Guitars has influence music in many ways, and has continually evolve through the years. On the early stages of rock n’ roll, Gretsch hallow body guitars was the preferred guitar aesthetically, and on how the way it sound, notable in the 1950’s to 70’s. Then it lost favor when the Strat, Tele, Les Paul and SG model, solid body guitars become more and more prominent guitar of choice for rock, heavy metal, and other forms of music as well.
Soon after came the 80’s where it took guitar playing to a whole new different level with the emergence of the thrash metal scene. Playing the guitar became much faster, heavier and aggressively brilliant on the licks/riffs, which ultimately gave the way for the era of Superstrat’s guitars of brands like ESP LTD, Ibanez, Dean, Charvel and Jackson etc.
ESP LTD M-100FM is just one the many Superstrats guitars with a leaner lighter body, thin neck. and frets that makes this guitar ideal for fast play and bending the strings to go along with the new innovations on the bridge tremolo and nut system.
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- Superstar guitar with a basswood body and has flame maple top
- Bolt-on thin U-shape neck is made of solid maple
- 24 extra jumbo frets rosewood fingerboard with dot inlays
- Set of chrome die-cast tuners
- LTD by Floyd Rose style bridge tremolo and locking nut system
- ESP Designed LH-150 pick-ups for the neck and bridge. Controlled by 3-way switch blade for pick-ups selection, master volume and master tone knobs
Body and Neck: Main tonewood for this electric guitar is basswood, even though it says it has a maple top. The maple placed on this guitar is a very thin veneer. Only needed for its grain to achieve a flame effect, contributing more on the finish and very little on the sound.
Basswood as its main body, is a good tone wood by any standards. Use by well-known brands for their entry-level to mid-range guitar models. It is very light, fairly soft wood, light in color with minimal grain. The sound it produce is characterized to have a fat to soft warmth when the guitar is played clean and overdriven.
The bolt-on neck is made of solid maple with an extra thin U-shape contour, top of by 24 XJ frets, 350mm (13.5” flat neck) radius rosewood fingerboard. Extra jumbo frets wire make you press the strings really light to build speed and makes it easier for bigger bends. In case press too hard the intonation changes and note become sharp a bit. It is still a matter of getting use too.
Pick-ups: Powering the guitar are two passive ESP Designed LH-150 pick-ups for the neck and bridge. Controlled by 3-way switch blade for pick-ups selection, master volume and master tone knobs. Unlike single-coils, humbucker pick-ups cancels the unwanted hum noise to musters a warm clean and fat overdriven sound.
Hardware: A feature on this guitar that needs to be learned in order to utilize it fully is the LTD by Floyd Rose style bridge tremolo and locking nut system. It is still the best floating tremolo system around for dive-bomb tones and high pitch pulls. However, it demands more setting during changing the strings to keep the bridge in the right height and even just plain tuning needs a lot of work.
Moreover if you drop tune for example the top string, it will affect all the other strings by just doing that, because the overall tension will loosen up, also it changes the position of the bridge, and you will have to tune the guitar all over again.
Final Thoughts: The ESP LTD M-100FM is a nice sounding mid-range level Superstrat with all the features needed to play fast, apply different modern rock techniques like bending, tapping harmonics to high notes, and dive-bombs by using the floyd rose.
If you want to get a guitar with a floyd rose or similar system, just do it. Even though it demands work, there is really nothing more going to be easier than this, and other way around to incorporate these type of pulls, huge dives and sound without using a floating tremolo.
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