1991 ESP Horizon Deluxe

Details

This guitar came from Guitar Center, as many of my used collection does, and luckily arrived in great condition and interestingly, set up for Drop C tuning. This Horizon is a bolt-on neck model, something not seen anymore on modern Horizons, and has a really awesome archtop body. This body shape is extremely similar to guitars like my archtop Kramer Stagemaster or modern Horizon models, and the horns are actually quite thin from the taper of the top - it is not much thicker than a regular body this size.

It is equipped with an ESP Sinclair bridge, which has a slightly curved, almost hexagonal route that means no other readily available bridge will fit here. This can be quite a conundrum as the saddles of this bridge are not compatible with Floyd saddles, and the set screw is offset. I’d love to find a source of replacement saddles for this bridge, but luckily I do have a spare Sinclair bridge with 5 good saddles left in case of an emergency - either way, I’ll be very careful not to overtighten these so I can keep enjoying this guitar.

I doubt these are the factory pickups, but they are from the same period as the guitar so who knows. This is an EMG 81 in the bridge and an SA in the neck, and combined with the Drop C setup, makes for a mean metal machine.

The neck is a standard ESP pointy from this era, with double dot inlays on the 12th fret and a more bare/satin feeling back to the neck. These are great necks and similar to other high end shredders at the time from BC Rich, or Jackson USA, but I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have a neck like this one with a glossier lacquer to it. Also unlike so many guitars towards the end of the 80s and early 90s, the frets are not extremely oversized, these are medium to medium-jumbo and I think that gives this a nice old school feel despite the modern features like the EMG’s. It’s also worth mentioning that this is the first ESP I’ve ever owned with a 25.5 scale neck, since everything else I’ve had up to this point have been Mavericks (short scale models).