nexion218
New member
The Jackson fanboy in me swallowed a bitter pill... 
As many of you might have previously heard from me I try to keep every guitar in my stable different: active, passive, neckthru, 7 string, 6 string and so forth, the only thing that has been a constant in the past 15+ years is the presence of the Floyd Rose. I got so used to it, I have become so at ease with it's feel, operation and maintenance that everything else felt weird and unconvenient. Which was kind of a bummer, as I always wanted a fixed bridge guitar, but it just wasn't happening. Enter Evertune. Ever since I saw it in I believe Ola Englund's video, I was sure that one day I'll get one - it just wasn't gonna happen with Jackson, as they (to my knowledge) do not have Evertune models.
As I was doing my usualy daily scroll-through a local gearflipping page, I came across an ad about this E-II Horizon with 7 strings, alder body, 3 piece maple neck, ebony board MoP inlays, brushd chrome coveres EMGs and Evertune seemingly in mint condition for around 2/3 of it's MSRP.Then came my usualy derpressive to and fro: "Too much money". "But its a good deal" "I don't really need this, I'm an average player at best, play for my cat only and don't make a living from music" "But what do you work for then? To buy gasoline and bread?" "But what if a train hits me next morning? Will I have enough money for a funeral?" "Money is just pieces paper, I can buy food and I have a job, so I'll have more of those pieces of paper" blablabla
And in a sudden moment of clairvoyance, I decided to look into it. It's a premium instrument, I can re-sell anytime and I must learn to not be intimately attached to every piece of lifeless object I own, not give names to them and if I don't need them, get rid of them. So I tried to educate myself bootcamp style from ESP stuff, even sent the pix from the ad to the ESP customer service to ask their opinion about the authenticity and decided to pull the trigger on the deal. I would like to add that ESP answered me within 2 hours, were super kind and expressed that they are "very confident" in the authenticity of the instrument based on the pix. Hats off to them!
The guitar itself waas in mint condition indeed. Not a single scratch ( and as you can see from the below pictures, it went through a very thorogh QC process
). Setup was meh, the Evertune hex key and the straplock locks were missing. Nothing that would take away anything from the instrument. Even the case was mint. So I took it home. No panic about the money, no intimacy with the thing, no names given. So far so good.
Setting up Evertune is a breeze and let me tell you ,this is 'bout the next biggest engineering invention since sliced bread. For anyone making a living from music and laying down rythm tracks, this thing is a must. You can set it up that the guitar basically ignores any sort of wanted or unwanted changes in string tension... You can set it up to respond in the same way as a regular hardtail/fixed bridge... And everything in between... Individually for each string... Just WOW.
The frets will need a good polish, but the fretwork is the best I have seen thus far from a factory. Note the rounded fret ends! Overall great build quality, nothing that my amateur eyes could spot as wrong. And it's heavy like mud! Almost 5 kgs, though most of it is due to the Evertune I believe.
I looked up ESP factory recommendations for setup values, which were kinda weird: 2-1,5 mm action, 0,3-0,5 mm relief... So I decided to go after my own idea of 1,2-1,5 action and 0,2-0,25 mm relief. The guitar took it like a champ, plays perfectly.
I've expressed that I am not a fan of the EMGs, but the they work insanely well in this guitar. The sound has girth and yet it's insanely tight. The neck profile is a bit bulky, I much prefer my WR7 7 strings profile, but it plays effortlessly.
So overall this thing looks like a keeper, but I am very glad that I did not pay a full price for it and most probably never will. Sure, it has astonishing attention to detail, but strictly looking at the playability and overall performance, there is no way in hell it should be priced twicce or thrice as much as my Pro Series Jacksons for example. Actually, those have better sustain at some points of the neck, even with passive pickups. But this goes for the USA Jacksons, Gibsons and whatever over-the-top priced instruments. Or to put it in another way: either the second tier instruments a steal at their pricetag or these are unreasonably highly priced.
Anways, here are the pics:
As many of you might have previously heard from me I try to keep every guitar in my stable different: active, passive, neckthru, 7 string, 6 string and so forth, the only thing that has been a constant in the past 15+ years is the presence of the Floyd Rose. I got so used to it, I have become so at ease with it's feel, operation and maintenance that everything else felt weird and unconvenient. Which was kind of a bummer, as I always wanted a fixed bridge guitar, but it just wasn't happening. Enter Evertune. Ever since I saw it in I believe Ola Englund's video, I was sure that one day I'll get one - it just wasn't gonna happen with Jackson, as they (to my knowledge) do not have Evertune models. As I was doing my usualy daily scroll-through a local gearflipping page, I came across an ad about this E-II Horizon with 7 strings, alder body, 3 piece maple neck, ebony board MoP inlays, brushd chrome coveres EMGs and Evertune seemingly in mint condition for around 2/3 of it's MSRP.Then came my usualy derpressive to and fro: "Too much money". "But its a good deal" "I don't really need this, I'm an average player at best, play for my cat only and don't make a living from music" "But what do you work for then? To buy gasoline and bread?" "But what if a train hits me next morning? Will I have enough money for a funeral?" "Money is just pieces paper, I can buy food and I have a job, so I'll have more of those pieces of paper" blablabla
And in a sudden moment of clairvoyance, I decided to look into it. It's a premium instrument, I can re-sell anytime and I must learn to not be intimately attached to every piece of lifeless object I own, not give names to them and if I don't need them, get rid of them. So I tried to educate myself bootcamp style from ESP stuff, even sent the pix from the ad to the ESP customer service to ask their opinion about the authenticity and decided to pull the trigger on the deal. I would like to add that ESP answered me within 2 hours, were super kind and expressed that they are "very confident" in the authenticity of the instrument based on the pix. Hats off to them!
The guitar itself waas in mint condition indeed. Not a single scratch ( and as you can see from the below pictures, it went through a very thorogh QC process
). Setup was meh, the Evertune hex key and the straplock locks were missing. Nothing that would take away anything from the instrument. Even the case was mint. So I took it home. No panic about the money, no intimacy with the thing, no names given. So far so good.Setting up Evertune is a breeze and let me tell you ,this is 'bout the next biggest engineering invention since sliced bread.
For anyone making a living from music and laying down rythm tracks, this thing is a must. You can set it up that the guitar basically ignores any sort of wanted or unwanted changes in string tension... You can set it up to respond in the same way as a regular hardtail/fixed bridge... And everything in between... Individually for each string... Just WOW.The frets will need a good polish, but the fretwork is the best I have seen thus far from a factory. Note the rounded fret ends! Overall great build quality, nothing that my amateur eyes could spot as wrong. And it's heavy like mud! Almost 5 kgs, though most of it is due to the Evertune I believe.
I looked up ESP factory recommendations for setup values, which were kinda weird: 2-1,5 mm action, 0,3-0,5 mm relief... So I decided to go after my own idea of 1,2-1,5 action and 0,2-0,25 mm relief. The guitar took it like a champ, plays perfectly.
I've expressed that I am not a fan of the EMGs, but the they work insanely well in this guitar. The sound has girth and yet it's insanely tight. The neck profile is a bit bulky, I much prefer my WR7 7 strings profile, but it plays effortlessly.
So overall this thing looks like a keeper, but I am very glad that I did not pay a full price for it and most probably never will. Sure, it has astonishing attention to detail, but strictly looking at the playability and overall performance, there is no way in hell it should be priced twicce or thrice as much as my Pro Series Jacksons for example. Actually, those have better sustain at some points of the neck, even with passive pickups. But this goes for the USA Jacksons, Gibsons and whatever over-the-top priced instruments. Or to put it in another way: either the second tier instruments a steal at their pricetag or these are unreasonably highly priced.
Anways, here are the pics:
