ESP LTD SN-1000 Evertune Koa NT

It pains me to give this guitar a 4 star rating as it's an amazing instrument worthy of 5 stars, but quality control with my particular model was definitely an issue.

First, the good and the neutral.

This is the most comfortable guitar I've ever played. The neck feels fast and maneuverable thanks to its profile and the satin finish. The body of the guitar is carved just right, allowing it to sit nicely against your body and forearm. It's well balanced and has little to no neck dive both when standing having it strapped in or having it sit on your lap.

The tuners and the evertune bridge are mounted flawlessly. The nut is plastic and could have been graphite at this price point (it'd gladly pay a few extra euros to just have it be a TUSK), but it doesn't bother me that much because tuning smoothness at the nut is not that of a priority if you have an evertune. The stainless steel frets are just amazing, some of the smoothest frets I've ever bent a string on.

The wood and the finish are absolutely gorgeous. When light hits the koa top of this guitar it's just something else, the wood grain is just mesmerizing. The satin finish just makes the wood look even more stunning. A word of caution tho: the pictures you see online - both on Thomann's and ESP's website - are pretty misleading. The koa top is way darker in real life, much closer in color to that of mahogany. It seems like the pictures online have the colors overly saturated and the contrast turned up. I'd say that the picture of the guitar from the side on Thomann's website is the closest representation of what it looks like, but the frontal one is a big over-exaggeration.

The pickups sound great to my ear. The neck pickup is warm and thick and the bridge pickup is nicely rounded, almost like a more tame and calmed down SD Nazgul. The guitar has a full sound and really makes its presence known. The 3-way switch changes between the neck, both and bridge pickups, while the push-pull tone knob does coil splitting - neck south, neck south + bridge north, bridge north.

The guitar came set up very well. The action was spot on and so was the intonation. Some strings were a bit out of tune when it arrived, so I did have to adjust the evertune to start with. But at least that was a good practice run to get a hang of the evertune bridge. The guitar comes with an evertune manual and reading it is a must. If you don't want to invest a bit of time into understanding how to set up and tune the bridge and how tension works, then maybe the evertune is not for you. The strings were wrapped around the tuning pegs a bit awkwardly tho, which popped out aesthetically, but nothing drastic.

Now the bad.

The first thing I've noticed was that there was glue residue around the nut, which stood out quite a lot since the glue has a glossy look in contrast to the matte look of the satin finish. So I had to scrape that off carefully.

The next thing I noticed was that there was a bunch of residue under the pickguard, so much so that you could visually see a gap between the body and the pickguard. That made me have to remove the pickguard, which I couldn't do without removing the strings and recessing the neck pickup since you have to slide the pickguard from under the neck joint in order to remove it. The residue turned out to be small wood shavings and pieces of the satin finish from when they were drilling the pickguard screw holes. After I removed those, the pickguard was able to sit flush with the body. Additionally, all the pickguard phillips screws were somehow already stripped when I got the guitar, making them sharp to the touch.
The wiring in the electronics cavity seemed neat tho and the shielding paint was applied properly.

While feeling the finish I noticed on the back of the guitar that there was some tiny bubbling going on on the satin finish. It's like some air got trapped in the coating. Also the workspace in the shop might not have been clean because some tiny fragments could be seen stuck in the finish. This was present in like 5% of the back of the body all closer up top towards the neck joint, but just enough to give you a bad feeling about it. You don't notice it while playing tho.

Lastly, the push-pull tone pot. The pot is way too loose and spins too freely, offering very little resistance. There is also the issue of some dead travel when you initially start turning it, meaning that for a brief time it turns with zero resistance and also without having any effect. The shaft feels wobbly and is most likely defective. Having said that, the pot itself works and adjusts the tone as it should. I've asked Thomann for a replacement.

The strange bit is that for the most part the guitar is flawless and very well made, but then there are these needless issues. I'm disappointed in ESP's/LTD's QA, especially at this price point. Harley Benton usually provides an "inspected by" card with their guitars, while this one came with no such thing.

In the end I decided to keep the guitar, as for me it truly is something special and I'm really glad I went for it. Having said that, I wish that ESP/LTD would step up their QA game because nobody wants to have shavings under their pickguard and wobbly tone knobs on a 1.5k guitar.

At first glance, this guitar boasts some truly impressive features: stainless steel frets, a Macassar ebony fingerboard, an Evertune bridge, and even exotic woods like koa. On paper, it sounds like a high-end, premium instrument.

However, in hand, the guitar just doesn’t feel premium. The most baffling choice was the plastic nut — I can’t understand why LTD would go with such a cheap component on a guitar with otherwise top-tier specs. It feels like a corner cut that really shouldn't be there at this price point.

My experience with Thomann was also disappointing. The guitar arrived poorly set up, and I had to attempt adjustments myself — especially with the Evertune, which isn’t beginner-friendly to tweak. Even after some setup work, the strings wouldn't stay properly in place, and one even popped out. That was the final straw.

In the end, I had to return the guitar for multiple reasons: bad setup out of the box, questionable build choices, and playability issues. It’s a shame, because this guitar could’ve been something special with just a bit more attention to detail and quality control.

Ich muss vorweg sagen, dass ich den (sehr empfehlenswerten) Einstellservice für die (2.)Gitarre incl. Evertune System in Anspruch genommen habe. Hintergrund waren sehr markante Bundierungsfehler im Bereich der 21./22 Bünde bei der zurückgeschickten 1.Gitarre. Der Hals gefiel mir von Anfang an hervorragend. Angenehme schlanke Proportionen mit einer seidenmatten Oberfläche, die müheloses Spiel ermöglicht, zumal im Zusammenwirken mit dem sehr guten Ebenholzgriffbrett. Der Sattel ist zwar nicht aus Knochen, aber optimal gekerbt und ermöglicht flache Saitenlage und perfekte Intonation. Wobei wir bei dem Evertune System wären: man muss sich da etwas reinfuchsen, sonst wird man die Gitarre bald zur Seite legen. Wenn man aber die Feineinstellung an die eigenen Spielbedürfnisse optimiert, insbesondere bei häufigen Bendings über einen Ganzton hinaus, ist die absolute Stimmstabilität schon ein großer Vorteil. Wenn man aber die richtige Feineinstellung nicht hinbekommt, werden Bendings zur Qual! Das System bringt natürlich ein gewisses Gewicht mit. Die Gitarre wiegt 3850 Gramm, was absolut noch im Rahmen ist, wobei wir aber zum einen kein dichtes und schweres Holz haben und zum anderen durch die systembedingten Ausfräsungen relativ weniger Holz haben als bei einer herkömmlichen Strat. In Sachen Sustain konnte ich indessen keine negativen Auswirkungen wahrnehmen. Für Spieler, die ihre Anschlagshand gerne auf der Brücke ablegen, ist das sehr flach gebaute System wirklich sehr angenehm. Die PUs Tonabnehmer sind leistungsstark und gut ohne aber herauszuragen. Das Scallopping der Bünde ab Bund 15 ist sehr gut gemacht und erfordert keine Eingewöhnung. Bendings in den hohen Lagen gehen mit wenig Kraftaufwand geschmeidig von der Hand. Auch wenn das vielleicht ein nachrangiger Aspekt ist ist: Die Gitarre ist schön und sieht edel aus!
Ingesamt ein positives Fazit und eine Empfehlung!