ESP LTD EC-1000FM Evertune STBLK

After waiting for 2 weeks for the delivery I finally got this guitar today and I've been playing it for a few hours + did detailed setup (which took another few hours).

There are a lot of quality control issues with this guitar but let's start with the good parts:

- The hardware is great. Obviously it has Evertune, but other than that, tuning pegs (Grover), pots and 3-way switch are all quality.
- Frets are almost perfectly level, so with a little bit of neck adjustment you can have a very low action. This guitar currently has the lowest action I've ever had with my other guitars (Ltd EC-401, Jackson Pro Soloist, Ibanez RGT6EXFX).
- Fret ends are great, no sharp ends (though full of tool marks, see below).
- The nut is cut nicely, the height is perfect.
- The finish is absolutely beautiful. The pictures in the product page do not do it justice. If you're interested in this guitar I suggest you check out some of the video reviews and owner-shot pictures in other used gear sites.
- Pickups are alright.

Now, the bad parts. I don't know if these are expected from an Indonesia-made guitar, but I have another one that I bought more than a year ago (a Jackson Pro Soloist) that is also from Indonesia, and it doesn't have any of these issues. I have photos of all of these but unfortunately Thomann doesn't allow adding photos to reviews.

- The binding is not exactly white. A little bit yellow-ish. It would look much better in white, and I was expecting white from the pictures in the product page. I found the color ugly.
- The binding is even more yellow than the rest around the fingerboard, and has lots of tooling marks. On the bottom side of the fret board it also has glue/paint residue.
- Binding around the headstock has a small dent.
- Under the truss rod cover there's a huge peeled part around the screw hole.
- There are a few white dots under the veneer below the neck pickup frame. I guess it's dust and they put the veneer on top of dust (just a guess).
- There are lots of tooling marks on the fretboard and bindings. On one of the frets there's a mark across the entire fretboard. It doesn't look like glue residue, I think it's a tooling mark. I tried to remove it but no luck.
- There are 4-5 frets with glue residues.
- The frets were a little bit dirty and not shiny enough for comfortable playing. Nothing 0000 steel wool couldn't solve, but something I didn't expect from a 1000EUR guitar.

I don't know how much Evertune bridge itself costs, but I wasn't expecting so much QA issues on a 1000 EUR guitar, so that's a bit disappointing to me. Still, the guitar plays great, and looks great from a distance. Make sure to not look too close under a bright light :-)

Firstly a comment on the Evertune bridge. It takes a little bit of setting up but once the time is invested adjusting the tuning and intonation (the action was spot on out of the box) the guitar simply does not go out of tune. Ever.

The guitar itself is quite heavy (even with the extra routing needed for the Evertune). Certainly heavier than a US made LP with modern weight relief. There's a beautiful flamed maple top that is completely wasted under the see-through black finish, as you can only see it when the light is right, but otherwise it looks a quality guitar. The neck is clearly build for speed (although not as skinny as a Ibanez wizard for example it's wider and slimmer than a traditional Les Paul "slim 60s" neck) and the ebony 'board and really well dressed jumbo frets make for a very slick playing experience. The belly cutaway is a very welcome addition on a Les Paul shape.

The unamplified sound is quite woody and there's bags of sustain, however plugging in the clean sounds are a little disappointing. Once you add a bit of dirt, though, things come alive. This guitar is clearly meant for rock and for overdriven tones. The JB pickup in the bridge does a supercharged Les Paul sound and the neck gets you into Slash territory without ever sounding woolly.

So overall a brilliant playing guitar that doesn't quite have the versatility of a more vintage-y Les Paul, but I guess that's not ESP's target market. The USP of the Evertune bridge makes it worth every penny/cent.

Kurzes Fazit vorweg: Wer sich ein langes Sustain auch in hohen Lagen wünscht, ist mit dieser Gitarre eher schlecht beraten. Für diejenigen, die hauptsächlich Riffs oder tendenziell schnelle Soli spielen, kann das ein großartiges Instrument sein (Sound, Bespielbarkeit, Stimmstabilität).

Ein maßgeblicher Grund für den Kauf dieser Gitarre war für mich das Evertune-System. Das Evertune hält die Stimmung tatsächlich gefühlt bis in alle Ewigkeit, nachdem es einmal eingestellt wurde.

Was mir bei dieser Gitarre leider schnell negativ aufgefallen ist, ist das deutlich schwächere Sustain in hohen Lagen. Ab dem zwölften Bund etwa geht das Sustain richtig in die Knie. Als Beispiel der 17. Bund auf der hohen E-Saite: Nach zwei Sekunden ist der Ton der Eclipse mit Evertune-System kaum noch hörbar. Bei meiner Les Paul Studio ist das erst nach etwa fünf bis sechs Sekunden der Fall.

Nachdem was ich bisher in Erfahrung bringen konnte, ist der mutmaßliche Grund für den Sustainverlust in hohen Lagen das Evertune-System. In Evertune-Demo-Videos hört man zum Thema Sustain nichts, aber in den zugehörigen Kommentarbereichen findet sich gelegentlich was dazu. Für meine Spielweise ist die Gitarre so nicht geeignet.

Noch ein verarbeitungstechnisches Manko: Das Hals-Binding hatte in kleinen Bereichen bräunliche Verfärbungen, die sich nicht entfernen ließen.