AS-1
AS-1
LEMON BURST

Few guitar players of the world merit as much respect as Alex Skolnick. Originally gaining fame as the teenage phenomenon holding down guitar duties for Bay Area thrashers Testament, Alex has gone on to tackle multiple musical genres, including sophisticated jazz playing in his Alex Skolnick Trio. With the LTD AS-1, guitarists of all styles will appreciate this amazing single-cutaway design that's surprisingly affordable considering its feature set that was created for professional players. Its contemporary set of tools include a set-neck, U-shaped three-piece mahogany neck for smooth access all the way up and down the fingerboard to the full thickness Eclipse body made of mahogany with maple cap. It comes with an excellent set of Seymour Duncan '59 (neck) and JB (bridge) pickups. Its flexible controls include individual volume knobs for each pickup, a tone control with push-pull access to split the neck pickup coil, and a pickup selector toggle. Its high-end components include a bone nut, TonePros locking TOM bridge and tailpiece, Dunlop straplok, and Grover tuners. The LTD AS-1 comes in an amazing-looking Lemon Burst translucent finish over its figured flamed maple top.
if you have any questions you may reach out to our customer service team at customerservice@espguitars.com or https://www.espguitars.com/pages/support
What's not to love about this guitar if you are looking for something with the feel of a LP? Thick body, chunkier neck, great Duncan pickups, fit and finish is top notch! Straight out of the included case it felt and played great, resonates well unplugged and sustains for days! The top on mine is a beautiful lemon burst and I could not be happier with a guitar!!
Sadly, I had to reject the Lemon Burst that I ordered. The color was no where near the yellow shown in ESP's official photos of the Lemon Burst.
This does not look like a photographic lighting issue or ‘slight variation in color’ that most manufacturers warn consumers about. The guitar I got was a deep honey gold: this looks like a manufacturing quality control issue. I am a woodworking craftsman among other things and understand that there will be some variation in color, in particular with wood, but I'll bet good money that the formulation of the stain and or finish coat and or selection criteria of the maple was changed at some point, either by ESP, or by a sub-contracted vendor.
This is not a case of just one rotten lemon: I later found photos of used models on the web that reflect the true color of the guitar that I rejected: it's gold, not even close to lemon yellow. Alex, if the lemon yellow color advertised for your Lemon Drop represents your artistic vision, sadly, ESP's manufacturing has somehow strayed far from your choice. - Mark