Edwards E-LP-135CE

Edwards is ESP guitars budget line. They are kind of like their version of Epiphone. These guitars are made for the Japanese market only so they can directly copy other designs without any legal problems. These guitars are very good quality and people have began to import them out of Japan on their own. These guitar sell for around 1000 usd but have the quality and tone of guitars costing three times as much. This guitar is one of the rarer ones. It is pretty cool to have one of these stop by in my shop. This guitar pretty much has identical specs to Zakk Wyldes short lived Camo model. The finish is slightly different as it is just camo and does not have the black bullseye lines around it. The real Zakk Wylde guitar is 70s Les Paul Custom. This guitar has the Zakk Wylde mods on it as well. This guitar has a maple neck and a very noticable maple fretboard which is very rare for a Les Paul style guitar. The back of the neck is raw for a fast and smooth feel. You get Zakk Wyldes traditional pickup set on this guitar with an EMG 81 in the bridge and an 85 in the neck. The controls are the typical Les Paul layout.

UTILIZATION

This guitar has superb playability thanks partly due to the Zakk Wylde mods and partly due to the great build quality. The raw finish on the back of the neck means the neck is faster to play. The finish on the back of a neck can cause the neck to become sticky when you are playing and cause you to snag on the neck. The frets are larger than on a normal Les Paul so you can get a better action on the neck for easy bends. The upper fret access is typical of a Les Paul beacause of the design the upper frets are not that easy to reach. The maple fretboard has creme inlays and they do not really stand out against the light colored wood. There is no separate battery compartment for the active pickups so when you change batteries you have to open up the entire control cavity.

SOUNDS

This guitar has all the tone of the Gibson version thanks to the EMG pickups which are the same as what you get in the Gibson. The maple fretboard provides a slightly brighter tone to the sound overall but the EMG's are super clear anyway. The 85 in the neck is a great pickup too. It has a more fuller sound than the 81 so in the neck position you can get fat lead tones. The 85 is also good too in the bridge. With EMG's quick connect system you can easily swap these pickups position without soldering anything. The 85 in the bridge produces a super thick tone and cleans up better than the 81. Speaking of cleans if you do the 18v mod on the EMG's. With the 18v mod you run the pickups on two batteries instead of one. This provides a more organic tone with more headroom. This tone produces better cleans than stock EMG's and clean tones are usually the weakest part of the EMG sound. With these EMG's they can handle most everything you throw at them even with the lowest tunings and thickest gain.

OVERALL OPINION

These guitars are pretty rare and this guitar layout is rare as well. There are not many mahogany bodied maple neck maple fretboard Les Paul Customs out. It is an unusual spec so these Zakk Wylde models are probably the only way you will get one. This Edwards is a great alternative to the Gibson model because it is less than Half the price. It is also a great alternative to the Epiphone version because it has more of the real sound with the correct pickups and has much better build quality overall. If you can find one of these they are great guitars if you are looking for a Camo Les Paul with a maple fretboard.