ESP LTD Horizon CTM '87 Pearl WH

This axe is amazing, I've been in love with it from the moment I've plugged it in. Finish is beautiful, the craftsmanship, well the build quality in general, are at the very high, "expensive guitar" level. It feels very solid and reassuring in my hands. Neck is fast, comfortable to hold even when you play it for hours and no hand pain. In terms of tone, it's really good as long as you're looking for metal and heavy rock guitar. Bridge pickup gives this crisp and tight cut for riffs with lots of aggression and neck pickup will sing nicely for solos. If I have to pick one thing "not perfect" it's definitely no stainless steel frets.

I got it on sale for 900euros, it was well worth it. It just has something in it that motivates me to pick it up and practice every day.

I ordered this guitar while it was on sale and was pretty excited for it to come. After receiving it (with a huge, unexplained delay but I won’t comment on that as it’s the shipping company’s fault) and unboxing it, on first glance I thought the same thing as when I saw the guitar on the website. It’s beautiful. But after taking a closer look at it and plugging it in, I started noticing many unacceptable flaws and in the end didn’t have a choice but to return this guitar I waited so long for.

I will start with the positives. It’s a very beautiful instrument. The pearl white color looks great, especially under lighting and the body has very nice curves. Also, the very thin neck profile felt really comfortable and fast, and the fretwork was also quite good, flawless. The neck through construction felt really smooth and made playing at the top frets very comfortable. Lastly, the pickups are nothing special and a bit muddy clean (that’s expected) but turning the gain up, they sound great for hard rock and metal tones. Very aggressive and high output.

Now the negatives. First of all, the guitar I received was made in Indonesia, while the guitar in Thomann’s photos had Korea written at the back of the headstock, and a Korean serial number. Mine started with CI and had Indonesia written next to it. I find it quite unacceptable for a guitar that costs 900€ on sale, 1500 normally (apparently) to be made in Indonesia, where most cheap guitars are made and has a worse reputation than Korea generally. But okay, I really wouldn’t mind if the guitar didn’t have so many problems. Turns out the quality control is pretty bad. The finish had some minor imperfections: the binding on the headstock looked badly done, the neck binding was crooked at the point where the neck joined the body and it looked bad there. Also, at the 24th fret there was a big black stain on the wood, and the edge of the fretboard (where it met the body) had some black stains on the color as well. Even worse, the trem cavity and the electronics cavity on the back of the guitar were so poorly cut, the edges were rough all around the plastic covers and looked terrible, and this was completely visible with the covers on. Especially the trem cavity. Unacceptable for the price, I have never seen something similar and even in cheap, 200-300€ guitars, the trem cavities are cut so much better. The wiring of the guitar was bad as well. Not clean soldering and some wires (plastic) were cut. The floyd rose tremolo was very poorly set up, it was unplayable. The guitar went out of tune all the time, after using the tremolo even a little bit, and I noticed that when pressing the tremolo from the flat side and then back up, the strings had gone flat out of pitch when returning in the normal floating position, and then when I used the trem to the opposite side and back in its normal floating position, all the strings had gone sharp! In conclusion it required a major set up. Its height was also not set up properly. Lastly, the guitar came with a broken pickup selector switch! After playing for 5 minutes, the pickup switch started not working properly. 90% of the time when selecting the neck pickup, there was no sound. Then suddenly after going back and forth many times it would give output, and then after going to the bridge position and back, nothing again. The bridge position worked almost all the time, and the middle position made a cracking noise sometimes, and other times after going back and forth it would just activate the bridge pickup only, so no neck. I’ve had another Ltd that had this problem after two months of playing at home, but it was a cheaper one (300€) and I just thought I was unlucky. But it’s unacceptable for such an expensive guitar to come with a bad switch. Please note that I’m not someone aggressive with my guitars, I am gentle and take great care of them so it’s really unacceptable for that to happen. I didn’t abuse the switch or anything and no other guitar I’ve ever owned had this problem.

All in all, I don’t recommend this guitar unless you try one out and check that it’s made in Korea. If it was flawless it would be a nice instrument and it’s a shame.

Received this guitar today and providing a review after spending about one hour with it. Will update here more in the future. Bought this to complete my pre-existing ESP Horizon 2006 Standard Series Horizon FR-II STBC. So bar already was set quite high. But this one has maple+alder body.

First impression: guitar is made in Korea and not Indonesia as somebody else here mentioned. Out of the box the neck action and floyd setup was very good. Needed to tune it a bit, but only half a tone. Perfect for a guitar having traveled all around the globe. Guitar is a bit on the heavier side, but that's expected - I wanted full maple neck-through. Finish is OK, but ESP bar is high :-) No specks to report whatsoever.

Amplified sound: excellent! No issues with the pots, nor the switch or the jack. Pure 80's sound on my tube Marshall amp! I plan to swap the bridge PU with a Super Distorsion one. But the current one really sounds great. I'm not impressed by the strings they threw in, but these will anyway be changed.

Neck is a bit flatter than my other ESP Horizon, and the frets seems to be a tiny bit smaller. And I think they'll need a bit of polishing, but nothing out of order with them either.

Up to now, I'm very happy with my new guitar.