Here's a review of my new guitar, the LTD EC-1000 Duncan. Playing starts at 6:25.
Features:
-Made in Indonesia
-Locking tuners and bridge
-Mahogany body and neck, ebony fretboard
-Set-thru construction
-24.75in scale, 42mm nut width, 24 extra jumbo frets
-Seymour Duncan 59 and JB in the neck and bridge respectively
-Split pickup feature
-Gold hardware and yellow binding on body and neck
-Black matte finish
I used the EZMix Mark Lewis Expansion pack to test a few tones.
The reason I bought this guitar was because I was in need of a new fixed bridge rhythm style guitar, since my SG has had lots of intonation and tuning problems for a long time now. Thought it was time for an upgrade. I still love the SG and will continue to play it, but this will help me out a lot when I don't want to deal with the shortcomings of the SG.
I also own an LTD D-4 bass, which I was highly impressed with, so I decided to check out some more LTDs, and I just loved the EC line. LTD does make an SG style guitar called the Viper, but to me they are just really ugly so I never even considered them. They just look like an ugly SG to me. Anyway, the EC-1000 Duncan is a great guitar. I love it. It plays great, sounds great, and it is cool looking.
The locking tuners are kind of interesting. To change the strings, you just insert the string, and turn the knob, which locks the string in place. Apparently that is supposed to give additional tuning stability. The tailpiece is fixed in place and doesn't come off with the strings. The woods and materials make the guitar sound great, and the fretboard is fast and smooth to play. The upper fret access isn't as good as some other guitars, but I intend to mostly play rhythm on this guitar anyway. It's still a good guitar for solos though.
The split coil feature is really nice. I was surprised to find that I actually really like having both the bridge and neck pickup on in the middle position for a single coil tone. Lastly the matte finish is kind of a feature in itself, because it makes the neck feel very fast like a neck without a finish, but even smoother.
My complaints are really small and minor, but to me, there's no such thing as a perfect instrument. Even though I do like the body shape, but it can be kind of uncomfortable. It feels like the top section of the guitar digs into my ribs and is quite painful. Also, I like the LTD headstock on the D-4 bass, but I think this one is kind of ugly. Same for the fret markers. Other than that, I really wish I had an option to have something other than black, but still have the Duncans and a matte finish. I wanted Duncans instead of EMGs, with the matte finish, and black was the only option. I have a Duncan in my SG and really like it, and I am not a huge fan of active pickups and having to maintain batteries all the time. I did have to settle for active pickups in my bass though.
Sorry about the sloppy playing. I just started jamming around once I got it out of the box and tuned it up, so I didn't get a chance to set up the action and get used to it a bit. The clean parts have some weird feedback. I think it's because I probably need to mute the strings on the headstock past the nut.
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