ESP Alexi-600

Whoa, Jack's gone all metal today, aha, nah, Jack is just reviewing a guilty pleasure, a guitar I've always liked, maybe something to do with the player of whom is its creator, Alexi Laiho. The Alexi-600 is Alexi's signature model. I'm a huge fan of Alexi, and so is Kirk Hammet! He gets slated by some for in the modern age being part of a scene, playing a lot of corporate metal to sell records. This I somewhat agree with, but the first two Children of Bodom albums, Something Wild and Hatebreeder were genuine guitar greatness, shredtastic. This is back when they were still playing melodic metal, it was technical and fast and incredibly catchy, the Tokyo Warhearts live album is a must listen if you haven't already, it just shows how good they are, and how accurate Alexi is himself. Modern albums lost some of this melody and technicality, as fast running solos got replaced with heavy muted chords and outlandish whammy tricks, taking away from the true brilliance of early Children of Bodom. But despite the change, one thing remained the same, the quality of Alexi's sound. Why? Well because he's been playing an ESP for the past 7 years, his signature Alexi-600 model. ESP's reputation is unquestionable, they make fantastic guitars, that have brought in guitarists ranging from all ends of the guitar world, from Ron Wood of the Stones to Nergal of Behemoth.



So lets dive into Alexi's 600 signature model. This will be quite brief, as there isn't all that much to explain, which is possibly the beauty of this guitar. It has just one pickup, a humbucker in the bridge position. So its not got the greatest versatility? You don't need it, this guitar was only really designed for one genre, and that is metal. So what is the best possible pickup for this guitar? An EMG of course, specifically an EMG-HZ, one of the best and most popular pickups on the market, due to its undoubted quality. It's so heavy, yet so clean, it's truly marvellous. Having just the one humbucker pickup gives this guitar a real feel of class and precision, it doesn't need anything else, its got all it needs in just that one pickup, and this leaves the body looking quite empty, which is awesome. The humbucker being in the bridge position gives it the heaviest sound available. The Alexi-600 also has a licensed Floyd Rose 1000 Series tremolo. Floyd Rose are the original, and only make quality tremolo systems, this is no exception, a sound and resolute trem system that gives you great range and strength. I love floating trem's, they look really technical, and I love Floyd Rose trem's the most, because they're such good quality. The guitar has just the one knob, for volume, but I don't see why you'd ever want that lower than 11, this guitar was built for power and deafening volumes.

The design of the Alexi-600 does a lot for me, its simplicity gives it respectability. I like the yellow or the purple, but given the choice would take the yellow. It's a great V shape, it's classy, it's not trying to be too metal, it's how things should be. Its simplistic layout just makes it real quality, it doesn't need all the mod-cons to be a superb guitar, just a pickup. The guitar also has unique custom sharktooth fret inlays, wound into a ebony fretboard, which just amplifies quality. There is a cutout for access to the lower frets, which looks great and really works the part. The neck is made of maple, and it has that brilliant ESP headstock, that you have to be careful with when using, it's lethal, and metal! It has a locking nut, which adds to the tuning sturdiness. It also has grover tuners, the top machine heads.

This guitar is fantastic, I'll probably never own one due to not being a metal player in a band, but maybe one day I'll make the switch, and this will be topping my list of metal guitars. So what do you think of Bodom, Alexi and his signature Alexi-600 model? Played one? Please do leave comments. Thanks.

Ibanez RG550

I'm not going to be specific in whether it's the original model or the 20th anniversary model, both had the same specs, other than the updated neck on the anniversary RG550 model, because of problems with the neck warping with the original model. So other than that, they're both the same guitar, which makes them both brilliant! I love this guitar, and I really want to get hold of one. It's the top of the range RG model, with all the top hardware. The other sublime feature about this guitar is that awesome paint job. The RG550 only came in three colours, Desert Yellow, Road Flare Red and Black, all of a matte finish, which took away the shine and made the guitars look fantastic on stage. There's a Paul Gilbert video on youtube introducing the RG550XX anniversary model (The XX signifies it's the anniversary model). He speaks about the power the original 550's had on stage, and how cool they looked back in the 80's, and how cool they still look today, even more so if you have an original RG550 with all that character, one of the early models, you're going to be the real envy of all your friends. Now, the travesty here is that the RG550 model has been discontinued a long time now, and the anniversary models are limited, but this should just increase your desire, if you can get hold of one of these, its value is only going to increase from the day you get it.


So lets talk about the defining features that made the original RG550 such a popular and fantastic guitar to play and own. The RG550 had a Basswood body, which made it very light, despite its size. Well how great is that? There's more guitar to own, without it weighing you down during live performances. This means they haven't had to compromise the looks of the 550 to make it play well and sound great. The Basswood gives a very unique tone, which made the RG550 so popular. I seem to drop his name a lot these days, but you can learn so much from him, Paul Gilbert uses a stock, off the shelf RG550 in the Road Flare Red, he used it for the whole of the Mr. Big reunion tour, it's the one with all the stickers on it, you've hopefully seen it before. Well when a top musician takes a stock instrument on tour and uses it regularly, you can clearly see it's a very good instrument. I'd certainly love to take one on a tour of the local area, aha.

The RG550 has a 5-piece wizard prestige bolt on neck, in maple, which looks fantastic with both the red and the yellow, personally I'm not a fan of black guitars in general, but whatever floats your boat. With the two really striking colours available, I couldn't imagine buying the black. I've mentioned before my preference for maple necks. From my perspective, they feel better, and they feel like they play a little quicker and smoother, but this again is only my personal preference, and despite this I don't actually own a guitar with a maple neck, because a lot of the time guitars with maple necks look a bit odd, but the RG550 really doesn't, not with the headstock that matches the body colour, it looks ace. The neck has 24 Jumbo frets, which is great, I always prefer to have 24, because it means you've got a whole octave on every string, rather than on a 22 where the last two notes are absent. The RG550 also has a Humbucker, Single, Humbucker combination, which combined with a 5-way pickup selector gives you great range and versatility. If you watch that Paul Gilbert 20th anniversary video, you'll see the quality and difference between each pickup combination. The pickups in the 550 are Ibanez pickups, the V1 in the neck, S1 in the middle and V2 in the bridge position. These are the top range of Ibanez pickups, but you may still want to change them out for DiMarzio's or EMG's as there are slightly better pickups out there, but not much better, the stock pickups are the best pickups Ibanez have to offer.

The RG550 also had the Edge Pro tremolo, which is fantastic and not to be confused with the Edge III Pro trem, which is prone to breakage and other problems. The Edge Pro is one of the finest trems Ibanez offer, a real sturdy and resolute tremolo. The RG550 also has a ultra thin carve on the back of the neck near the high frets to give easy access, this is what had to be addressed on the 20th anniversary models, but only a few original 550's suffered from warping, those that didn't are fantastic, and the anniversary models are beautiful and play perfectly.

This is one of the best RG models available, it's fantastic, it looks the part and plays the part, it has so much history behind it, and so much class, and is still a very sought after instrument today, which is constantly increasing in value. So what is your opinion on the RG550? Were you ever lucky enough to own one, or still do? Post some comments guys, what colour would you have this guitar in, what do you think of it? I hope you enjoyed the article, thanks.

Ibanez S470

So, here's a more hands on review of the Ibanez S470, why? Because it's my primary guitar, I've been playing it a long time now and know it well. I still love this guitar like the day I first bought it, because it does everything. I bought this guitar just after Christmas 08, and play it by the day, and it still plays like it did when it was new. I bought this guitar because of its range and versatility, I wanted to have all the most modern and technical features I could, so this was the only guitar that was in my price range and had all these things available to me. It cost me £380, which is its standard retail price here in the UK. So, what're all those features that make this guitar so great? Well, where to start... The S470 has a ZR tremolo (ZR stands for Zero Resistance). This is a recently developed tremolo from Ibanez, it's called a Zero Resistance tremolo because it runs on ball-bearings rather than a knife edge like the trems of past, such as the Ibanez Edge III Pro or a standard Floyd Rose. This gave it extra smoothness, tuning stability and reliability. The Edge III tremolo's are quite prone to breakage, search through the Ultimate Guitar forums or Jemsite and it probably won't take you any more than 5 minutes to find a thread about someone's broken Edge III trem. The Knife edge is how it sounds, the strings run on a sharp edge, this meant strings could also be easily broken by an overly vicious pull up on the whammy bar. The ball-bearings cancel this out, they run really smoothly, which also adds to the quality of the sound when using the trem for Vibrato or tricks. The ZR trem also has a stopping bar in it, which decreases the range of the Tremolo, in exchange for tuning stability. As a live musician, this was a great selling point for myself. One of the key facts about the ZR bridge, which I can confirm is true is that if you break a string, all the other strings will still remain perfectly in tune, which can be a savour in a live situation, and I can confirm, it really is! Now you may be thinking, well ok, but then I can't do some of those crazy divebombs and flutters, not true. That stopping bar in the ZR can be removed, which then makes the tremolo just like any other, you can start doing mad things with it, just be careful or your string bill might start costing the same as your gas and electricity bills.

Other major selling points? Well, the S470 has a Humbucker, Single, Humbucker pickup combination with a 5-way pickup selector. This gives you great range, for all styles of music, and can save you a fortune on pedals and effects. The bridge humbucker gives you a really raw heavy sound, but when you flick up to the neck pickup, you get a beautiful clean sound, it's like strumming an acoustic, it's wonderful. The pickups that come as standard are Ibanez Infinity pickups. Now I'm an honest guy, these pickups aren't great, and I would recommend changing them out for something like DiMarzio's or EMG's, when it comes to quality of parts, Ibanez perhaps aren't the finest ambassadors. The Infinity's are good for a beginner, or someone just stepping up to their second guitar, but if you're an experienced guitarist, who often plays live and loud, you may notice lots of noise at high volumes, which is far from ideal. Don't let this put you off though, changing pickups is very easy, and not really all that expensive if you're patient and do your research.

The S470 also has other things you'd expect, it has a Wizard II neck, which is great for soloing, it has shark tooth inlays, which look great. It has a locking nut, classic Ibanez headstock, volume and tone controls and 22 frets. The last major selling point of this guitar from my perspective was how thin and light it was, yet how despite this, it doesn't lose any tone or sustain. It's made from mahogany, so you still get that great thick tone, but it's very thin and light, which is great live, you come off stage at the end of a gig with your shoulder still mobile. It also makes the guitar look very sleek. I consider this guitar like buying a new gadget, I saw it as the top gadget in the guitar market, like those more nerdy of you that like I want an iPhone because of all the extras it gives you over a normal mobile, all those things that you don't really need, but you want to have anyway, so once in a while, you can use them. This guitar has all the top range parts, and I wanted the most guitar I could get for my money, with the least limitations, and this was the best value item I could find, by quite a margin.


I've got the Cool Ice Blue finish, because it was slightly cheaper, but you can get a Blue Moon Burst or Red Viking finish, which is quilted maple top, and both look fantastic, looking back I should of saved up more and got one of those. I highly recommend this guitar, especially to anyone stepping up to their second guitar, it's fantastic and allows you to play all genres of music, it's the least restricting guitar on the market, in my opinion. It just has so much to it, allowing you to play anything.

So good people, what do you think of the Ibanez S470, or any guitar from the S Series range? Some of those prestiges look and play fantastic, if only I were richer. Leave comments and give opinions, I'd love to hear it, thanks.

ESP EC-1000FM

Doesn't it just look spectacular? I love the silver trim around the body, neck and headstock, it makes it look beautiful. I'd have it in the see-thru blue personally, but the purple is pretty stunning as well, I'd love to have it in any colour. This is a guitar I seriously considered buying when I bought my Ibanez S470, unfortunately, its cost in comparison let it down (My Ibanez was £380, this retails at about £800), for a poor man like myself of course, with guitars you get what you pay for, if I had the extra cash, I probably would've gone with this. It's like a modern twist on a classic design. The body shape is very familiar, looks like the styling of a Les Paul, can't go wrong with that. I love those fret markers, the glitter silver, just like the trim, it all fits together like a puzzle. The signature ESP Guitar name on the 12th fret as well, I love that. "What guitar is that guy playing? It doesn't say on the headstock..." "Check the twelfth."

The other bits look great too, the knobs in the silver, which match the bridge and the tuning pegs. That finish is great too, the quilted maple, like I said, in the blue, that finish is awesome. Lets get some facts down about this guitar, so you can get some insight.

The EC-1000FM has 24 Jumbo frets, the neck is made out of mahogany and so is the body, because this one a neck-thru, giving it that extra sustain and feeling of strength. The fingerboard is rosewood, as is so common, I personally prefer a maple neck, but because it is a lighter colour, it often looks odd with certain guitars, so I find, especially a black metal guitar. A black Stratocaster with a maple neck looks great (Probably because Clapton has been rocking that for the past 40 years) but I think that something like a black Jackson Dinky, with a maple neck just looks ridiculous, you got that black because you wanted to look metal, and then you've got this bright neck sticking out of it. My preference of maple necks doesn't really have great reasoning behind it, I just prefer the feel of them, they feel like they play slightly quicker. Where the neck hasn't had a bit of rosewood fitted on the frets, it feels more pure, like you're really shredding the neck. You can see the body has been slightly curved so you can easily reach the 24th fret, ESP call this a thin U-Neck contour. It looks good though, I've seen some guitars compromise the look for the access, and I guess that's fair, since it should about the playing and music, not the look, but when you can get both to work for you, it's fantastic.

The EC-1000FM comes as standard with a EMG 81 in the bridge position and a EMG 60 in the neck position. If you're reading this, I assume you play guitar, and therefore understand the quality of EMG pickups, right up there at the top with DiMarzio's and Seymour Duncan's. These two pickups will give you a fantastic sound, and is probably part of the reason this guitar cost a lot more than my Ibanez, this is using EMG's, my S470 came fitted with Ibanez's own brand of pickups, the Infinity series of pickups, which aren't all that good in comparison to the big guns. They of course can be changed, I just haven't got round to it, and still haven't really got the money to buy some DiMarzio's. DiMarzio pickups are my personal preference, there's gotta be a reason all those top virtuoso's use them, Vai, Gilbert, Petrucci, Satch and Malmsteen are all using DiMarzio pickups. I think it's due to the range of pickups available from DiMazrzio, there's pickups for all styles of music, with great sound. You really know what you're getting with DiMarzio's. The EC-1000 also comes with locking tuners, which is great for tuning stability, and is therefore great in live situations. How your guitar will perform live is vital, even if you're not a musician in a band, consider it, because you never know. I bought my Ibanez when I wasn't in a band, I now find myself playing a lot of indie music with a band, and me playing my Ibanez looks kinda odd in a scene dominated by Telecasters and other Fenders. When you buy a guitar, consider all factors, because I now have this guitar that isn't suited for my style of music, don't make my mistake. Luckily the versatility on the S470 means that it sounds right for the music, it just really doesn't look right. Consider playing Sweet Child O' Mine on a B.C. Rich Warlock, it just isn't right is it? When you've got a shred looking guitar, and you're playing lots of barre chords, it just doesn't feel or look right.

So after all that, this guitar retails at about £800, which is a fair bit, but you get a very good guitar for it. It's an ESP, they have a very high reputation for developing brilliant guitars, hence the number of superb musicians who have signature ESP guitars, one of which is Kirk Hammet, one of the most successful guitarists in metal music, if not thee most successful? He wouldn't play second rate guitars, or want to be associated with them, and that's why he plays ESP's.

So, as you can see, I think this guitar is great, the article has ended up pretty lengthy, I think I got everything in there, and I hope it's of assistance to you. So I'll finish this post in the normal fashion by asking for any of your opinion on this guitar, and your personal reviews on the this guitar, or any from the whole EC-1000 range.