ESP Original Snapper CTM Natural Buckeye Burl Electric w/ESP Hardshell Case *Authorized Dealer*

From the ESP Custom Shop in Japan, the ESP Snapper CTM combines exceptional craftsmanship and materials for a truly memorable playing experience. Inspired by the original "Super Strats" the ESP Snapper CTM takes the flexible HSS format and elevates it to its highest level. 

At the heart of the Snapper is a  Swamp Ash body and striking Buckeye Burl top with it's unique and swirling colorful clusters. Owing to it's direct mount pickups, careful wood selection and precise fit, the Snapper is very responsive, with excellent touch sensitivity and dynamics. And as you would expect, the frets are smoothly rounded and highly polished. The Thin U profile is not extremely shred-like or thin, measuring .837" at the first fret and .915" at the 12th. Other than the compound radius, it's a pretty traditional shape and feel, which is just fine with us. 

The ESP Snapper uses Seymour Duncan Hot Stack neck and middle pickups, which is a bit of a misnomer. These are low-noise pickups with a little more fullness and roundness than a traditional Strat pickup, but far from hot. As with any stacked coil pickup they lose some of the glassy quality and quack of a true single coil. But being a guitar more likely to live on the high gain side of life, the additional mids and lack of noise are a good trade-off. The Duncan 59/Custom Hybrid pickup is one of our favorite bridge pickups for rock and hard rock applications. Using mis-matched coils it develops a great grind with lots of harmonics, sonic detail, but none of the harsh "bark" of a high output pickup. It's a really good blend of power and clarity and splits pretty nicely too, which well get to shortly.

The Snapper has a conventional 5-way switch with and expander toggle, which they don't actually explain. Doing the "tap test" to figure it out, here is what the expander toggle appears to be doing:

In position 2 - Selects middle+bridge or neck+bridge split
In position 4 - Selects neck+middle or all three

As we said the 59/Hybrid splits well, and combined with the neck pickup creates a nice jangly clean tone that has more character than just splitting the bridge pickup by itself. Lastly, the tone control has a push/pull feature the allows selection of two different tone capacitors, which varies how aggressively high frequencies are rolled off. The differences are subtle but noticeable, and which is better comes down to player preference. 

The ESP Snapper CTM is an aspirational guitar that for some can be justified purely on looks. It clearly attracts attention, but it's not overly festooned with bling. It comes about its looks from the natural beauty of the materials and not ornate inlays or gold hardware. But beauty is more than skin deep and the Snapper is also a highly capable instrument that plays flawlessly, and dishes out blues-infused and modern tones with authority. If you want to look as good as you sound, look no further.

The ESP Snapper CTM features:

• Swamp Ash body, 8.2 pounds
• Natural finish Buckeye Burl top
• Satin finish maple neck and fretboard
• 5 bolt-on neck construction with sculpted heel
• Slim U profile
• Compound 9.5-12" radius
• 1.65" nut width
• 22 jumbo frets
• Bottom adjust truss rod wheel
• Seymour Duncan Vintage Hot Stack neck and middle pickups
• Seymour Duncan 59/Custom Hybrid bridge pickup
• ESP Flicker bridge
• 5-way switch
• Pickup expander switch
• Push-pull tone capacitor option
• Gotoh locking tuners
• ESP form fit hard case
• Made in Japan