Eclipse

From across the room, the Eclipse is the shape everybody knows: one cutaway, a maple cap on a mahogany body, a 24.75-inch scale that feels slinky under your fingers. It gets called a Les Paul copy. It isn’t one. The neck joint is different, the pickups are different, and it comes out of a different factory with different ideas.

The joint is the big one. ESP calls it set-thru. The neck is glued in, not bolted, and it runs deep into the body with the heel shaped away. What that means for you is simple: when you go for the top frets, your hand doesn’t run into a big block of wood. There are 22 of them, and you can actually use them all.

They’re big frets, too, extra-jumbo and made of stainless steel, set in ebony. Tall frets make bends and vibrato feel easy, because your fingertip barely touches the wood. Stainless steel wears slowly, so they stay that way for a long time.

The current Japanese Eclipse has a pair of active EMG humbuckers. The neat part is the volume knobs. Pull one up and that pickup splits into a single-coil. So one guitar gives you the thick, heavy humbucker sound for riffs, and then a thinner, brighter sound for clean parts, without reaching for a second instrument.

The bridge and tailpiece lock down, so they don’t shift or fall off when you change strings. The nut is bone. None of that makes headlines, and all of it is the kind of thing you appreciate on the fortieth gig more than the first.

There’s also an EverTune version, for players who never want to think about tuning again, and a BB version with silver binding and a different pair of EMGs.

The Eclipse is made at three levels. At the top is ESP’s custom shop in the USA. In the middle is E-II, built in Japan, the line that used to be called ESP Standard. At the bottom is the LTD EC, the import most people see first. They’re all Eclipses.

When did it start? Depends who you ask. ESP says 1993, in Japan. At least one magazine says 1995. I’d take the factory’s date and keep the other in your back pocket.

And a note for the trivia crowd. Kirk Hammett’s ESPs are his own KH models. James Hetfield’s are Snakebytes, Iron Crosses, and Trucksters. Neither of them is the reason anybody should buy an Eclipse.

That’s the funny freedom of a guitar without a legend. No one is going to tell you that you’re playing it wrong, or that it sounded better on somebody’s album. There isn’t an album.

What it has is a comfortable neck, a way up to the top frets, and a pair of pickups that give you more than one sound. Whether that’s enough is something no story can settle for you. You take it off the wall, plug it in, and find out.