Edwards E-AL-120

2007 model, made in Japan. 24 frets(seem to be jumbo instead of the usual ESP extra jumbo's) which feel closer to a Jackson's frets than it's LTD/ESP versions. Alpine white with black pinstripes, KILLER Scythe inlays, a chrome Original Floyd Rose, and an EMG HZ-4 pickup(which no doubt needs to be replaced haha).Alder body, maple neck, beautiful ebony fingerboard...nice and dense and dark like it should be, and I can't make out any grain lines like on my Alexi-600.( a cheaper piece of ebony can sometimes reveal rosewood-like grain lines over time) No real detailed specs on the neck, but I would have to say that it's got to have a compound radius neck because when I meausured my action it was super low...couldn't believe it actually. I had no buzz even playing it clean. So once again, I have to be honest and say this thing feels more like a Jackson(especially when standing up with it) than it does an ESP...I've read all the reviews on this guitar and they don't seem to be very accurate. Oh and it came with some paper work,( which I can't read cause it's in Japanese) ,an ESP gigbag and some wrenches and the trem bar. * Purchased off ebay from Katana guitars - excellent business and the guitar was flawless...looked untouched !! The shipping from Japan to where I am (New York) took 2 business days and the guitar was packed incredibly well...take that for what it's worth I guess...

It sounds great...total crunch machine. Very bright though...like a "Rhoads" normally is. Playing through Marshalls exclusively...JCM's. I also own the LTD Alexi-600, and first off my LTD plays like butter and has way more "heft" to it than this guitar. All in all, my Alexi-600 is defintely "darker" sounding. Which is cool. Purchased this guitar thinking it would have the same specs, with just a different paintjob. Also, The LTD Alexi-600 models have sort of a "curled" feel right at the edges of where the fingerboard meets the rest of the neck...most Gibsons have this.

The action was perfect right out of the box...pickup height was fine also. All the electronics were perfect...Only 1 Volume 1 tone so...So far no flaws that I can see...

Haven't gigged with it yet, but I definitely don't see a problem when I do. Original Floyd, Gotoh tuners...and Schaller straplocks came free with the bag of tools.

Haven't had any issues yet...

Been playing for over 10 years now, and I love flying V's...

I bought this on Ebay, from a dude in Sagamihara,Japan(near mount Fuji).I paid 1,049 usd, plus shipping(I live in Malaysia,which is in Asia btw,hence the free shipping).Black w/ white pinstripe,front and back,not like the LTD version,made in japan,again not like the LTD.
I believe this is a 2007 model,coz it didn't come with the AHB 1.I change it to AHB 1.Satin neck through alder body,one EMG HZ,OFR bridge,
ebony f/board,R2 locking nut.Perfect for Metal ONLY!!

I play metal.I'm playing thru Digitech Gnx 3 and roland cube
Since I changed the pickup to AHB 1,this one sounds and feels just great.Sustain is endless,harmonics are so filthy rich,smooth satin neck,ebony f/board.Clean is amazing,but has no neck pickup.Like I said
only for molten metal.Edwards is definately better than LTD,made in japan,not korea or somewhere else.Quality is as close the Standard
ESP Standard siries,if not the custom shop.I love this baby,and would gig with it, and did.See video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCGyC59Zx-4

I bought this baby new,so it came with Alexi's tuning,which down a whole step,with regular 10's.The finish is perfect,the satin neck is
silky smooth,intonation was good,in fact after I changed to my gauge
11-50,the intonation stays perfect.ESP is the best.Tuners is Gotoh 18:1 ratio,which is way better the LTD version that are fitted with
a Grover mini tuners.The original Floyd stays in tune.the only downside is it comes with a gigbag,not OHSC.

live?Just the video...you'll see.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCGyC59Zx-4 .The hardware is top quality,Schaller strap buttons Gotoh tuners,OFR.What more you want.Mind if you're a gigging musician,
you need a back up,coz this is a Floyd Rose...and it's only for metal application...no blues or funk here...

No idea.. warranty is one year..that dude is an authorised dealer.
Anyways...haven't told you guys..it's been a year...I still don't need
to re intonate or re adjust the trust rod...Malaysia is a very2 hot
weathered country and sudden heavy rain..extreme climate change i'm tellin' ya... All I've been doing this year is change the strings and the AHB 1..that's it..ESP makes great instruments..even in other names.... NUFF SAID..

I've been playing 11 year plus.. I've once own a Jackson RR 22, made in Jpan as well,not as good as this.. I traded for an LTD MH 100QM.
Just wish it comes with a hardcase.. and an active pickup..

Same features as listed by other reviewers.

25.5" scale length
compound radius fretboard
3-piece Maple neck-through, ebony fretboard, alder body wings.
Full neck/headstock binding,
proprietary ESP "Saw tooth" fretboard inlays,
ebony finish on body and headstock with off-white pin-striping (matches binding.)
Thin satin finish on neck (a great feature)
OFR trem, up-routed for full-floating
Schaller strap-locks come stock
Single EMG HZ-H4 passive humbucker, wired to volume knob.

This is, without question, a metal guitar. It does one thing - metal through a hot bridge pickup - and that's it. While the guitar is not tonally versatile, the stripped-down aspect is clearly part of it's aesthetic and as such should not count against it in this category. Rather, the combination of the high-quality hardware and performance-enhancing features like the satin-finished neck and compound radius fretboard make this a solid, efficient, joy to play that suits it's intended purpose with aplomb.

Let me start by saying this guitar defies it's specs in regards to tone.

Unplugged, it is very, very loud compared to the acoustic tone of my other guitars. It's one of the loudest and fullest-sounding solid-bodied guitars I have ever played. This completely defies the nature of most neck-through guitars, Floyd Rose bridges, and asymmetrical Vs in particular (due to a lack of mass behind the bridge). On paper, it should sound small and tinny unplugged. In reality it's quite the opposite. The alder body wings provide a nice warmth to the tone while the maple neck resonates powerfully and the ebony fretboard supplies an articulate "snap" to individual notes.

Plugged in, results are perhaps a little different. I run this guitar through two set-ups:

Live with my original stoner rock/thrash/prog band (through a Korg DT-10 tuner straight into the high-gain input of my early-model Splawn Pro Mod and Splawn 4x12 cab. No effects) and...

at home in a recording environment (through a Digitech Bad Monkey, to a PODxt direct to PC running Line6 GearBox and Adobe Audition).

The results through both rigs are pretty much the same. The guitar has a long, singing sustain, great clarity for distorted chords, and a pretty balanced tone throughout the spectrum. I'm not entirely sold on the EMG passive pickup - it's almost TOO balanced for my tastes - I prefer a little extra push in the low-mids and slightly rolled-off upper-high-end, and more touch-sensitivity than this pickup provides. It's very compressed, and it's interaction with the volume knob is practically reduced to on/off - there is barely any usable taper to the knob before the pickup appears to be full-on. This may have more to do with the volume pot than the pickup itself, but replacing a single pot and pickup is neither hard work nor expensive if one is so inclined.

The pickup's perceived output is also much lower than I anticipated - requiring me to turn the gain on my amp up considerably higher than I do with my DiMarzio Tone Zone-loaded Carvin Carve Top. The good thing is that the Edwards sounds VERY good through the amp when run like this (though the amp itself is logically noisier and slightly more prone to unsolicited feedback).

Lastly, there appears to be some anomaly or issue with the grounding - I've yet to dig around inside to find out what, exactly, but the guitar hums noticeably if you're not touching any metal part of the guitar (strings, bridge, etc.) even through the PODxt. It's a little annoying but nothing too irritating from a performance standpoint. I suspect it will go away when and if I swap out the electronics and re-wire the guitar.

Overall the guitar is loud, sustaining, and toneful. I'm not a total fan of the pickup and I feel the guitar may suffer from an inferior volume pot as well, but a better pickup could really raise the quality of tone from high to un-freaking-believable so I've ranked it an 8.

The fit & finish of this guitar is near-flawless. I say "near" flawless because there is one - just one - little thing, which I will get out of the way right now:

At certain angles in the light, if you hold the body just right and look in the area of the body between the fretboard and the pickup, you can see the slightest surface difference where the neck passes through the body under the finish. There is no difference in texture or color - no actual "visible" line - just a vague impression that the surface from body-edge to center isn't 100% level like a pane of glass. It's too small a thing to detect with touch, but if you angle the guitar just so and let reflecting light hit that spot, it gives it away.

There. That's it. Everything else about the guitar in terms of quality and construction is perfect. P.E.R.F.E.C.T.

The paint job, pin-striping, masked-off satin neck and painted headstock were done with laser precision.

The binding and inlay looks like it was applied by a surgeon.

The strings do not buzz. Anywhere. The action is VERY low, and there is no buzz whatsoever.

The fretwork is absolutely perfect.

The neck contour is surprising meaty deep-C shape for a guitar of this style - definitely not like a Wizard neck or similar "shred-typical" neck. It's not Les Paul or Esquire big, but big enough to be very comfy for me (my hands cramp up on super-thin necks). I suspect it's size is a big contributor to the impressive tone of the instrument.

The maple neck and ebony fretboard (the wood you can see) appears to be wood of the highest quality. In fact, the fretboard is so black and the grain is so dense that I would believe it was some kind of phenolic or graphite compound if I didn't know better. It literally glistens and feels as smooth as glass. This is the kind of fretboard that makes people who love ebony fretboards love ebony fretboards, if you know what I'm saying.

The quality of this guitar is a very big reason for why I'll be purchasing another Edwards in a few days.

Will this guitar withstand live playing? I'll put it this way:

I played this guitar for an entire Misfits tribute set to a packed house, during a dress-up Halloween party, at the oldest, dirtiest, worst-part-of-town, bathroom-from-hell, crusty-ass punk rock bar in the whole state. Things got so crazy that by the second song there were six Glen Danzigs on the tiny stage and four rows in front physically fighting for the microphone for a chance to scream the words to "I Turned Into a Martian" and "Brain Eaters" in their best Morrison-meets-Orbison-meets-Elvis bravado (with varied success). It was hot, sweaty, stinky, crowded, and loud as hell... but when my stage area got TOO crowded, I actually used this guitar as a stabbing weapon while playing to prod the spike-jacketed masses back out of my "personal space."

At the end of the night, as I was wiping... who knows what... off the guitar to put it away, I surveyed the damage.

Not a scratch.



Still in tune.

Bah. I have no idea who I would contact about a broken second-hand Japanese guitar. I'm not going to break it structurally, and if any component ever fails (which appears unlikely but is never impossible) I'm capable of servicing it myself.

I've been playing since 1993 and have ownED a number of guitars ranging from $3.5k to $350.

Right now I have the previously mentioned early-model Splawn Pro Mod & 4x12 cab loaded with Eminence Governers and Man-O-Wars.
The PODxt home recording set-up
A heavily modified Carvin CT4C
A 1963 Gibson SG/LP Junior
Soon another Edwards (probably their vintage lacquer LP Custom)
and a bunch of assorted small stuff.

My overall feeling about this guitar is that it's an EXTREMELY well-made, great playing, great sounding, great looking, absolutely killer V. It's a nice 8 lbs, practically indestructible and more stable than my parent's marriage of 40 years. If it weren't for the ridiculously tiny detail I mentioned about seeing the neck-through joint, the ok-so-far pickup, and the ground issue it would rate a perfect 10 by landslide.

As such, I give it..................9, but if I could give it a 9.5 I would.

BODY : Alder
NECK : Hard Maple 3P
FINGERBOARD : Ebony , 24frets
INLAY : Saw tooth
SCALE : 25.5 inch (648mm)
NUT (width) : Lock Nut (42mm/R2)
JOINT : Neck-thru-body
BRIDGE : Floyd Rose
PICKUPS : EMG HZ-H4
CONTROL : Master Volume
COLOR : Black with White Pin Stripe
ACCESSORIES: Gig Bag, Schaller Strap Locks

I've been playing for almost 2 years. I like to play Children Of Bodom songs, Speed Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Neo-classical, any good shred music, and therefore this guitar suits me just perfectly. Power chords sound pretty good too on it. I am using Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2 with it. I also have a roland cube 30, but I barely use it since Guitar Rig 2 is million times more versatile, in my opinion. I never tried it on any expensive equipment though, so it's hard to tell how it performs there but i bet pretty amazing. The sound surely has some noise in it, but compared to my LTD MH-400 it produces way less noise. I use noise reduction effects in Guitar Rig 2 to get rid of noise. The guitar has very bright sound, again way brighter than MH-400. This must be due to the fact that it has a HZ-H4 unlike the other one which has 81. It obviously doesn't sound as bright when I downtune it in D. Pinch Harmonics are pretty easy on it and can be picked anywhere. The stuff you can do with the whammy bar is boundless too. If you want to make this guitar sound like Children of Bodom, you will have to work hard on the presets be it expensive hardware or guitar rig software. Cheap effects like in roland cube will not make this guitar sound great. Guitar Rig 2 has a great set of soloist presets, but none of those make this guitar sound good, so I am using customized presets.

The only flaws I noticed are with the paintjob which isn't even on certain places such as around the place where fretboard meets the body. Everything else looks and feels great!

I never gigged with it, but I bet it will withstand anything. Original Floyd Rose is really amazing, unlike the licensed one on my MH-400 which constantly gets out tune for no reason and doesnt hold the strings properly. This one would only go out of tune once the string starts to stretch naturally. The finish doesnt appear like it will wear off easily. I've had this guitar for 3 months and I don't have a single scratch on it yet, even though i accidentally hit it against hard surfaces many times. Strap buttons are really good. What surprised me is that this guitar comes with Schaller strap locks, so your guitar can stay safe and i bet you can swing like Alexi and nothing will happen to it - i never tried it though! :-) I am pretty sure you can use this for a gig without a backup - this thing is of a really high quality.

I bought it in Japan, so no warranty on it. But I doubt you'd ever need it - because it just looks and feels like it will survive the nuclear war.

I've been playing for almost two years and this is my 3rd guitar. I wish this was my 2nd guitar, but maybe not first - cos i would ruin it! :-) This is a great instrument for anyone at intermediate, advanced and even pro levels. If this guitar was stolen, I think I would rather save more to buy Alexi Laiho Scythe not because I don't like this one, but just because I am tempted to get an ESP version or a Scythe:-). What I love about this guitar is that is its simplicity - it has nothing useless - I never play using neck pickup, so there isn't one - I never mess with the tone - so there isn't a tone control - the volume control is the only thing I ever need. The neck is unpainted which feels better than the painted neck of my MH-400 - it doesnt get sticky and it adds up to speed. Original Floyd Rose is really amazing and it's one of my favorite features of this guitar. I also really love the sawtooth fretboard it makes the navigation easier since the teeth are spread across the entire area of the frets just like in Jackson guitars, not to mention that it makes the guitar looks cooler. The Neck-thru construction makes it more comfortable to access the higher frets. The unbalanced SV body shape makes it look really cool while easy to play while sitting down. What I hate about this guitar is the fact that it doesn't come with a hard case - but this is just a problem with most ESP products - they are being cheap! My LTD MH-400 didnt even have a soft gig bag! Also I would be happy if it came with an ESP Strap. Instead this guitar came with an extra set of 9-42 strings - which is totally useless, since i dont even use those!
I wanted to buy ESP version of this guitar but that one is ridiculously expensive - and from what I hear this guitar compares well with standard series ESP such SV being insignificantly inferior to it, so I went for it. I suppose if you can't afford ESP version of it or the Scythe you should go with this one. But this one is pretty hard to get since it isnt sold in the US. So if you know someone from Japan who could get you this one then I think you should go for it rather than going for LTD Alexi-600, since this one is way nicer than Alexi-600 and it costs less too. The bottom line is that if you are a big fan of Children of Bodom, getting this guitar or its ESP version, or the Scythe is a must!

BODY: Alder
NECK: Hard Maple 3P (natural satin finish which is a PLUS!)
FINGERBOARD: Ebony and 24frets
INLAY: Saw tooth
SCALE: 25.5 inch (648mm)
NUT (width): LOCK Nut (42mm/R2)
JOINT: Neck-thru-body
BRIDGE: Floyd Rose
PICKUPS: EMG HZ-H4(now switched to an EMG 85)
CONTROL: Master Volume
COLOR: Black with White Pin Stripe

this axe sounds like a dream!.i play metal and this thing plays the part just like it should.now with an 85 it sounds much darker but not too dark or mahogany sounding.just got the balls alder lacks you know? this thing sustains for days which surprised me.pinches come real easy on it.I'm running it thru a Spider-II and a Peavey 6505.not very noisy at all and if it is it's the amp,but a noise gate can fix that.not THAT versatile seeing as it only has one pickup but i can still produce some nice warm cleans with it as well.only dislike is the chrome hardware which I'm swapping out allready.but other then that ALL is good!

the set-up was real nice when i got it.It was real low,just the way i like it.pickups are aligned perfectly just like everything else.fretwork is rather good on it.inlays don't have any filler visible.nicely routed,and the finish doesn't have any flaws.Binding doesn't overlap.

this guitar can withstand anything.Played it live a couple of times.hardware used on it is nothing but the best so it will last quite a long while.strap buttons are solid,they are Schaller strap locks.i always have several backups at gigs seing as we have diferent tunings so each tuning has a backup.But if i had to i would really use it without a backup,i mean i can abuse the hell outa the Floyd and it has never snapped a string on me.

i've been playing for about 4 years,i only use ESP(edwards is a line of ESP) and Dean.if this was stolen i would find the thief and kick his ass before getting it back! but if i couldnt track him down i would definitely get another one!i love the shape,look and playability of this thing.my fav feature is that it's not available in the US so only me and a number of other lucks americans have them :P.i compared it to my ESP SV and it's almost right up there with it but falls behind just by a little,Also have the ESP Version on this ESP RV-398 and it kills it but that's expected seeing as it's made inthe custom shop.if i wish it had just one more thing it would be a neck pickup but no biggie i got lots of others with one :] if you guys reading this are condifering buying one...just pull the trigger and buy one.really worth the money.