ESP E-II ECLIPSE Tobacco Sunburst Flame Maple Fishman Fluence w/Hard Case *Authorized Dealer*

This ESP E-II Eclipse features:

• Tobacco Sunburst finish, 8.2 pounds
• Multi-ply bound Mahogany body
• Full thickness body with rear contour
• Flame Maple Top
• 1-piece "Thin U" Mahogany neck
• Satin finish on back of neck
• Bound Ebony Fingerboard
• 1.650" bone nut and 12" radius, 24-3/4" scale
• 22 Nickel Silver XJ Frets
• Fishman Fluence Open Core pickup set
• 3-position pickup switch
• (2) volume controls and (1) tone control
• Pull neck volume and tone controls for additional voicings
• Gotoh TOM bridge and Tailpiece
• Gotoh Locking tuners
• ESP strap locks included
• Hardshell Deluxe Case
• Made in Tokyo, Japan

ESP's humble roots began in Tokyo, Japan as a replacement part shop for stringed instruments. People quickly realized that their parts were higher quality than most originals on the market, and ESP became a destination for custom guitar projects and OEM manufacturing. Their custom work launched a frenzy of interest by world-class players, pushing the brand into full guitar and bass production with guitars now made in Japan, Korea and Indonesia (LTD) and USA.

This E-II Eclipse is made in Tokyo, Japan where the ESP brand was born. The E-II line serves as a bridge between the Korean/Indonesian LTD series and the premium USA and ESP Original Japanese models. The Japanese penchant for quality control makes these the highest quality "production" ESP's, and coming from Tokyo gives each one a unique sense of family tradition. The Eclipse features the classic combination of Maple over Mahogany for a balanced tonal palette that emphasizes both depth and clarity.

What sets the this E-II apart from the rest of the Eclipse line are the Fishman Fluence pickups. While they’ve been around for a few years, it’s fair to say that most players have not experienced them. They are an active pickup with a unique construction that features several stacked “printed” coils that make up each pickup coil. These coils produce a very consistent and noiseless signal, and the internal preamp handles the voicings and filtering necessary to create the desired sound. A conventional pickup is an analog inductor with a series of windings and magnets, and so is the Fluence. But it is much more highly engineered, and the designers can accurately tailor the response of the pickup.

There are other benefits of the Fluence active pickups. Their tone and volume controls work equally well throughout their range. Your guitar will sound as good on 2 as it does on 10, with no tone loss. And the internal preamp buffer negates the impact of cable length and capacitance.

But how do they sound? Fluence pickups are designed to sound like a very good renditions of what we expect to hear. The Open Core pickups offer three voicings for each pickup, accessed via the push/pull knobs:

• Neck pickup both knobs down - Standard PAF type humbucker
• Neck pickup tone knob up – Clean and airy humbucker
• Neck pickup neck volume knob up – Single coil
• Bridge pickup both knobs down - Hot humbucker
• Bridge pickup tone knob up – Clean bridge humbucker
• Bridge pickup neck volume knob up – Single coil

What happens if you have both pickups on? Well, you get whatever pickups settings correlate to the push/pull knobs settings. You can’t individually choose each combination, but suffice to say there is still a lot of choice

If you did not know you were playing an active guitar, you would just think you’ve got a really good sounding set of pickups. Compared to a similar set of passive pickups, the passives sound a little more grainy and organic, with less note separation and high end detail. But the Fluence counter with excellent attack, clarity, even string response, and if they sound a little too detailed compared to their passive brethren, the tone control is very effective. They work great with pedals too, and distortion and gain pedals respond very evenly with no harsh peaks, lots of harmonic detail, and minimal noise.  

The big bonus is that if you think that split humbuckers are pretty meh (and we do mostly) the split Fluence really sound like single coils. The split neck pickup is bouncy and touch sensitive with the type of response you get from a real single coil. It’s very good, and the bridge pickup is equally convincing. You won’t convert a diehard Strat fan, but it’s a big breakthrough for humbucker players.  

The neck on the Eclipse is what they call their "Thin U" profile. It's naturally comfortable and provides good palm support while being thin enough to get a thumb around the neck when necessary. To our precision-calibrated hand it appears to be somewhere in-between a Slim 60 and '59 profile, with 1-piece Mahogany construction, Ebony fretboard and jumbo frets. With the sleek cutaway all 22 frets are easily accessed and provide nicely balanced tonality all across the neck.

While many players know ESP it by its hard rock and predominantly heavy metal image, there are many facets to the ESP product lineup that address a wide range of player interests. With outstanding quality and a breadth of models, there is more to ESP than you think.