set point and had maybe an 8 degree total swing depending on the weather and how heavy the meat load was.  As long as the controller knows when to shut down I'm hoping I'll be back in business in no time.

Sorry about the "immolation" thing.  
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Lets Say, I'm not a huge fan of the new 2012 MES 40.....

So, what do we do with them?

Same things we did with the previous models

We play with them and figure out modifications, that make them work better

For under $300 it's a pretty darn good deal

The new MES runs "HOT"

Knowing that, you have to adjust accordingly.  I'll set mine around 205° - 210° to maintain 225° in my smoker.

I would not worry about a foil tent.  There's just not enough room

Use a foil pan above the AMNPS on the shelf, or just wrap the portion of the shelf, directly above the AMNPS with foil.

I always place a disposable foil pan under the meat I'm smoking, to catch the drippings.  It's easier to clean up your smoker and you can reuse the juice if you want.

Just tryin' to make lemonade out of lemons!!!

Todd
Noticed that the Gen2 I had ran very hot using my Maverick 732.  Mine was reading almost 50 degrees lower on my unit readout with temps way over 300!  Per my last post in this thread, I did return it and kept my Gen1. 

I still think they are both great, just hope MB works out the problems before the next rollout. 

I agree that the new one does not draft as well, but I'm sure people here will mod and do things that will make it work!

THANKS TO ALL POSTING ON THIS THREAD!
 
So, I received my new digital control panel and installed it the other day. When I removed the old panel and turned it over I was shocked to see standing water inside the plastic.  Apparently, my one hour of successful smoking before the unit failed had produced enough condensation to create the pools.  To me this means bad seals...I have about 12 days before I hit the 60 day return window for Cabelas so I plan to test it out tomorrow night.  With this sudden cold snap I had to take advantage of good ice fishing conditions this weekend.  I'm also kinda worried about ruining more meat when I test out the unit again. Blah
 
So, I received my new digital control panel and installed it the other day. When I removed the old panel and turned it over I was shocked to see standing water inside the plastic.  Apparently, my one hour of successful smoking before the unit failed had produced enough condensation to create the pools.  To me this means bad seals...I have about 12 days before I hit the 60 day return window for Cabelas so I plan to test it out tomorrow night.  With this sudden cold snap I had to take advantage of good ice fishing conditions this weekend.  I'm also kinda worried about ruining more meat when I test out the unit again. Blah
I wish you had taken some photos of that ...I dont even know how to take the control panel off ... but I will say

I have done a pork butt some sausage a whole chicken and some ribs ... so far since christmas.. so far so good and I have a mavrick probe I have been using to compare with the one in the MES30  and so far its only been a few degrees difference ...Ive been real happy with it ....but  now Im scared to plug it back in lol
 
the wires plugged in and out with no problem. the hardest part was getting the panel to attach back onto the body of the smoker.
 
Well, I got my extra thermometers in and tested out my unit. As many have mentioned, mine has the same temp variation issues. I placed four identical oven thermometers in it and set it to 225.

MES reading: 223

Rack 3: left side: 245 right side 280

Rack 2: left side 245 right side 300

Obviously, this is a problem unless you only plan on one half of your food being properly cooked. But, as I think Todd had mentioned, I figured the water pan may be disrupting the natural heat flow in the unit. So, I took it out and reset it to 225. Once it got up to target, all four thermometers read within 5 degrees of 225. Go figure.

So, the moral of the story is that this unit apparently works MUCH better without the water pan. Just put a small foil drip pan on the bottom as Todd suggested. I think these will do the trick just fine:

 
That's what I'm hoping. I'm sure I'll smoke something over the weekend and will try it out. I think as long as you have the AMNPS on the far left side, leaving about half of the opening uncovered, it shouldn't block off the circulation too much.
 
Hi all,

New to the Forum and bought 40" MES based on discussions. Received mine beginning of January. I had an issue that I did not see posted, that thought I would share. Started seasoning the smoker, plugged it in, used smoker control panel to set temp and time, all was good. It started up fine, ran for about 1/2 hour then it was off. Thought it died, but was the GFCI (GFI). Read the other threads on this, so no issue, did notice though that at full power cycle it kept tripping, not when starting from cold, we'll save for another discussion. So I plugged into another outlet no GFCI and kept going.

While it was going I decided to try the remote, installed batteries, hit the ON button and noticed some strange characters on top line and TEMP was reading 300. So I continued and was able to adjust temp (on remote) above the 275 threshold. went up to 350 and then I stopped, reading on Smoker Controller also read 350! Long story short (already long!) temp maxed out at 300-310 figure it is an element limitation.

OK now that I have that out of the way promise not to write books...
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After resetting the temp back below the 275 mark I was never able to reproduce the scenario. However this, along with your posts on the subject prompted careful monitoring of the internal temp with MAV-732. Called Masterbuilt and they are sending out a new controller for replacement. Not convinced the controller is the issue. 

Already smoked a few PBs, Brisket and Baby Backs. Worked fine by setting temp on about 190-200 on the smoker, kept internal temp between 220-235). AMPS worked ok on bottom, but then read about lifting off the bottom drip pan or placing on top of water pan (Thanks for the advice Todd, will try).  Will let everyone know what I find out when I remove drip pan and test temps as PillPusher suggested.

One last thing when checking the temp last time I used the smoker’s meat probe as another test point and noticed that it would read within a few  degrees of MAV probe. So I'm leaning (guessing) that controller may be OK and internal box temp probe may be off? See the temps below, at high temps it was a bit messy (will redo temp test when I can, with water pan removed, hopefully this weekend):

Hope this helps, if nothing else it appears most 40MES 2nd Gens consistently have temp control issue. Tino.
Controller Setting(C)Meat Probe(P)Additional Therm.(T)P-CP-C %T-C
84113 2925.66372 
86115 2925.21739 
87116 2925 
92122 3024.59016 
97128 3124.21875 
103136 3324.26471 
1141481503422.9729736
1231571603421.6560537
1421781803620.2247238
1531891913619.0476238
1682042053617.6470637
1762122153616.9811339
1812182203716.9724839
1922282303615.7894738
2022392403715.4811738
2182572553915.175137
2342732653914.2857131
2422802753813.5714333
2582932853511.9453927
2653002953511.6666730
272300295289.33333323
27630030024824
      
  AVERAGE33.6818218.1684134.0625
  MAX3925.6637239
 
I did similar testing, with similar results

Shut mine off at 340° and it smelled like melting plastic

Tried again the next day, but same thing happened

Called Masterbuilt, and they offered to send be a new cabinet. 

I had to remove the plug and nameplate and send it in, before they would send me a new cabinet. 

2 weeks for the process, but I said "No Thanks!"

Called SAMS, where I got it and they took it back.

Fired up the replacement, and it ran hot too, but maxed out at 309°

No funny melting plastic smell

Temps consistently ran 25° - 30° higher than the temp set on the controller

I have to set the controller to 205°, in-order for the 2nd rack to maintain 225°

If anyone has a new 2012 MES that the controller and cabinet temp are in sync, please come forward

I'm guessing "All" of them are not functioning correctly

TJ
 
Today the AMNPS worked great over drip pan opening tried it on bottom shelf but I had it to close to the burner and ignited another row but was working. Good smoke today.
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My MES runs cold:

Set temp      MES read     Three probes on shelf  1       2      3       4

275               277                                                  269          265      

275               285                                                  260          260

275               277                                                  269          270

275               279                                                           270          270

245               245                                                           239          241

225               235                                                           225          230

Meat probe tested again in hot water two probes read 150/151 MES probe read 170.

Some very tasty Chicken thighs wrapped around some japs and cheese! Todds AMNPS was only smoke source PECAN, nice color and smoke.

 
So it seems that you might have run the test that PillPusher was explaining with AMPS in place over the water pan.

Did you have the water pan removed?

BTW your temps vs setting are very close, no more than 10 degrees worst case if I'm reading correctly,

(except for one 15 degree outlying point), which is not bad compared to others of us.
 
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