ESP LTD MH-250NT Guitar Review

Over the years, the ESP brand of guitar has gotten better and better at making more versatile guitars with better looks and sound while maintaining their trademark playability. Features have been carefully added that make the brand more and more attractive to prospective buyers looking for a great, well rounded axe in a reasonable price range. One of the best examples of this is the ESP LTD MH-250NT. In this article, I'll take a close look at it to see who this guitar best caters to.

Features: The body of the ESP LTD MH-250NT is made of agathis wood, and it has a maple top for aesthetics. The agathis build isn't as common anymore as it once was, but it is very comfortable and decent in sound and sustain. The finish on this guitar is termed by ESP as a dark brown sunburst, and it looks very natural on the maple top. The neck is made with a thru-body design for playability purposes, and is made of maple wood. It has a rosewood fretboard with top-half block inlays and twenty four extra jumbo frets. To conserve on production costs, the hardware on the ESP LTD MH-250NT, including the tuning heads and Tune-O-Matic style bridge with string through body tail, is ESP brand black nickel. Electronically, the ESP LTD MH-250NT has two ESP LH-301 humbucker pickups, one volume and one tone control knob, a coil tap, and a three way selector switch.

Playability: A great selling point of most ESP guitars is the fact that their playability is nearly unrivaled. The extremely thin neck and fat frets mean shredding solos are easier on this guitar than most others. Also, the lightweight agathis body both promotes great high fret access and is light and comfortable for playing in nearly any situation.

Sound: ESP brand pickups, as judged by most people, are a hit or miss kind of thing. Hard core metal players prefer active pickups, which these are not. But, they are still on the heavier side for people looking to play cleaner stuff. All in all, the ESP LTD MH-250NT is a jack of all trades but a master of none.

Overall: The ESP LTD MH-250NT represents a target audience the ESP brand rarely goes after. It doesn't look or sound explicitly just for metal, but still maintains a hard edge sonically. It's absolutely gorgeous, plays nearly perfectly, and has enough tonal range to satisfy most intermediate level musicians. You can find the ESP LTD MH-250NT in music stores for about $440.