This gorgeous ESP Ltd guitar is a vision of beauty in metallic gold.  What guitarist wouldn’t want the classic combination of a single-cutaway design with a solid mahogany body and neck, and rosewood fingerboard with mother of pearl inlay? The LTD EC-256 is an amazingly affordable way to get into the look and sound of an all-time great guitar that’s great for every style of music, with great-sounding ESP Designed LH-150 passive pickups. It even includes features you don’t often find in a low-cost guitar, like set-neck construction and body, 3 pc. neck, and headstock binding. 
 
"While the EC-256’s shape leans heavily on the Les Paul theme, all the curves are appropriately different. In particular the sharpness of the lower forward cutaway adds a very LTD touch, which echoes the ‘sway’ of the headstock and the distinctive position markers on the neck. Body, neck and headstock are bound, which adds a nicely finished, retro feel...The board is relatively flat and the well-dressed medium-gauge frets make for a fast and accurate playing surface....Overall, the acoustic tone and feel are snappy and bright – classicallyLTD, in fact. However, the 24.75” scale length is classically Gibson, so there’s a looseness that lets you dig into the strings and bend with ease. The hardware choice is straightforward: individual ESP-branded tuners, standard stoptail and tune-o-matic bridge. As a result the tuning seems to be very stable.A pair of ESP LH-150 humbuckers provides the oomph for the EC-256. There’s a three-way selector on the upper bout and volume controls for each unit. The single tone control is a push/pull pot for activating the coil tap. It’s a great, simple solution; the guitar will deliver six distinctly different sounds without any confusion.  With the coil tap facility you have the ideal solution for delivering the full range of clean and distorted sounds. Voicing a bridge humbucker for a great rock tone can leave the midrange a little lacking and boxy-sounding for clean playing. However, a single-coil at the bridge will give all the wiry twang you need. This is exactly how it works here, and you can switch with ease. Generally speaking the humbucker voices are rich and open. Twin-pickup and neck sounds are great clean; country, jazz, reggae and ’70s pop chords all sound authentic, and melodic playing is well articulated.  Gradually wind up the gain and the EC-256 easily performs classic blues and punk before grasping rock and metal in style. Here, the bridge voice comes into its own and soloing is a joyous experience. There is a slight, but inevitable, drop in volume when you switch to single-coil operation from humbucker, so some sort of volume boost pedal on the floor will prove a valuable addition to your kitbag. The tone is great and the sharper, more cutting sound offers both clarity when you need it and added grit for those mayhem moments. The EC-256 is a good platform on which to build effected sounds as the basic output is suitably hi-fi in the first place. This means you can really hop genres and eras, which makes this a great guitar for a player who appreciates playing a wide range of material. ....This would be a great instrument for a beginner, or someone looking for a second guitar to help move their playing onto a new level. At the same time, the EC-256 punches well above the weight of its comparatively modest price tag so the more experienced player will find this a practical everyday gigging instrument."  Review from The Guitar Magazine 2013