The ESP Guitar Company

Hey Hekate, Thanks for posting your comments here. Glad to hear you like this guitar and thanks for your suggestions and feedback on the pickups. What is you pickup set of choice?

Todd, I am currently trying to find an alternative to the 81 by EMG. The pickups I am curious about now are: Duncan Black Winter, Fishman Fluence Modern/Townsend, and a few of the Bareknuckles --plus the Lace pickups designed to replace the 81. I don't have a straight answer yet to your question, but all the Duncans I have used and heard have poor sound quality or the wrong EQ profile and harmonics. If I were to choose a good set with versatility, it would be the Fishman Modern set. Probably a Bareknuckle set for passives.

I think a great replacement for the 81 can be BKP Miracle man, it is designed after Zak k Wylde pickups, there are pickups comming from EMG, Jim Root sigs they will be passive with active preamp, like 81 but with less gain but still sounds amazing and Wes Hauch get a sig pickup from SD it is 7 string but I hope it will be in 6 too, but they are not selling these se z but Wes said he wanted the sound of metallica on 7 string in passive and it sounds killer. Fishmans are great but they wary so you should check them somehow plus they are not active they have cirquit board instead of magnet and wiring which is magical 

I have not heard the Miracle Man yet but the Warpig definitely seems worth a try. Lukáš, the idea of an 81-like pickup is correct for extreme metal.

I can make my 81 sound like a Duncan with an EQ pedal but with a Duncan, I am not sure I can retain mids and dial out the messy Duncan sound.

I don´t think that Duncan´s sound messy Hekate, it only sounds weird and mushy on their Blackout pickups, but people somehow love them. if you did not heard the Miracle Man you should do, it sounds exactly like it should and I like it, but the price of these two or find them in shop is impossible for me and letting them make me custom set is expensive. EMG 81 is for extreme metal? What kind of, heavy machinegun sounds? The only extreme sounds I can describe that sound heavy and killer for me is even BKP Nailbomb ceramic or aftermath, on 6 string baritone guitar with mahagony body and thick ash top, that sounds just so damn fkin good. Even the Duncan Wes Hauch Jupiter pickup sounds gnarly on swamp ash, it´s just bright and nasty. But I also like the riffs like Slipknot does, so that´s why I like Jim Root so much as guitar player and his style and sound, simply to put a similiar tone, I will put a 57/66 in a guitar, or will wait for his sig pickups, because those EMG´s Retro Active aren´t my style, it´s more like 80´s thrash metal. 

Have you seen the seven string with a floyd and emgs

Hi jean-baptiste, we changed the inlays starting last year and moving into this year. So the model in the video is the current version without the block inlay. Now we do not put the model name block inlay on the fingerboards for LTD models.  NOTE: our picture on our site is still not updated. We will be updating it very soon so it will match. Hope that helps.

Hi Jason, thanks for you comments and suggestions. We're thrilled to hear how much you like your guitar. Thanks for choosing ESP!

Hi MulletRide, Evertune is not hard to change strings, simple remove old string and put new string and tune to pitch. If you want to change tunings you can easily do it, you simple need to learn the steps it takes to make adjustments. Evertune has some videos on their site or you can watch our instructional videos as well here: https://www.espguitars.com/videos/2032724

Hi Phil, This model is available, but if you are in France, please check with your local distributor. Here is a link to our distributor page: https://www.espguitars.com/locations?categories=intl-distributors