When it comes to choosing the right mid-range guitar, once you're ready to take those tentative steps up from "novice" to "budding professional", the choice can always be a difficult one. The guitars presented are often good, but with the addition of 200 or so to your budget you could usually get something far better. And then a company like ESP comes along, and releases a very high-quality guitar from their LTD factory that's laden with premium quality features (including EMG pickups) and offers it to you for less than 800. Like they've done with the ESP EC-401 Single Cutaway guitar, seen here in a lovely Olympic White finish.
This mid-range, professional grade grade guitar is built to last and perform to the level that modern working musicians demand. Featuring a number of premium adornments, including that famous EMG 81/60 humbucker pickup combo, you'll be hard-pressed to find another guitar of this quality within the same price bracket.
The Pickups
The combination of neck and bridge humbucker in this guitar gives you plenty of tonal choices to work with, especially with the pickup selector and tone/volume pots at your disposal too - with the correct settings you can produce sounds to fit pretty much all of your musical needs.
In the neck position there's an EMG-60 humbucker, a pickup that packs plenty of output with a nice balance of thick, boosted mids, big lows and singing highs. The close aperture coils produce an array of rich harmonic overtones and plenty of sustain, and due to the ceramic magnets they deliver a fully treble response with lots of output, making them perfect for distinct single-note solos.
Sitting in the bridge position is the ever popular EMG-81. This pickup utilises powerful ceramic magnets with close aperture coils, and produces a tone that's been speifically designed with detailed intensity, incredibly amounts of high end cut and fluid sustain. The nature of this pickup ensures that your leads will slice right through even the most dense of mixes.
Built to Perform
The EC-401 has been designed to withstand any kind of music where your guitar is pushed to the forefront. The set-neck design makes accessing the whole fretboard an incredibly comfortable experience, and the Thin U profile makes for the perfect companion when shredding out those awesome solos. Not only that, but it comes complete with high-quality Grover tuners, ensuring that there's little-to-no loss of tuning or intonation, regardless of how agressively you play.
Highlights