Product: ESP LTD H-1001
Price Paid: USD 750
Submitted
09/03/2008
at
08:02pm
by
Matthew Lamb
Features
:
10
Made in Korea 2008
24 Extra Jumbo Frets, 25.5" Scale, Thin U-neck contour (about a 14" radius)
Mahogany Body, Flame Maple Top, Maple Neck, Rosewood Fretboard
1 Volume, 1 Tone, 5 way blade selector
H/H configuration
Passive Seymour Duncan Pickups, Custom-5 bridge, Jazz neck
Locking Tone-Pros bridge, ESP locking tuners, string-through body
See- through blue finish
Sound
:
10
The pickups are very well matched for the guitar woods. It's an extremely versatile guitar. I play metal, country, blues, classic rock and funk styles. The Custom-5 in the bridge has nice response at low gain settings, but also handles more modern metal sounds. The Jazz works very well in the neck for clean sounds.
The 5-way pickup selector is where this guitar really shows its versatility. Besides the usual bridge only, neck only and bridge and neck together choices, the 5-way has two in-between settings that work very well. The position right after the bridge produces a very convincing single-coil bridge sound. With distortion, you can get an SRV style tone. With clean settings, it produces a nice tele style sound for country leads. The position before the neck only produces a nice chimey single-coil neck sound. It sounds very nice on a clean setting with chorus.
The pickups by themselves are excellent, but with the 5- way selector you have so many more tone options.
Action, Fit, & Finish
:
8
When I recieved the guitar, the setup was pretty good. I live in Houston, and shipping guitars into this humidity usually has negative effects on the setup. The intonation is pretty accurate, but the low E does have some buzzing on the first 5 frets. This is tolerable, but needs to be fixed.
The finish is very nice, but the finish spilled over onto the binding in a few spots. This is to be expected for a Korean made guitar.
Other than that there are no issues. I'm giving it an 8 because string buzzing is fixable, and the small finish flaws are common in a Korean made guitar that retails for under $1000.
Reliability/Durability
:
9
The hardware seems very durable. I knew going in that the Tone-pros bridge and Seymour Duncan pickups were reliable. The ESP locking tuners were a real surprise. They are just as nice as the Sperzels I have used in the past. ESP really did a nice job with these tuners. This guitar holds tune extremely well.
I've owned ESP's before and they have handled some pretty serious abuse (strap slips, slamming into walls/other players, etc.) Only time will tell with this one.
You should never gig without a backup, but I feel like this guitar could get away with it if you had to.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
I have never dealt with ESP directly.
ESP's are built like tanks, you shouldn't need to replace one unless there is a factory defect. They can take the rigours of the road. Just look at the ESP roster. Most of them even use the cheaper LTD's.
Overall Rating
:
No Opinion
I have been playing for 11 years. I sold my Gibson SG to buy this guitar and haven't looked back. Most will say blasphemy, but I say the quality of ESP/LTD is much better than these newer Gibsons.
Things I love about this guitar:
The feel of the neck. Thin but not Ibanez "too thin".
The light weight
The versatility
The aesthetics
The quality of the hardware
Things I dislike:
The abalone binding, I prefer basic white or cream binding
The pickups do handle metal, but don't have the chunk of the EMG's I'm used to
