ESP Edwards E-SN-130M/3S Burner

Description

ESP Edwards E-SN-130M/3S Burner

Why we love it

The E-SN-130M/3S is the Edwards version of the ESP Snapper Strat-style guitar. Think of it as a hot-rodded Strat with some very interesting features and useful surprises. It’s a perfect blend of traditional Stratocaster features and tone while bringing its own distinct flavor to the table.

Make no mistake, this is a high-quality ESP-built guitar that is made in Japan by highly skilled ESP luthiers. If you are not familiar, Edwards is an ESP Japan-only cost performance brand. Edwards instruments are made in Japan by ESP and feature high quality materials and exceptional build quality. This includes immaculate fit and finish, a real bone nut, Gotoh hardware, and Seymour Duncan pickups. This guitar includes a non-original (but very nice) gig bag and original tremolo arm.

Overview

This guitar is a 2015 build in overall excellent condition. The attractive swamp ash body has a pleasing grain highlighted by the burner finish and weighs in at 8.25 pounds. You’ll have to look close, but there are a few normal signs of use. This includes light scratches and pick parks, a few very small dents and buckle marks, and light oxidation on the pickup pole pieces. There is a very light scuff near the neck pocket on the lower cutaway. There are a couple very small bumps near the output jack which were difficult to photograph (you feel them more than see them).

The 25.5-inch scale hard maple neck has a comfortable V-shape profile, maple fingerboard with some nice figuring. The frets are still in excellent condition, showing few signs of wear. The truss rod operates as expected and has plenty of adjustment room left. There are no signs of warping or waviness. There are a couple light scuffs near frets 20 and 21 which are only visible from certain angles. The guitar has been inspected and set up including cleaning, string replacement (Slinky 9’s), truss rod adjustment, intonation, string height adjustment, and jack replacement.

This guitar features hand-built USA made Seymour Duncan SSL-1, SSL-1RW, and SSL-3 pickups in an SSS layout. According to Seymour Duncan, these pickups “use hand-ground alnico 5 rod magnets and heavy Formvar mag wire with a special wind pattern to produce that bright, glassy, bell tone with all of the bounce and sparkle you would expect from the best Strat pickups from the 50s. The treble attack is crisp and immediate, while the low end remains articulate and focused. Chords ring out with clear note-to-note separation. The three pickup combination includes a standard wound neck and bridge pickup, and an RWRP, reverse wind reverse polarity, middle pickup for noise cancellation in the in-between positions.”  This guitar exhibits all of these qualities, with great chime and sparkle, but also has an ace up its sleeve. Pressing the middle pickup tone knob switches between parallel and series mode for adjacent pickups, giving a beefy humbucker-like output in Custom (Series) mode. See ESP’s description below. With these two modes, this guitar can produce a huge variety of usable tones.

Dual Mode (description from ESP):

You can easily switch between two modes with a single switch: NORMAL MODE, where you can enjoy the usual 3 single pickup tones, and CUSTOM MODE, where you can enjoy powerful sounds.

NORMAL MODE has a total of 5 types of sounds: each pickup alone and halftones (parallel connection) between adjacent pickups.

In CUSTOM MODE, the sound at the normal bridge and neck positions will be the series connection sound of adjacent pickups, and the other three positions will output only the middle position. You can switch between two types of tones in total.

A total of seven different tones can be output with one guitar.

Try pressing the middle pickup tone knob lightly. The pot used is a Push-Push switch pot. The retracted state is NORMAL MODE, and the protruded state is CUSTOM MODE. The 5WAY pickup selector works differently depending on MODE.

Specifications

Country of manufacture: Japan

Year of manufacture: 2015

Serial Number: ED1512176

Case: Gig bag/not genuine

Weight: 8.25 lbs / 3.74 kg

Other accessories: Tremolo Arm

BODY: Swamp Ash

NECK: Hard Maple

FINGER BOARD: Maple, 22frets

RADIUS: 305R

SCALE: 25.5 inches / 648mm

NUT: 1.65 in / Bone (42mm)

INLAY: Dot

JOINT: Bolt-on

TUNER: GOTOH SG360-07

BRIDGE: T-200V

PICKUPS: Seymour Duncan SSL-1 (Neck), Seymour Duncan SSL-1RW (Middle), Seymour Duncan SSL-3 (Bridge)

HARDWARE COLOR: Chrome

CONTROLS: Master Volume, Neck Tone, Middle Tone w/Dual Mode Switch (Push-Push), 5 WAY Lever PU Selector