ESP E-II Eclipse BM Blue Nat Fade

I bought this guitar during the Thomann Music Days sales for a discounted price of 2200 euros.
I always liked how this guitar looked and I was already into Les Paul shape and I said to myself why not. I watched tons of videos about it before hand to know what to expect. I was also very fond of ESP MIJ reputation and I was really excited to see that quality myself and to see how it compared to Made in USA, Mexico, Indonesia, China.
Delivery was fast, ordered Monday, received it on Friday same week.
The guitar was delivered in a double box which was pretty good although the outside box was almost opened in shipping, the inner one, the one shipped by ESP was sealed.
I unboxed the guitar, I researched and it was manufactured in 2025 so it had stainless steel frets and such.
The comfort cut on the back was indeed a comfort feature I liked.
Quality of the finish was really not that wow, I've seen cheaper guitars having better finish than this MIJ guitar. The guitar was poly finished so I knew what to expect but there were many places where the lacquer was yellowed due to it being applied to fast or incorrectly or it was contaminated with some yellowish substance, especially on both sides near of the fretboard at the neck pocket.
The guitar was also showing visible "dents" in the wood. I think the wood was not fully dried before being transformed into a guitar and it had little lumps that looked very bad in my opinion. I would say 8/10 on finish. The frets were thick and very nicely polished.
The B tuner was kind of faulty compared to the other ones: it always needed like a quarter of a clock of free movement in both directions before actually doing anything. Action was high but that's to expect from a factory new guitar 2.5mm on both sides at 12 fret.
The battery had little juice left in it, unfortunately. If you buy this guitar make sure you have a spare new one at hand to test the guitar with it to get the full sound of it.
I liked that it came with some Schaller locking strap buttons that could be installed pretty easily on my strap if I were to keep it.
Sound wise I really didn't enjoy the pickups sound. Whatever I did I couldn't really clean them the way I liked no matter what. I ran them through both amp sims and real amp. They sounded too harsh for me.

Return was pretty easy, was made using a UPS label generated by Thomann.

My expectations were not met and I wouldn't recommend this guitar to anyone for the retail price(2900 ish euros), not even the discounted one(2200 ish euros). In my opinion, this is a 1500 euro guitar with a 1400 euro "MIJ" "ESP" "ECLIPSE" bragging rights, it simply isn't worth the money.

Thomann 10/10
ESP 7.5/10

I’ve been looking at ESP’s now for a few years & I’ve always been a Gibson player.

I finally took delivery of this earlier in the year so I’ve had it now for about 9 months. It was the blue fade finish that caught my eye & of course the Les Paul shape.

The best way I can describe the E2 is it’s everything you would expect from a modern guitar while still holding those classic features like the factory bone nut, Ghoto bridge, tailpiece & locking tuners.

I did ZERO set up on this guitar as it was already done beautifully strait out of the box & haven’t made any altercations since getting it, even the strings are still the same.

To use the term “you pay for what you get”

We’ll… you most certainly do!

It took me a long time to pull the trigger on ESP & now my only regret is I didn’t do it a lot sooner. The detail & the finish is flawless from the through neck to the triple binding finish.

My only issues now going forward is I now have the itch to get more & how I go about explaining another “raffle win” for a guitar I entered 🤣

Die Eclipse E-II stand schon sehr lange auf meiner Wunschliste und als die neue Blue Nat Fade aufschlug musste ich gleich zuschlagen.
Jetzt bereichert sie den Sound meines Wohnzimmers und unseres Bandraumes.
Die Ahornmaserung kommt in natura so phantastisch zur Geltung, wie auf den Fotos dieser Homepage. Über die Verarbeitungs- und Klangqualität muss ich sicherlich nichts sagen, die ist natürlich ESP-mäßig super.
Die Schaller-Locks sind wie ich finde ungeschlagen und die Hardware von EMG und Gotoh stimmen perfekt.
Der inklusive Koffer passt auch super. Standardschwarz mit ESP-Logo, weißer Innenpolsterung und praktischem Staufach.
Alles kam in tadellosem Zustand bei mir an.
Die Halskrümmung musste ich noch ein kleines bisschen nachjustieren, ansonsten Alles top!