Metal89
Ambassador of Orchestral Brewtality
So yea, instead of settling, I splurged and got this.ESP LTD EC-1000S Fluence Electric Guitar
I had maybe 15 minutes to plug it in and rip on it a bit before having to head to work. So I wasn’t able to get a picture of it myself. I will do so tomorrow.
So the original intent was to shove my Richard Z signature pickups into a guitar, which is why I got a guitar that already had fishmans, so I can just unscrew the pickups and plug the rammstein ones in and go. However, I never actually played on fishmans myself, I’ve read up on them. I’ve watched reviews on them, but never actually played on them myself… more on this later.
The guitar itself is 25.5 scale length with extra jumbo frets and 24 stainless steal frets to boot. It has locking Ltd tuners, and a neck through construction because I LOVE sustain. Tone pros locking bridge and stop bar. Binding on the neck and body. Comes stock with fishman fluence modern pickups, two volume pots and a push pull tone pot, the pickups do have three voicings but this is set for voice 1 and 2 so the active modern voice and the passive humbucker voice. Which suites me just fine, I have no interest in single coil voice.
I didn’t weigh it but it’s lighter than a Gibson les Paul. It’s not going to break your back on stage, the cut away is real nice letting me effortlessly get to the 22nd fret without thinking, getting to the 24th fret will take a bit more effort but I’m not complaining. Neck is extremely comfortable about the same as my richy Faulkner epiphone V. Not a baseball bat, but not super thin like an Ibanez neck. Kinda hits that sweet spot for me.
It did come tuned down half a step but it’s set up perfectly out of the box, I even tuned it up to E standard. Then drop D, then used my drop tune pedal to just bring it down to drop C but from half a step, standard, to drop D. No fret buzz, action is low enough you could shred on it out of the box as is. String gauge it comes with is 10-46.
As I said before I had 15 minutes to play on it, so took the opportunity to try the moderns for myself. Going into an amp sim “amped roots” so basically 6150 type of amp, high gain metal tones.
The moderns often get compared to EMG 81-85’s and for good reason. Honestly I’ve heard that they are pretty similar but I knew something had to be up because most metal artists aside from a few have completely abandoned EMG’s and gone with Fishmans.
First thing I noticed when plugging in, absolutely no noise…. Now my recording set up i have a window ac unit right next to me. Then my computer, a fan. It’s not ideal in fact with passives, there would be a lot of unwanted noise, which is a primary reason I’ve stuck with actives. Severely cuts out that noise, even then a lot of the times with my EMG’s some really low static can sneak in, not enough to ruin a track at all. Easily removed when mixed and mastered. With these fishmans, absolutely nothing. At all, in fact i had a moment where I thought there might have been an issue til I hit the string with my pick and clear as day, tone!
Ok then…. There’s a point towards fishman. So i warmed up, chugged, did some lead licks, used different amp settings. These are, in fact, very mid heavy, which is great in a mix. EMG’s tend to have a bit more bottom end which is what I prefer. However, I couldn’t help but think the tone of these are really well balanced. Emg 81’s can get a bit ice pickish when getting up to around the 13th and 15th frets on the high E and B strings. Fishmans I didn’t really have that issue, it was kinda in between tone wise to an emg 81 and an emg 57. The neck pickup is pretty similar to an 85 just leaning towards mids a bit more.
Ok that’s all well and good, but what’s up with voice 2, the passive sound? This is were i suddenly started to understand.
Now I’ve had guitars that had “coil split” with push pull pots… and honestly… I’ve been underwhelmed. Mainly because out put is severely reduced (which makes sense, you are electronically cutting the pickup in half… doesn’t mean I like it) but tone wise, it didn’t do anything for me in any guitar that’s had it. So I just avoided them altogether.
This though! This is actually a voice CHANGE! I pulled up on the knob, hit a power chord and immediately noticed a difference. I kept switching back and forth, trying to put my finger on it. First thing I noticed, the passive setting DOES reduce output, however. Not to the point where you then have to adjust your volume, volume maybe a half decible difference. It was more in the responsiveness to the gain in which I noticed it. It was actually tighter. Now these pickups are tight even in actives but reducing the actual output, made a noticeable difference but still retained a heavy tone, second thing I noticed. There is a tad bit more bottom end… bottom end with a tad bit of fuzz… YUP DEFINITELY A PASSIVE HUMBUCKER TONE!
Ok now I’m starting to get impressed. It was at this point I started to question on if I even wanted to swap out the pickups, but those Richard Z pickups are 300$ by God I’m going to at least give them an opportunity. But at this point I’m starting to think of tonal possibilities, for the first time I actually found use for a push pull pot and thinking what type of heavy tones I could get with using the passive voice for rhythm tracks and using the active for leads!
I switched back to voice 1 and the bridge pickup, deciding to go through one more lead run before putting it up. I started to get into it. The fret board felt really good, bending on stainless steel frets felt so effortless, I got lost in the moment. And on a sustained note without thinking, I pulled the tone pot, putting it in passive, switched to the neck pickup, and finished off with a melodic ending… At that point as I let the final sustained note take over and naturally fade. I finally understood, I got why these pickups are taking over the active market… you actually get inspiring tonal possibilities with these… just from the guitar itself…
Tomorrow I’m hoping to have enough time to slap in the rammstein pickups and see what I think of them. So far.. this guitar may quickly become my favorite.
I had maybe 15 minutes to plug it in and rip on it a bit before having to head to work. So I wasn’t able to get a picture of it myself. I will do so tomorrow.
So the original intent was to shove my Richard Z signature pickups into a guitar, which is why I got a guitar that already had fishmans, so I can just unscrew the pickups and plug the rammstein ones in and go. However, I never actually played on fishmans myself, I’ve read up on them. I’ve watched reviews on them, but never actually played on them myself… more on this later.
The guitar itself is 25.5 scale length with extra jumbo frets and 24 stainless steal frets to boot. It has locking Ltd tuners, and a neck through construction because I LOVE sustain. Tone pros locking bridge and stop bar. Binding on the neck and body. Comes stock with fishman fluence modern pickups, two volume pots and a push pull tone pot, the pickups do have three voicings but this is set for voice 1 and 2 so the active modern voice and the passive humbucker voice. Which suites me just fine, I have no interest in single coil voice.
I didn’t weigh it but it’s lighter than a Gibson les Paul. It’s not going to break your back on stage, the cut away is real nice letting me effortlessly get to the 22nd fret without thinking, getting to the 24th fret will take a bit more effort but I’m not complaining. Neck is extremely comfortable about the same as my richy Faulkner epiphone V. Not a baseball bat, but not super thin like an Ibanez neck. Kinda hits that sweet spot for me.
It did come tuned down half a step but it’s set up perfectly out of the box, I even tuned it up to E standard. Then drop D, then used my drop tune pedal to just bring it down to drop C but from half a step, standard, to drop D. No fret buzz, action is low enough you could shred on it out of the box as is. String gauge it comes with is 10-46.
As I said before I had 15 minutes to play on it, so took the opportunity to try the moderns for myself. Going into an amp sim “amped roots” so basically 6150 type of amp, high gain metal tones.
The moderns often get compared to EMG 81-85’s and for good reason. Honestly I’ve heard that they are pretty similar but I knew something had to be up because most metal artists aside from a few have completely abandoned EMG’s and gone with Fishmans.
First thing I noticed when plugging in, absolutely no noise…. Now my recording set up i have a window ac unit right next to me. Then my computer, a fan. It’s not ideal in fact with passives, there would be a lot of unwanted noise, which is a primary reason I’ve stuck with actives. Severely cuts out that noise, even then a lot of the times with my EMG’s some really low static can sneak in, not enough to ruin a track at all. Easily removed when mixed and mastered. With these fishmans, absolutely nothing. At all, in fact i had a moment where I thought there might have been an issue til I hit the string with my pick and clear as day, tone!
Ok then…. There’s a point towards fishman. So i warmed up, chugged, did some lead licks, used different amp settings. These are, in fact, very mid heavy, which is great in a mix. EMG’s tend to have a bit more bottom end which is what I prefer. However, I couldn’t help but think the tone of these are really well balanced. Emg 81’s can get a bit ice pickish when getting up to around the 13th and 15th frets on the high E and B strings. Fishmans I didn’t really have that issue, it was kinda in between tone wise to an emg 81 and an emg 57. The neck pickup is pretty similar to an 85 just leaning towards mids a bit more.
Ok that’s all well and good, but what’s up with voice 2, the passive sound? This is were i suddenly started to understand.
Now I’ve had guitars that had “coil split” with push pull pots… and honestly… I’ve been underwhelmed. Mainly because out put is severely reduced (which makes sense, you are electronically cutting the pickup in half… doesn’t mean I like it) but tone wise, it didn’t do anything for me in any guitar that’s had it. So I just avoided them altogether.
This though! This is actually a voice CHANGE! I pulled up on the knob, hit a power chord and immediately noticed a difference. I kept switching back and forth, trying to put my finger on it. First thing I noticed, the passive setting DOES reduce output, however. Not to the point where you then have to adjust your volume, volume maybe a half decible difference. It was more in the responsiveness to the gain in which I noticed it. It was actually tighter. Now these pickups are tight even in actives but reducing the actual output, made a noticeable difference but still retained a heavy tone, second thing I noticed. There is a tad bit more bottom end… bottom end with a tad bit of fuzz… YUP DEFINITELY A PASSIVE HUMBUCKER TONE!
Ok now I’m starting to get impressed. It was at this point I started to question on if I even wanted to swap out the pickups, but those Richard Z pickups are 300$ by God I’m going to at least give them an opportunity. But at this point I’m starting to think of tonal possibilities, for the first time I actually found use for a push pull pot and thinking what type of heavy tones I could get with using the passive voice for rhythm tracks and using the active for leads!
I switched back to voice 1 and the bridge pickup, deciding to go through one more lead run before putting it up. I started to get into it. The fret board felt really good, bending on stainless steel frets felt so effortless, I got lost in the moment. And on a sustained note without thinking, I pulled the tone pot, putting it in passive, switched to the neck pickup, and finished off with a melodic ending… At that point as I let the final sustained note take over and naturally fade. I finally understood, I got why these pickups are taking over the active market… you actually get inspiring tonal possibilities with these… just from the guitar itself…
Tomorrow I’m hoping to have enough time to slap in the rammstein pickups and see what I think of them. So far.. this guitar may quickly become my favorite.
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