ESP LTD EC-401 Black

I purchased this guitar two weeks ago at Thomann. This is the first guitar in this price range that I ever bought. I have some old guitars and I also purchased a Harley Benton beginners guitar at Thomann six weeks ago.
To make a long story short: the guitar sounds flawless. Together with the new amplifier, it is just beautiful. But unfortunately I felt like something was wrong when I received the package. The Harely Benton Guitar that I received six weeks ago was simply beautifully wrapped and unboxing it was very cool. My son was more than happy. Unboxing this guitar felt like unboxing something that was already returned to the seller and now was re-sold. This was not the original packaging and there were fingerprints all over the guitar body. It almost looked like B-Stock. Although this is kind of ok and won't effect the sound of the guitar (there are not scratches), it messed the "unboxing feeling" totally up. Having to clean a product first before you can use it is difficult. However, after cleaning it I deceided not to send it back because it is still a great guitar and it works fine. It doesn't have any scratches so it looks good now. Other than the poor packaging, I can only highly recommend this instrument.
// let me give you a quick update here: after about three weeks, I experienced technical problems with the guitar. There was no sound anymore although cable and amp were ok. I contacted the Thomann support and their help was concerning friendliness, competency, speed and, at the end, customer happiness absolutely flawless. To be honest I never experienced a customer service at the hight quality level. This is why I changed my rating of the overall quality from two stars to five. Thank you Thomann-Team for this exceptional service. You guys rock! :-)

Great guitar!
I play mostly metal, sometimes punk rock. This guitar handles the styles very well, active pickups provide high gain sounds with great fidelity. I owned several guitars with EMG pickups, I always used to replace EMG 81 in bridge position with EMG 85 due to EMG 81 sounding too harsh and brittle to me. With LTD EC-401 i did not do it for the first time, as EMG 81 sounds just great in bridge position, sound is full a and very harmonic, not harsh in any way. I think this is related to wood of the body (mahogany with no top). I always modify the pickups connection to work in 18 volt mode (two 9 V batteries), which makes the sound more natural and harmonic. This guitar has absolutely best sustain I have ever experienced with any guitar!
The only small complaint about this guitar is instability while playing sitting, guitar body is not very well balanced for that and tends to slip off to the right side, you definitelly need a strap to stabilize the instrument while sitting. However, this is really minor issue and playing while standing is absolutelly comfortable.

I bought this guitar as a step up from an old cheap jackson that I had learned to play on. I based my decision to buy partly on the Total Guitar review that is attached to the product page. It only came second out of four in the review but that was good enough for me as the product that came first, the Ibanez ARZ700, did not have fret markers / inlays. This wouldn't bother some but I do actually look at the inlays as I play.

This guitar screams quality and I tried this in a local shop alongside the LTD EC -1000 and I couldn't justify the price difference although I now also want to buy the EC- 1000 for the ebony fretboard. The build quality is the same I feel.

Playability, the neck is slim but not so slim it gives you cramp in your hands. It's just about perfect and the gloss neck doesn't get sticky at all when playing. Build quality, top quality fit and finish all around with only a bit of minor glue smear on the bottom neck join. The paint, fretboard, binding and hardware are all flawless quality. The EMG pickups... are exactly how you would expect, roaring with bite at the bridge and sounding like angels singings when playing lead.

9.9 / 10 for this guitar it is just like a les paul custom but lighter weight and with emg's. Plus I think LTD is cooler that other popular manufacturers.

I have to provide great feedback on the quality and purity of the sound of the EMG pickups. The overall quality is very good for the price range of this ESP LTD. Although, I must say that I was surprised that after a couple of weeks started to have a problem with the toggle switch of the pickups, where I could never know if next time I would switch, the pickups would produce/capture any sound... I've returned the guitar and ordered another one. Again, very pleased with it, but... after another couple of weeks, same problem. Switching between pickups was failing and no sound coming out of the pickups :-( I was very frustrated and discussed this with Thomann support, that I must say was very professional and comprehensive with my frustration. This is something that ESP LTD must check and fix. I ended up opting for other options and chose another guitar, but in case you get lucky with your order, it is a great guitar at an affordable price.

I use this guitar for D Standard and drop C tunings with 11's on it, and it's great for what I need it to do. The pickups sound good with metal tones and can produce some decent clean tones as well, however I find the sound to be quite one-dimensional, in the sense that you can't use this guitar for much else. That depends on whether or not you like EMG's though. The guitar feels great to play, is comfortable and has good weight. The set-up was excellent and the guitar was great out of the box, and I only needed to change the strings, as it came with 10's on it. There were some issues with build quality that arose a few months later. Both volume knobs came loose, and I had to tighten them, and also the pickup switch started malfunctioning. I was able to fix it with no problems though (unscrewed the back, messed around with the selector and it started working properly). Overall, a great buy for anyone looking to upgrade from cheaper guitars!

I wanted a single cut guitar, but a model more oriented for metal, I choose this model for the EMG pickups the lightweight and overall design of the guitar (pure black goodness with easy access to the higher frets, a very ergonomic design).

The feel of the guitar is great, great neck although having a gloss finish is not sticky in any way and the high fret access is great, frets are shinny and rounded on the edges, beautiful rosewood finger board with the inlays perfectly executed. About the finish and looks of the guitar I only found two small golden flakes beneath the black paint that look like some kind of dust from the factory flying around during the painting (but that?s not a problem for me)

All the hardware is good quality and the EMG?s are great for high gain, not so good for clean sounds or bluesy tunes, truly a metal guitar.

For the price the only downside of this instrument is the lack of a case or gig bag included, it?s a made in Korea, and other brands from the same factory on this price range all come with a gig bag included.

For metal music i totally recommend this guitar.