ESP debuted new Signature Series, limited-edition models and basses at NAMM 2024.
LTD GH SV-200
The LTD GH SV-200 is the newest Signature Series guitar for Gary Holt, one of the most influential musicians in the world of thrash metal. The LTD SV GH-200 is a more affordable version of Holt’s LTD GH-SV model announced in 2023, with the same offset ESP SV body shape, black finish, and red multi- binding as its higher-end version. Its features include bolt-on construction at 24.75” scale with a mahogany body and three-piece mahogany neck, a roasted jatoba fingerboard, 22 extra-jumbo stainless steel frets, a Floyd Rose 1000 double-locking tremolo, LTD tuners, and a set of direct-mount high-output ESP LH-301 pickups with red covers.
LTD GL Desert Eagle
ESP debuted a new Signature guitar for the company’s longterm artist endorsee George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob) with the LTD GL Desert Eagle, a re-imagining of his famous Kamikaze model. It features an alder body and maple neck, joined with bolt-on construction at 25.5” scale. Its neck profile implements George’s original U shape, and it includes a Macassar ebony fingerboard and 22 extra-jumbo stainless steel frets. Components on the LTD GL Desert Eagle include a Floyd Rose 1000 SE double-locking tremolo with stainless steel screws, a special low-friction volume pot, and a special pickup combination that includes a Seymour Duncan Distortion pickup in the bridge, with push-pull coil splitting on the single volume knob, and an ESP SS-120 single-coil in the neck position. A portion of the proceeds of every LTD Desert Eagle will be contributed to George’s non-profit charity that assists Native American communities and causes. This guitar includes a deluxe ESP hardshell case.
LTD MK EC-FR
The LTD MK EC-FR is a new addition to the Signature Series for Mille Petrozza, founder of pioneering and influential thrash band Kreator. The MK-EC FR starts with the familiar single-cutaway shape of the ESP Eclipse, but offers a flat-top alder body with no bevels, horn scoop, or arm cut, and features black binding on the body, neck, and headstock. Other features include neck-thru-body construction at 25.5” scale, a three-piece thin u-shaped maple neck, and Macassar ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl dot inlays, Luminlay glow-in-the-dark side markers, and 24 extra-jumbo stainless steel frets. The all-black hardware on the MK-EC FR includes a Floyd Rose 1000 SE double-locking tremolo with stainless steel screws, precise Grover tuners, and a set of direct-mount EMG 81X (bridge) and EMG 85X (neck) active pickups with brushed black chrome covers. It includes a deluxe ESP hardshell case.
LTD Royal Shiva
The 2024 NAMM Show also saw the debut of a brand new Signature Series guitar for Bill Kelliher of award-winning American metal band Mastodon. Based on a guitar that Kelliher had built by the ESP Custom Shop, the LTD Royal Shiva has a completely unique double-cutaway body shape with a Silver Sunburst finish that extends to the back of the guitars body and neck. The Royal Shiva uses traditional set neck construction at 25” scale, joining a maple-capped mahogany body with a three-piece u-shaped maple neck. Its Macassar ebony fingerboard has large mother-of-pearl block inlays and 22 extra-jumbo frets. Components on the Royal Shiva include a TonePros TOM bridge and tailpiece, LTD locking tuners, a bone nut, a multi-ply black pickguard, and a set of Kelliher’s signature Mojotone Hellbender humbucker pickups. This guitar also includes a deluxe ESP hardshell case.
LTD TED-EC
The LTD TED-EC joins the Signature Series of Ted Aguilar, guitarist of Bay Area thrash band Death Angel. This single-cutaway EC has a Black finish sharply contrasting with white pickup covers/rings and white pearloid tuners. The TED-EC features special design aspects like neck-thru-body construction at 24.75” scale, mahogany body with maple cap, thin u-shaped three-piece mahogany neck, and Macassar ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl dot inlays and 24 extra-jumbo frets. Components on the TED-EC include a recessed Gotoh TOM bridge with string thru body, LTD locking tuners, and a set of EMG 81 (bridge) and EMG 60 (neck) active pickups with white covers. The TED-EC includes a deluxe ESP hardshell case.
LTD FL-4
Two new Signature Series basses also made their debut at the 2024 NAMM Show. The LTD FL-4 is the new signature bass for Fred Leclercq, bass player for German thrash metal band Kreator. The FL-4’s body shape is an adaptation of ESP’s Forest/F shape, but with a cutout at the tail end. It has an equally distinctive finish, with Satin Black that bursts to Red on the front and back edges of its body. The FL-4 features neck-thru-body construction at 34” scale, pairing an alder body with an extra-thin five-piece maple/purpleheart neck and Macassar ebony fingerboard with black binding, red offset dot inlays, and 24 extra-jumbo stainless steel frets. Its sound is driven by a single active EMG 35P pickup. Other components of the FL-4 include a Hipshot A Style bridge and Grover mini-tuners. The FL-4 includes a deluxe ESP hardshell case.
LTD MLB-4
ESP also announced the new LTD MLB-4, the company’s first Signature Series bass for Mike Leon of Brazilian-American groove/thrash metal band Soulfly. The MLB-4 is based on the musician’s personal ESP Custom Shop B Series bass, and features a textured sandblasted finish on its swamp ash body, a complementing black satin headstock, and an open-pore finish on the back of its extra-thin five-piece wenge/purpleheart neck. The MLB-4 features sturdy 6-bolt construction at 35” scale, a Macassar ebony fingerboard with 24 extra-jumbo stainless steel frets, and a premium active pickup set with two Nordstrand Big Splits. Other controls and components include individual volume knobs for each pickup, ABQ-3MS three-band EQ controls, Gotoh tuners, and a Gotoh 404BO-4 hardtail bridge. This bass includes ESP deluxe hardshell case.
ESP LTD Deluxe EC-01FT
The LTD Deluxe EC-01FT is a single-cutaway guitar with a flat-top body and clean electronics layout. It features a comfortable 24.75” scale with a smooth set-thru heel construction. It features a mahogany body and a distinctive brushed black pickguard. Its mahogany neck has a 43mm nut, slightly wider than is standard for EC models, allowing for comfortable ergonomics in power chords and fluid lead lines. It features a Macassar ebony fingerboard with pearloid block inlays and 22 extra-jumbo stainless steel frets. A recessed TonePros TOM bridge with string thru body keeps string height low and comfortable while maximizing resonance. Other components include LTD locking tuners.
Perhaps the biggest feature of the EC-01FT is the Custom 14, a new custom pickup designed exclusively for ESP by Seymour Duncan. Purpose-built to cover the specific needs of the ESP player, the EC-01FT’s flexible and dynamic Custom 14 pickup offers the range of tones needed by the contemporary guitarist, able to handle everything from clean, chimey intros to sizzling rock, classic metal, and hardcore tones, as well as the most crushing modern chugging and articulate, angular rhythm lines. A push-pull control on the volume knob splits this pickup to a wide-ranging single coil bridge tone.
Horizon Custom '87
The Horizon Custom ’87 takes the archtop body of the ESP Horizon, and offers it with minimal adornment for unencumbered playability. It offers neck-thru-body construction at 25.5” scale, pairing an alder body and an extra-thin three-piece maple neck. The Horizon Custom ’87 features a Macassar ebony fingerboard with 24 extra-jumbo frets and no inlays (using side position dots, like the 1980s Horizon version). Its components include a Floyd Rose 1000 double-locking tremolo, a Seymour Duncan TB-5 Custom Trembucker pickup in the bridge, and a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails pickup in the neck position. Coil spitting for single-coil tones on either or both pickups is available via push-pull controls on the volume and tone knobs.
ESP also announced updates to the Signature Series guitar of Lars Frederiksen of the iconic punk rock band Rancid. The LTD Volsung is now being offered in a new Oxblood Satin finish, and its design has been modified to a 22-fret design, maximizing the sweet spot for the neck pickup. The Volsung’s components include a TonePros locking TOM bridge and tailpiece, Gotoh tuners, and a set of Lars' signature EMG pickups, the LF-DMF. It also offers a unique three-control configuration, with individual knobs for each pickup volume plus a tone control. It includes a deluxe ESP hardshell case.
For more information, please visit espguitars.com.
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Note the cavity cover on the back, which houses the components of Andy Summers’ mid-boost system.
In general, you can use any Telecaster and convert it to Andy Summers’ specs. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original guitar, the way to go is an alder body—just like Andy’s, which is 2-piece—with a 3-tone sunburst finish and white double binding.
The neck should be quarter-sawn, 1-piece maple with a C profile, 21 vintage-style frets, and a 7.25" fretboard radius. Of course, you can choose your own specs here, too. The original guitar has a brass nut rather than bone or plastic, and it should be no problem to find a brass nut blank for a Telecaster. You will need different tools to work on it compared to bone, plastic, or graphite, so keep this in mind. If you do not have the right tools or don’t feel comfortable making nuts, you should leave this task to your local guitar tech. Summers’ guitar has Schaller M6 tuning machines, which are still available from the German Schaller company, and two chrome butterfly string trees. You may not really need two of them—usually one for the B and the high E string will do the trick, especially with a well-made nut.
The original has a heavy brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles, which will increase overall weight significantly. You can still buy this type of brass bridge from several companies, but there are much lighter bridges on the market.
The stereo output jack is installed in a rectangular chrome plate, like on a Les Paul, which I think is superior to the typical Telecaster jack cup. Interestingly, the plate on Summers’ guitar is only held by two of four screws, but do yourself a favor and use all four to make this spot as strong as possible. You should attach the plate really tight, especially when you use an output jack with a tight grip for the plug.
“Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls.”
The rest of the hardware is chrome and standard: two regular strap buttons, a standard Telecaster control plate, ’60s Telecaster flat-top knobs, a black ’60s-style top-hat switch knob on the 3-way pickup selector switch, and two flat-lever mini-toggle switches. You should have no problem getting all of these parts from any guitar shop. The pickguard is a 3-ply mint green pickguard with a standard humbucker routing for the neck pickup.
Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls: a standard 3-way pickup selector switch, two 250k audio pots for master volume and master tone, a gain control pot for the booster, and two additional mini DPDT on-on toggle switches for switching the booster on and off and for the phase control of the bridge pickup. The resistance of the gain control pot depends on the booster you want to use: e.g. for the Fender Clapton mid-boost kit, a 500k type will work great.
For the bridge pickup, there is a standard early-’60s-style Telecaster single-coil pickup, and every pickup company will have something like this in their catalog. Because the bridge pickup is installed to an out-of-phase mini-toggle switch, your pickup will need three conductors, with the metal base plate separated from the pickup’s common ground, and a third wire that connects the bridge plate individually to ground. If you have a regular two-conductor model, you need to break this connection, soldering a third wire directly to the base plate.
Interestingly, the bridge pickup on Summers’ Tele is installed directly into the wood of the pickup’s cavity. I see no reason why you shouldn’t install it the regular way on your guitar.
Here’s a close-up of the bridge on Summers’ historic Tele.
Photo courtesy of Ten-Guitars (https://ten-guitars.de)
In the neck position, there is a ’59 PAF humbucker with a conventional two-conductor wiring installed directly into the pickguard in the standard way, with the open pole pieces facing towards the neck. The choice of late-’50s PAF copies has never been better than it is today. You can buy excellent versions from a lot of companies, just make sure to choose the correct string spacing, which is usually called “F-spacing” or something similar, and is usually 2.070" (52.6 mm). (Gibson spacing, or G-spacing, is 1.930" or 49 mm.)
You’ll need humbucker routing on your body to make it fit. If you don’t have a body with humbucker routing and don’t want to get your Tele body re-routed, you can consider one of the numerous stacked humbuckers that will fit into a standard Telecaster neck pickup cavity. My experience is that there is a noticeable difference in tone compared to a full-sized humbucker, and it will be a compromise.
Next is the active booster. Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body. There are a wide range of available booster options. There are complete DIY sets available that include the PCB and all of the necessary parts to build your own, and there are also drop-in PCBs that are already populated, like the well-known Fender mid-boost circuit kit. You can also find mini-sized booster modules using high-quality SMD parts, which only require a fraction of space compared to the regular PCBs.
“Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body.”
The available options include treble boosters, mid-boost circuits, full-range boosters, etc. Choose what you like best. The problem will be that you need to stuff it into a Telecaster body. As you know, there is not much space inside a Telecaster, and you need to add the booster itself, the 9V battery, an additional pot for controlling the booster, and two additional mini-toggle switches—one for turning the booster on and off, and the other to get the bridge pickup out of phase. This is a lot of stuff! On Summers’ guitar, this problem was solved by adding a large cavity on the back and closing it with a plastic back plate, as on a Gibson Les Paul.
A look inside the cavity for the mid-boost unit.
Photo courtesy of TeleManDon from Vancouver Island, BC (https://tdpri.com)
You can clearly see the two big routings for the booster’s PCB and the 9V battery, plus the additional pot to control the amount of boost as well as the mini-toggle switch to turn the booster on and off. If you are not afraid of routing two big chambers into your Telecaster’s body, this is a suitable way to go.
On a Telecaster, there are not many alternatives I can think of to fit all these parts. One possible way of saving space would be to use a stacked pot with two 250k pots for volume and tone, so you have the second hole in the control plate available for the gain control pot of the booster. Between the two pots, it should be no problem to place the two mini-toggle switches. Or you use a push-pull pot for the gain control to save one of the mini-toggle switches. The guitar will look much cleaner, at least from the front side. But you still have to put the booster PCB and the battery somewhere. A customer of mine did this by completely routing the area under the pickguard. But even with only a regular single-coil neck pickup, it was a really tight fit, so with a regular-sized humbucker, it will be close to impossible. So, you or your luthier will have to be creative, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a company offers Andy Summers Telecaster bodies with all chambers already routed.
Here we go for the wiring. Wherever possible, I tried to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring of the booster is only an example and depends on the booster you want to use, but the basic wiring is always the same.
Here’s a helpful schmatic of the Andy Summers‘ Telecaster wiring.
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
That’s it. Next month, we will take a deep look into guitar cables and wires, what really makes a difference, and how you can use this to reshape your guitar tone. So stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Grammy-nominated session guitarist, producer, mixer, and engineer Paul Moak stays busy on multiple fronts. Over the years he’s written, played, produced and more for TV sessions (Pretty Little Liars, One Tree Hill) and artists including Third Day, Leeland, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. But most recently he’s worked with Heart and Ann Wilson and Tripsitter.
Time Traveler
Moak is most loyal to a 1963 Stratocaster body that’s mated to a 1980s-vintage, 3-bolt, maple, bullet-truss-rod, 1969-style Fender Japan neck. The bridge has been swapped as many as four times and the bridge and neck pickups are Lindy Fralins.
Cool Cat
If there’s one guitar Moak would grab in a fire, it’s the Jaguar he’s had since age 20 and used in his band DC Talk. When Moak bought the guitar at Music Go Round in Minneapolis, the olympic white finish was almost perfect. He remains impressed with the breadth of tones. He likes the low-output single-coils for use with more expansive reverb effects.
Mystery Message Les Paul
Moak’s 1970 L.P. Custom has a number of 1969 parts. It was traded to Moak by the band Feel. Interestingly, the back is carved with the words “cheat” and “liar,” telling a tale we can only speculate about.
Dad Rocker
Almost equally near and dear to Moak’s heart is this 1968 Vox Folk Twelve that belonged to his father. It has the original magnetic pickup at the neck as well as a piezo installed by Moak.
Flexi Plexis
This rare and precious trio of plexis can be routed in mix-and-match fashion to any of Moak’s extensive selection of cabs—all of which are miked and ready to roll.
Vintage Voices
Moak’s amps skew British, but ’60s Fender tone is here in plentitude courtesy of a blonde-and-oxblood Bassman and 1965 Bandmaster as well as a 2x6L6 Slivertone 1484 Twin Twelve.
Guess What?
The H-Zog, which is the second version of Canadian amp builder Garnet’s Herzog tube-driven overdrive, can work as an overdrive or an amp head, but it’s probably most famous for Randy Bachman’s fuzzy-as-heck “American Woman” tone.
Stomp Staff
While the Eventide H90 that helps anchor Moak’s pedalboard can handle the job of many pedals, he may have more amp heads on hand than stompboxes. But essentials include a JHS Pulp ‘N’ Peel compressor/preamp, a DigiTech Whammy II, DigiTech FreqOut natural feedback generator, a Pete Cornish SS-3 drive, Klon Centaur, and Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man.
