ESP E-II Eclipse EverTune Electric Guitar Black Satin

I have wanted a Les Paul for awhile now. During my search, I somehow stumbled upon this beauty. I love everything about it: look, feel, quality, and evertune is amazing. Easy to setup, clear instructions, and will be hard to ever have a guitar without it. There are very free reviews of this guitar online but felt comfortable ordering it without playing given I am a huge fan of Japanese guitars (my nice acoustic is a Takamine) and knew that ESP would not disappoint.

After playing this guitar for over a year I would recommend the following: 1) No Evertune experience? Get a professional to service it. This is the best way to get your sound right before playing this thing. Mr. Saint's review is right, it's difficult tuning this thing right. So I spend an extra $150 to get the specification I wanted, as well as a small lesson on how to keep this guitar in solid tune for a long time. I play in CGCGCE. To get that tuning with size 11 strings there was definitely a service needed to get the bridge positioned just right. 2) Pickups are good, but not great. I honestly would desire DeMarzios or EMGs to this thing because you really have to turn up your sound to get your bright reverb. Sometimes you have to hit the strings a little harder to get that high pitch sound as well. If you have a MESA boogie or any other high gain amp, this guitar will work nicely with it. 3) Feel and Electronics are very good. You can tell some guy in Japan spent a long time getting the frets and neck to feel pretty good in your palm. The weight of the guitar should be light, but gains a couple pounds with the Evertune being extra heavy. Even with the Evertune it's still lighter than a Gibson Les Paul. 4) Ever wanted a Fender Stratocaster? This guitar can sound pretty close to one with the pull and push tone knob. If you pull it out you get that single coil sound. Close your eyes and you would swear your were playing on a Fender Strat. 5) Monster gain!!! If you like metal, this thing is it. The sound doesn't get too saturated and keeps it's bold notes sounding great in the heaviest gain possible.

I've tried a whole bunch of guitars lately. My go to for the last 15 years are Gibson's, mainly an SG and unfortunately, Fenders not so much. So I decided to purchase this Eclipse and I couldn't have been happier. I finally found the tool that works effortlessly in my hands, BUT that Evertune is a disaster. Personally, why have this thing attached to this piece of art. The Evertune is a bit complicated by messing with the tuning pegs to hit a sweet spot and then busting out the Evertune key for the actual tuning. After all that is done then you have to deal with string sensitivity in bends by more adjusting. After all that messing around I was still ok with keeping it cuz it is the baddest guitar I've ever played, but when I changed Strings to a thicker gauge it was a total mess and I couldn't get it to tune the way Evertune wants you to do. What a shame!!! So if your a monster bender etc that has constant issues in being out of tune and your gauge is thin then you'll be alright and look past this tuning system. If your like me, I never have tuning issues, cuz I use thicker strings then this is not for you.