ESP LTD KH-3 Spider

The workmanship is very good - I haven't had many LTD guitars in my hand before so I was a bit worried about the quality and detail, but everything was surprisingly well produced. The only place where you can see the advantage of ESP over LTD visually are markers - in ESP they are a bit more pearly and perfectly fill a given pattern, and in LTD they are glued in and have a delicate frame, which is probably some material mixed with wood dust to keep the color of the fingerboard. If you don't look at the guitar with a magnifying glass in your hand, you probably won't even notice it. The only visual drawback is the markers on the part where the wood is grooved between the sills - the white mass seems a bit darker there. However, I believe that it is a bit of a force-clinging.

The guitar arrived very well packed and set up. I did not correct the trussrod setting at all, even though I put on 10-46 (factory-made size 9 strings with this gauge are too thin in my opinion). I did not lift the bridge either - everything is as it came from the store. Only the scales needed to be adjusted, but you can easily do it yourself.

The neck is very comfortable - not too thin and not too thick - just right. The frets are perfectly polished - even in more expensive guitars from other companies, the frets are less polished, so for that big applause. The way of connecting the neck with the body makes the access to all frets perfect.

I recommend the EMG KH-BB pickups even to those who are afraid of buying active pickups. They do not sound too strong and I think that, contrary to appearances, they are very universal, and they sound great. I even started joking that it was the first bridge pickup that I could have had with a single bridge pickup like this.

A slight downside when it comes to playability is the location of the pickup volume knob at the bridge - in my opinion it could be lower or further back. The EMG knobs do not require a lot of force to turn and sometimes I turn it down by mistake.

The included hard case is an advantage at this price - especially as it is of good quality.

I only had to wait 30 years for my dream guitar but it was so worth it. If Heavy metal is your thing and you're a fan of Kirk Hammett well then you will not be disappointed with this guitar. Once I started playing I just lost complete track of time. It's such an easy guitar to play and out of the box the setup was pretty much to my satisfaction. I did have to restring as I broke the high E when tuning but to be fair thats no biggie. I was going to put on a new set any way. I'm running through a hughs and Kettner TubeMeister deluxe 20 watt head into a 60 Watt hughs and Kettner cabinet with a pedal set up of KH wah, Revv G3 and a reverb and I'm very satisfied with the sound. Running this guitar through a clean channel is bright and full but still punchy due to the active bone breakers on the neck and bridge.

Pros: A beautifully constructed guitar, Flawless paint job and a dream to play

Cons: none that I can think of.

Conclusion: A great guitar for a very reasonable price.