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Picked up an ESP/LTD EC401 from Hello Music on teh cheaps!
It's very light/resonant, none of the usual LP heft (my agile is a beast). Probably due to it being a lot skinnier, like a mix between a Les Paul and an Ibanez Sabre.





Plugged it in for an afternoon of drop-b

No signal when the bridge pickup (emg81) is selected
I took the pups out and flipped em around ( 81bridge in the neck, neck60 in the bridge), and I got signal out of the 81 but not the 60.

Bad pickup selector? Short somewhere? I dunnos.

Um....i dont want to sound like a dick but.....you have a battery in it right?

haha yeah man...I tried 3 different batteries

I get signal on the neck and middle positions but nada on the bridge.

I just had this problem in one of my guitars. The issue was a frayed wire running from the neck pick-up to the selector switch.

Added some solder to that wire and I was back in business.

Or, take out the EMGs, bing bang boom, way better guitar.

Reflowed just about every joint...the bridge humbucker now works, though if I switch directly from neck to bridge it still cuts out.
To switch from neck to bridge I have to let it sit in the middle position for a few seconds then flip all the way down to just the bridge

SPACERITUAL wrote:Um....i dont want to sound like a dick but.....you have a battery in it right?

sounds like a bad selector.

Yeah, them switches go bad. Especially if they're the cheaper kind usually in Asian-made guitars. If it's an open frame switch, you may be able to look at it and see what the problem is and fix it.

But... you really should just replace the switch.

theavondon wrote:Or, take out the EMGs, bing bang boom, way better guitar.

...and u dont have to deal with 9 volt batteries, worst thing ever

Yeah I'm gunna swap out the switch and the jack at some point, they seem sketchy at best to me.

Otherwise the guitar is really comfy and a blast to play!
Active haters can suck it

have you tried spraying out the switch with contact cleaner? it works a treat for that sort of intermittent-connection thing on Asian-made guitars with cheaper metric-thread switches.

now you know why they sold it

swapping a switch takes fifteen minutes. twenty if you have to ream out the hole to put a US switch in.