ESP LTD F-414FM

Updated
Jay B.

I'm really thinking about buying one of these basses but haven't been able to find many videos or articles about its practicality. If anyone has one please share with me experiences with the bass, including modifications that can be done and how easily strings can be changed, and how well it fares with the scale (which I've seen some places say 35" and some say 34")when down tuning to drop d or drop c. Also, the models come in colours like "See thru black" which looks great in the pictures but every video I see of someone playing this (or a similar) bass it is solid gloss black? Any comments would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Mechanevil

They look really good, both spec-wise as well as in terms of body shape. And yes, I've seen them used in a few videos too. I don't think they come in any other colour than black though. It's not exactly black either, it's a flame maple, so it'll probably look nicer up close, but on dimly lit stages, no one will see that flame. There is a similar model, the F5E, which is neck through and comes in a natural wood colour, but is identical in most respects. 

Asaruludu

A bit late, but probably this reply will be helpful to someone else, or Jay if he hasn't bought it yet.

I own an F-414 and it has a killer sound, if you're gonna play extreme music with an aggressive bass sound, this model is perfect (it can be EQ'd for softer genres and sound ok, but it always has a "heavy" vibe).

It's 35", see through black or see-through red, mine is black, the flame is visible for probably 20 feet.
I don't tune that low, but 35" is said to be good for low tunings, string changing is not hard, but anyways I always take my instruments for a setup when changing strings. The sort of bronze colored hardware looks great. You can do the 18V modification for the pickups,, but there's no space on the bass for an extra battery, so you'd have to cut it yourself.

I think it holds up pretty well at it's price range, to me is the best choice if you want a bass to play death, thrash or black metal.

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