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 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.