LTD FX-260 Explorer-style axe hands-on review — the LTD FX-260 guitar feels like a weapon caressed to your body while playing. With its woodsy look, it might even spark a flashback to the days of Thai sticks, bell-bottom flares and chicks named Ivy and Moonpuppy. The natural grain and warm brown hue of the guitar’s spalted maple top and mahogany body kinda remind me of guitars produced in Canada when Elisha Cuthbert was still somewhat a virgin, but with its pointy, beveled Explorer-style body shape, black nickel hardware and EMG-ESP LH-300 pickups offer enough modern attraction to make metalheads give it the two-fingered devil-horn “I wanna rock” salute.
Custom-quality features abound on the LTD FX-260. The set neck is constructed of a five-piece maple-and-mahogany laminated sandwich that provides incredible stability, and abalone dot inlays adorn the rosewood fingerboard. The tone control has a push/pull knob for splitting the pickup coils, providing a wide array of textures and tones than usual for a guitar with a stream lined master volume, master tone and three-position pickup selector control setup. The craftsmanship is stellar, and the guitar’s overall vibe is more soulful than you would expect for a mass-produced guitar.
The passive EMG-ESP LH-300 pickups produce glassy, crystalline treble, just like EMG’s active counterpart, but the midrange is warmer and the bass is looser. Good Explorer-shaped guitars have unbeatable punch and sustain, and the FX-260 undoubtedly lives up to its legacy with fat single-note lead tone and power chords that leap from the speakers like lunging lions. This guitar thrives on high-gain, so you’ll want to feed it a diet of anything from classic Marshalls to modern Mesa/Boogies.
The FX-260’s tone may be razor sharp, but it’s action is smoothed and refined. The neck is a shredder’s dream, with a thin U-shaped profile and 22 extra jumbo frets (the body’s beveled cutaway makes it easy to reach higher up the neck). Even though the guitar has a standard 24 ¾-inch scale, somehow the strings feel a gauge or two lighter than what they actually are. The ESP FX-260’s playing ability is simple and effortless and feels good to play.
The combination of its vintage looks, modern-styling and updated features, like the coil taps for example, make this Explorer-style axe ideal for tone-conscious headbangers, while the fast neck and jumbo frets give shredders good reason to come out and play.
How much is this ax? Check for price!
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