ESP Horizon NT-II FM

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.