# Pitboss or Masterbuilt



## Sjb55 (Apr 18, 2019)

I'm getting ready to purchase my first electric smoker. I've narrowed my choices to two, the PitBoss Series 3 and the Masterbuilt 230g. Both are available locally for $230. The Masterbuilt has the ability to monitor temps via Bluetooth, but only hits 275 degrees. The Pitboss reaches 400 degrees, (which I'd like for roasting vegetables.) Depending on where you look, both devices are fantastic or lousy. 
Given the higher temps that can be reached on the Pitboss, I'm leaning towards it. Any thoughts from the forum?

Thanks


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## normanaj (Apr 18, 2019)

I own a couple of Masterbuilts and both the built-in chamber temp and meat probes are inaccurate at best.One of mine is the bluetooth model(230g) and I've never used that feature as it only reports the inaccurate readings.Being able to adjust time and temp with your phone is novel at best imo.

I use a multi-probe wireless therm,one probe for chamber temp and the others for food temp.

And the vast majority of MES owners here use and A-MAZE-N tray or tube to generate smoke.Beats the hell out of using the chip loader.

Can't make any judgement on the PitBoss as I've never used one.


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## dward51 (Apr 19, 2019)

By Pit Boss "series 3" are you talking about the vertical pellet smoker "series 3" unit?  If you are, remember it will not work without pellets, so there is a little higher operating cost involved.   That being said, I would lean towards the Pit Boss myself.

Also there is another thread in this forum where a MES owner was denied warranty repairs because he used a pellet tube/tray in his MES instead of the stock wood chip tray.  They have added the notice of "do no use pellets" to their owners manuals now (it's on page 3 of the 320/340g manual).  I guess this is their "out" going forward although nearly everyone uses pellets instead of chips it seems (just not in their chip holder, but in a pellet tube mostly).


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## Bearcarver (Apr 19, 2019)

I love my MES units, but I wouldn't use the Bluetooth as a "Plus" when comparing smokers.
Their old RF remote was definitely better!!

Bear


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## Inscrutable (Apr 19, 2019)

No there is both a 2 and 3 series electric, the 3 a little larger. But has a much higher wattage element and top end temp than the MES’s ... at least theoretically.  
Been looking at that 3 series too, but the pellet ones much larger and leaning that way.


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## Inscrutable (Apr 19, 2019)

And agree with Bear, not wed nor enthralled with Bluetooth and all. 
But getting older and curmudgeonly


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## sigmo (May 7, 2019)

I have a gen 1 MES 40, and with heavy modifications and an AMNPS pellet maze, it works well.

The other day I saw a Pit Boss series 5 at a local store, and was impressed by its size, build quality, and adjustable racks.  But it is a pellet burner, and I want an all-electric unit like the MES.

I wish Pit Boss made an all electric as large as this series 5, but they probably can't make one that large that is all electric and will operate off of a normal 20 Amp 120V circuit.  With a pellet burner design, they can achieve the necessary heat.

Their series 3 all-electrics seem to use a 1550 or 1600 Watt heating element, and that's about the max you can have for a 120V appliance.  So they must be limited on size by that.

I have not seen one of their series 3s in person, but the build quality of the 5 I saw seemed nice.

My reason for getting a new smoker would be to get a larger chamber.  But if I was looking for a similar sized unit to what I already have, I would definitely look long and hard at a Pit Boss.


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## Buzz G (May 25, 2019)

sigmo said:


> I have a gen 1 MES 40, and with heavy modifications and an AMNPS pellet maze, it works well.
> 
> The other day I saw a Pit Boss series 5 at a local store, and was impressed by its size, build quality, and adjustable racks.  But it is a pellet burner, and I want an all-electric unit like the MES.
> 
> ...


I have a pit boss 5, it is absolute junk, Chinese made garbage dumped on the U.S. consumers, control board was bad the day I got it, took close to 3 months to get a new one, just tried it again today and the temp ping ponged from 140 to 400 degrees, couldn't finish the cook in this pile of crap, put the pork in one of my home made smokers to get the job done, definitely stay away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## sigmo (May 26, 2019)

Buzz G said:


> I have a pit boss 5, it is absolute junk, Chinese made garbage dumped on the U.S. consumers, control board was bad the day I got it, took close to 3 months to get a new one, just tried it again today and the temp ping ponged from 140 to 400 degrees, couldn't finish the cook in this pile of crap, put the pork in one of my home made smokers to get the job done, definitely stay away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



The mechanical build of the one I saw seemed good on a quick examination.  I considered getting one mainly to retrofit it to be electrically heated and adding a separate smoke generator.  So the reliability and design of the pellet burner parts and the electronic controls wouldn't be terribly important to me.

But the cabinet and shelves would be important.  How does the build quality of that stuff seem?


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## GaryHibbert (May 26, 2019)

I've never used a Pit Boss, so I cant comment on them.
I've owned a MES 30 Gen 1 for years and love it.  I modded it with a PID, AMNPS, and mailbox.  Since I do all my smokes low and slow, the higher temps don't really matter to me.  The MES and mailbox mod work beautifully for cold smoking.
Gary


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## Inscrutable (May 27, 2019)

I have a PB 3 electric about to take on maiden voyage. Seasoned it with no problems. Yesterday did temp checks throughout the unit. Got up to 284* before I shut down. Had 4 racks equidistant and filled water pan. Top 3 racks pretty consistent 284/279/270, and about 20* cooler right above the water pan. As expected, the built-in (analog dial) thermometer read off/low. Will be seeing if it’s consistent so I can derive a calibration/equivalency table. Though I expect to use the Inkbird or Thermoworks all the time anyway. 

But no wild oscillations - again, as expected with electrics ... the pellet poopers can oscillate a bit as the auger kicks in and out. 

One flame post and no return yet ... At this point seems BuzzG just a troll ... happy to be proven wrong. 

But plenty of happy PB owners as well as MES, wouldn’t discourage the OP either way.


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## Buzz G (May 27, 2019)

Inscrutable said:


> I have a PB 3 electric about to take on maiden voyage. Seasoned it with no problems. Yesterday did temp checks throughout the unit. Got up to 284* before I shut down. Had 4 racks equidistant and filled water pan. Top 3 racks pretty consistent 284/279/270, and about 20* cooler right above the water pan. As expected, the built-in (analog dial) thermometer read off/low. Will be seeing if it’s consistent so I can derive a calibration/equivalency table. Though I expect to use the Inkbird or Thermoworks all the time anyway.
> 
> But no wild oscillations - again, as expected with electrics ... the pellet poopers can oscillate a bit as the auger kicks in and out.
> 
> ...


I am not a troll, been smoking meats for 20+ years and the PB is the worst smoker I have ever seen for temp control and consistency, the cabinet build is decent but the pellet controls are no good!!!


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## Inscrutable (May 27, 2019)

Glad your back ... hang around and post some. 

Frankly, unless have a PID based controller they all exhibit swings to varying degrees. Inherent to chasing setpoints whether temp or other parameters - even with those often need to incorporate rate of change logic as well.


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## Buzz G (May 27, 2019)

Inscrutable said:


> Glad your back ... hang around and post some.
> 
> Frankly, unless have a PID based controller they all exhibit swings to varying degrees. Inherent to chasing setpoints whether temp or other parameters - even with those often need to incorporate rate of change logic as well.


Temp swings on my pb5 are way to radical to trust it, been messing with it for 4 months now and always wind up with it dropping to around 140 to 150 degrees then it pours the pellets to it and it has gone as high as 450 degrees with a big pellet fire in the pot then it sits until that burns off and you wind up with a bitter smoke flavor in your meat then it will hold temp close to 225 where I set it and then off to the races again.  You absolutely cant leave this thing unattended.


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## dr k (May 27, 2019)

Buzz G said:


> Temp swings on my pb5 are way to radical to trust it, been messing with it for 4 months now and always wind up with it dropping to around 140 to 150 degrees then it pours the pellets to it and it has gone as high as 450 degrees with a big pellet fire in the pot then it sits until that burns off and you wind up with a bitter smoke flavor in your meat then it will hold temp close to 225 where I set it and then off to the races again.  You absolutely cant leave this thing unattended.


I'd return it or have PB send new parts. They need to know about your issue and resolve it.


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## Buzz G (May 27, 2019)

dr k said:


> I'd return it or have PB send new parts. They need to know about your issue and resolve it.


they know about it


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## sigmo (May 27, 2019)

I suspect it may be difficult to tune the controller for a pellet burner design.  I would be curious to know how they accomplish smooth, even temperature control in any pellet burning design.

Does it seem like they leave the blower on constantly at a fixed speed, and use only the pellet feed to control the temperature, or do they also throttle the blower speed to adjust how rapidly the pellets burn?

I'm honestly tempted to buy one just to observe how it operates.

You could use a PLC or microcontroller to adjust the pellet auger AND the blower speed independently.  But it would take some serious trial and error to figure out how to get what you want.

In a way, a pellet burner type smoker has an inherent problem like an all-electric that uses the main heater to also produce the smoke.

I think most of us agree that it is best to be able to control smoke production separately from cabinet temperature.  So any system where the heating power is locked into the smoke generation seems less than ideal.

If you're just heating a large space, a pellet stove can achieve as good of temperature regulation as a gas furnace (for example).

But to maintain a tiny space (like a smoker) at a reasonably constant temperature may be more unforgiving and difficult.  Further, since the smoke production is directly tied to the heating, you're back to a similar situation as with a single-heater all-electric like my MES40 was, right out of the box.

I think I will always end up preferring an electrically-heated smoker for ease of temperature control, but it also needs a separate (and separately-controllable) smoke generator so I can adjust smoke and temperature independently.

I'm still considering getting one of the PB5s to play with, and then modify.  The adjustable shelves and size of the one I saw seemed just right for what I want in a smoker.  I just don't think I would want the unit to be heated by the burning of pellets.  I'd likely set it up with a 220V operated heating element.

Still, setting up a PLC and writing the program to control both the blower and the pellet feeder would be a fun challenge!  But even if I achieved good temperature control, would I like how the smoke was?  It seems unlikely.


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## Buzz G (May 27, 2019)

sigmo said:


> I suspect it may be difficult to tune the controller for a pellet burner design.  I would be curious to know how they accomplish smooth, even temperature control in any pellet burning design.
> 
> Does it seem like they leave the blower on constantly at a fixed speed, and use only the pellet feed to control the temperature, or do they also throttle the blower speed to adjust how rapidly the pellets burn?
> 
> ...


The fan runs at a continuous speed all the time, the couple of times it has worked for a couple of hours the temp fluctuations ran 25 to 30 degrees below the set temp to 50 to 70 degrees above the set temp,  I think they have a very slow reacting thermostat control and the parameters are way to wide,  there is a box above the pot and when it goes wild the fire will be shooting out the vent holes 4 to 5 inches on each side, had one hell of a grease fire in it once, it caught the drippings pan on fire and damn near burned the whole thing up, should've just let it burn up


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## sigmo (May 27, 2019)

Buzz G said:


> The fan runs at a continuous speed all the time, the couple of times it has worked for a couple of hours the temp fluctuations ran 25 to 30 degrees below the set temp to 50 to 70 degrees above the set temp,  I think they have a very slow reacting thermostat control and the parameters are way to wide,  there is a box above the pot and when it goes wild the fire will be shooting out the vent holes 4 to 5 inches on each side, had one hell of a grease fire in it once, it caught the drippings pan on fire and damn near burned the whole thing up, should've just let it burn up



You're a big fan of this smoker.  I can tell!  ;)

OK.  That's interesting information.  The blower runs at a constant speed, and they try to control the temperature purely by the rate at which they feed pellets into the burn area.

If you could feed the pellets very smoothly and slowly, it seems like you could still get reasonably precise temperature control.  But it sounds like the controller in yours dumps pellets into the burn chamber in rather jerky, large dumps.

I wonder if this is because the controller is "jerky", or if there might be a mechanical issue that is causing your particular copy of this smoker to be jamming or hanging up when trying to feed the pellets.  So instead of feeding them slowly and steadily, it binds up for a while, and then things break loose all at once dumping in a big batch of pellets.

It would be interesting to study the drive to the pellet feed corkscrew.

Pellet stoves usually work very well.  I'm sure these smokers use a similar system.  But a small smoker would be a lot more unforgiving than heating an entire room or part of a house.
,


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## Jonok (May 28, 2019)

You will get better product with an electric smoker with some thought given to independent, controlled smoke generation. 

I personally think that a butt from a Masterbuilt, (run well) even without a smoke mod, tastes a lot better than one from a Traeger.


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## Buzz G (May 28, 2019)

Jonok said:


> You will get better product with an electric smoker with some thought given to independent, controlled smoke generation.
> 
> I personally think that a butt from a Masterbuilt, (run well) even without a smoke mod, tastes a lot better than one from a Traeger.


I have been running a masterbilt 40 electric for probably close to ten years and it has been flawless,  thought I would try the pb for something different,  guess you should stick to what works for you, home made smokers I have built that are stick burners with propane backup is still by far the best flavor and the best cook I use the mes when I am being lazy and don't want to babysit it.


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## Buzz G (May 28, 2019)

sigmo said:


> You're a big fan of this smoker.  I can tell!  ;)
> 
> OK.  That's interesting information.  The blower runs at a constant speed, and they try to control the temperature purely by the rate at which they feed pellets into the burn area.
> 
> ...


The auger runs nice and smooth, it seems to be the timing of the thermostat when it starts dumping pellets it is just more than it needs before it stops the auger, that is where the big temp swings come in.


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## sigmo (May 28, 2019)

As you both say, I really do love how pork butts come out in my modified MES40 with the AMNPS pellet burner for smoke.

The flavor and cook are excellent and it really is nice to be able to run it with very little intervention for long periods.  Perfect, especially for those long long smokes like a butt!

If the auger and pellet movement are smooth, it seems like setting up a different control system might be able to fix the issues with the PB.  That still seems like a fun project for a control system nerd like me.

But it's not acceptable out of the box performance for a product.  I can see why you'd be mightily annoyed!


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## Buzz G (May 28, 2019)

sigmo said:


> As you both say, I really do love how pork butts come out in my modified MES40 with the AMNPS pellet burner for smoke.
> 
> The flavor and cook are excellent and it really is nice to be able to run it with very little intervention for long periods.  Perfect, especially for those long long smokes like a butt!
> 
> ...


If In knew it was going to take a bunch of mods I would have just built another one from scratch


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## sigmo (May 28, 2019)

I'm still tempted to get one to use for its enclosure.  I really like its size and rack setup.  For me, building the cabinet would be the time-consuming part of a build.  The control system is the part I'd actually enjoy.  I guess I should try a complete build someday.


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## Buzz G (May 28, 2019)

sigmo said:


> I'm still tempted to get one to use for its enclosure.  I really like its size and rack setup.  For me, building the cabinet would be the time-consuming part of a build.  The control system is the part I'd actually enjoy.  I guess I should try a complete build someday.


I'd give you a screaming deal on one but I am in North Dakota and it looks like your in Wyoming, thinking the freight would not work out


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## sigmo (May 29, 2019)

Buzz G said:


> I'd give you a screaming deal on one but I am in North Dakota and it looks like your in Wyoming, thinking the freight would not work out



I think you're right.  As an individual without a big shipping contract with UPS or FedEx, it's very expensive to ship.  Where I used to work, we had a contract with UPS, and I could have sent you an ARS label for that bad boy, and regardless of its weight and size, $4.50 is what we'd pay.  We shipped bigger, heavier items that way quite often.

As an individual, it would be prohibitive.

I just guessed the box might be 30 x 30 x 36", with a weight of 50#.

Ground UPS from Bismarck to Casper:  $322!!!

I'd be far better off getting one locally.

I keep toying with the idea.  But only because I figure I could modify it to be all electric.  But I would play with it as-is first just to see.how it works.


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