SeriesESP Horizon

ESP is the leading maker of metal guitars nowadays. They pretty much have two brands of guitars, the ESP line and the LTD line. The LTD line is what you see mostly. These guitars are made all over the world and have really nice specs and are sold at a reasonable price. The ESP line is what you see in the hands of real enthusiasts. These guitars are made in Japan only at the ESP custom shop. Every one of these eSP guitars has custom shop quality. They make look the same as the LTD models but if you have played one you know the difference. Sometimes the price difference isnt worth it but sometimes it is. This is the hardtail Horizon with EMG pickups. This is an old school shredder pretty much. The body is made of alder with a neck through maple neck. The neck has an ebony fretboard with 24 jumbo frets. Up top you get locking tuners and a Gotoh bridge. The pickups are a set of EMG's in the old Metallica setup with an 81 in the bridge and a 60 in the neck. The controls are simple with a volume and tone with a 3 way switch. UTILIZATION There is nothign wrong with the playability on this guitar. The fretwork on these Custom Shop level ESP guitars is pretty much perfect. The neck is super thin and fast. The big frets on the ebony fretboard means it is almost effortless to play. Being a hardtail you get rock solid stability and the locking tuners up top just help this out even more. The only thing I do not like on this guitar is the pickup selector placement. It is really close to the volume knob and kind of makes the controls look cluttered. When I am adjusting the volume sometimes I hit my fingers on the pickup selector. If I was designing this guitar I would have used a 3 way blade switch instead of the toggle switch. I have a similar problem with 6 inline headstocks. When I am tuning I always hit my fingers on the tuners next to the one I am tuning. I might just have big fingers. SOUNDS This guitar is a real screamer. Every part on this guitar builds on every other part to help make this guitar really cut through any mix. The alder body with the maple neck through neck naturally gives a pretty bright tone. I have found neck through guitars to be the brightest typically. This combined with the screaming EMG pickups means this guitar never sounds muddy. The 81 in the bridge has a buzz saw sound. It has a high end grind to it that makes your riffs laser sharp. The 60 in the neck is a great compliment to the 81. While the 81 is great at riffs it is so not great for leads and cleans. The 60 has as bit lower output and a bit smoother sound so it is better for clean tones and lead playing. It sounds nice and smooth playing both. OVERALL OPINION while these guitars are some of the best metal guitars on the market I find them hard to recommend because the ESP LTD line is so good itself. If you find a good LTD example and have it professional setup and dressed it will play every bit as good as an ESP Custom Shop model. The fit and finish might not be as good but the playability will be there. I have friends that will only play made in Japan ESP guitars. I guess they like the consistancy of knowning that every made in Japan ESP they get will be good. You dont get that kind of consistancy with LTD. But LTD guitars can be good too if you try them out first and have them properly setup. I would recommend trying some LTD ESP guitars before shelling out the big bucks for a made in Japan ESP.

ESP guitars are the hard rock or and metal guitars that many of today's artist go to for their guitar needs. This guitar is a very beautiful guitar on the top with its nice quilted maple laminate. This guitar has two humbucker pickups as well as a routed Floyd Rose tremolo system. These guitars are pretty solidly built guitars and they arw very comfortable to play. UTILIZATION Neck-Thru-Body 25.5” Scale Mahogany Body Quilted Maple Top Maple Neck Ebony Fingerboard Locking Nut 42mm Neck Width Thin U Neck Contour 24 XJ Frets Black Nickel Hardware Gotoh Tuners Floyd Rose Bridge EMG 81 (B) / 85 (N) p.u. INCLUDES MATCHING ESP HARD CASE SOUNDS This axe features two hum pups that sounds very good and a high gain amplifier setting. These guitars aren't full of tone like you would find in a Fender Stratocaster or a Gibson Les Paul guitar. However it's going to be a nice rich tone as can be very suitable for most styles of music. This guitar cleans up pretty well and overall has a nice balance and feel for any type of music. The neck is very comfortable a play on and the action on the frets is very good too. Whatever amplifier you use with this guitar it's good to sound pretty good but it really comes to life with a nice high again amplifier. OVERALL OPINION You can find these guitars new for right at around $1999 which is a price point that is somewhere in the middle of a standard guitar and a custom shop guitar. It is a happy medium point for some consumers. Overall this is a cool guitar but if I would to spend this kind of money I would go with a Custom Shop Charvel. You can spend a few extra hundred bucks and get a CS and it will have a better neck and tone that matches better with more styles of music.

Along with the floyd rose version, ESP decided to release a hard tail version of this guitar for those who don't like to deal with the hassle of floyds. The guitar features mahogany wings with a figured maple top, maple neck-thru construction with an ebony fretboard, 24 extra jumbo frets, side square inlays with a 12th fret name inlay, a hard tail bridge, two humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a three way switch. UTILIZATION The guitar is absolutely top notch in almost every way. The first thing you notice is how nice the fretwork is on these models. The frets are perfectly crowned, perfectly level and don't cut up your hand when moving up and down the neck. The binding on this is awesome, and there are no obvious lines or chips anywhere. The ebony fretboard is jet black, and always seems to look wet. I'm actually more of a fan of the floyd version than the hard tail one, but the hard tail bridge on this is a very nice and high quality bridge. SOUNDS The guitar had Seymour Duncans installed in it as opposed to the EMGs that were in my ESP Horizon II. The guitar had a JB in the bridge and a 59 in the neck. The JB is an awesome pickup that can really do any genre. You can play blues, fusion, classic rock and even death metal with this thing. It's crazy versatile. Normally, these are a bit bright, but in this guitar, I found it to be just perfect, and I attribute that to the mahogany wings. The 59 in the neck is heaven for lead tones. It's got enough bite to cut through, but it's also super fat and warm sounding. OVERALL OPINION If you don't like floyds but want a Horizon, this is the one you should look for. It's a very high quality guitar, sounds great, feels awesome and really rips. The painted necks can sometimes be a bit of a downer, but I find that they're not a huge deal for me.

The Horizon is a series of guitars ESP has been making for a long time. They have the traditional superstrat shape like the M-II but have an arched top body and are made of different woods. This guitars are made to give a thicker sound than the M-II. These guitars are full bore ESP guitars so they are made in Japan and have custom shop level fit and finish. This Horizon features neck through construction. It has a maple neck with an ebony fretboard. It has 24 jumbo frets. On top it has Gotoh locking tuners. The inlays are offset so you can really see the fretboard wood. The body is mahogany with a maple cap. Instead of the usual EMG pickups you get you get a classic set of Seymour Duncans. The Duncans you get are the 59 in the neck and the JB in the bridge. The guitar has a tune-o-matic bridge with string through tail piece for more sustain. The controls are standard with a master volume and master tone with a 3 way toggle. UTILIZATION I prefer playing this guitar over the M-II because of a few things. I prefer the hardtail bridge on this guitar. You do not have to fuss with allen wrenches and stuff whenever you want to change tunings or strings and it will stay in tune no matter what. I also liked the arch top body. Being use to playing Les Pauls with the arch top I have some where to put my arm. On flat topped guitars I am always searching for where I should rest my hand when im playing. The ebony fretboard on this guitar is great. I wish all guitars had ebony fretboards. Locking tuners on a hardtail guitar is something I also wish every guitar had. Passive pickups means this guitar is dead simple and reliable. SOUNDS With the Seymour Duncan pickups you get a wide array of tones. The string through bridge with the neck through construction means the strings are anchored on the same piece of wood the neck is. This gives great resonance to the tone and every note that you play just sings. A set of EMG pickups would limit this guitar to a metal only role but with these you can do pretty much anything. With the Seymour Duncan pickups the guitar already comes with some of the best pickups you can get so the tone is there out of the box. This pickup combination is something that Edwards uses in a lot of its Gibson copies. The 59 has a great PAF style tone. It has a good amount of sag and the mids are nice and pronounced. The JB in the bridge is the jack of all traits and can be used for just about anything. You can get great overdriven tones all the way to searing high gain with it. Many Jackson guitars come with this pickup set so you know it can hang for metal too. But of course if you just want a metal only guitar there are similar ESP models that will do that very well. OVERALL OPINION This guitar is pretty expensive and that is a big downside. ESP's LTD line of guitars is like half the price and the quality is really good. If you want a guitar like this I suggest you try out the LTD version first and see if you can save a bunch of money. The only outside difference between the model is that the LTD comes with a rosewood fretboard. I prefer ebony but its not a 1000 dollar difference. If you are looking for a hard tail shred guitar with an arch top and neck through construction you do not have many options but this is probably the best of them.

The ESP Horizon series is an arched top version of the M body, and they're usually neck-thru. However, there are so many different variations that have occurred throughout the years that it's kind of hard to compare one guitar to another without knowing the total specs. The one I'm referring to is actually a bolt-on model. It contains a swamp ash body, maple neck with an ebony fretboard, 24 extra jumbo frets, a slanted neck single-coil sized humbucker, a regular humbucker in the bridge, a floyd rose synclair bridge, one volume, one tone and a three way switch. UTILIZATION This guitar is older, so there are a few flaws that I found. The neck joint itself was nice, but some of the frets were a bit uneven. I found this out when I started really slamming the action. This could have been due to wear since the guitar is so old, so it's hard to say that's ESP's fault. The binding was nicely done, and the fret edges weren't sharp at all. The guitar came with one of those old ESP Synclair floyds. These are great floyds, but they have a tendency to not come with bars. The bars aren't interchangeable with the current floyds, so that can be a big downer if you are missing one. You also cannot drop in an OFR without some slight routing. SOUNDS The guitar sounded great, although it was a touch bright. A lot of that has to do with the swamp ash body coupled with the ebony fretboard. Swamp ash has pretty hyped bass and treble. You need to select a proper pickup to really match with this, and the JB that was in the bridge was a bit too bright for this guitar. I think a Custom would have been a better match. The neck was a slanted single coil humbucker Hot Rails pickup. This delivered some great lead tones that were super smooth and fat. The clean tones weren't the best, but it's workable. If you replace the standard 3 way switch with one that'll split the inner coils of both pickups, you'll get an awesome single coil-esque tone. OVERALL OPINION If you can find an older Horizon, I highly recommend picking one up. They're well built guitars, and they play fantastic. Keep in mind that a lot of them came with the old ESP Synclair bridge. If it has that bridge, be sure it has all the pieces and isn't missing anything. These bridges are getting more and more rare, as are parts for them. If you decide to drop in an OFR, understand that it may require some slight routing to get it to fit perfectly.