Victory! Almost. Just synced up some gybe! to the empeg and it rebuilt the database ... then I saw this on output from jemplode (v51):

Retry #0 failed. (Failed to receive packet from device.)
Retry #1 failed. (Failed to receive packet from device.)
Retry #2 failed. (Failed to receive packet from device.)

Around this point the empeg rebooted, and - whaddaya know, the music is on the player. But jemplode is still showing "Rebuilding Music Database ..."

[Hey - import with pix works - yay! Thanks.]