Description
The LTD Royal Shiva Silver Sunburst is the signature guitar of Mastodone guitarist Bill Kelliher. The LTD Royal Shiva is based on a guitar that the Mastodon guitar king had created by the ESP Custom Shop and used it extensively on recent tours. It’s a completely unique double-cutaway body shape with an outstanding Silver Sunburst finish that extends to the back of the guitars body and neck, with white binding on the body, neck, and headstock. The Royal Shiva uses traditional set neck construction at 25” scale, joining a maple-capped mahogany body with a three-piece u-shaped mahogany neck, per Bill’s personal specifications.
Its Macassar ebony fingerboard has large mother-of-pearl block inlays and 22 extra-jumbo frets. Pro-tier nickel-finished hardware on the Royal Shiva includes a TonePros TOM bridge and tailpiece, LTD locking tuners, a bone nut, a multi-ply black pickguard, and a set of Bill’s signature Mojotone Hellbender humbucker pickups. Designed for both brutality and beauty, these nickel-covered pickups offer everything from raw and menacing tones to complex, articulate, and open cleans. Both the bridge and neck pickups may be split individually with push-pull controls on the volume and tone knobs. Includes deluxe ESP hardshell case.
MojoTone Hell Bender
Bill Kelliher, guitarist for the band Mastodon, worked with Mojotone to help create his ultimate signature pickup, Hellbender. The Hellbender is a raw and menacing beast with a capacity for the most visceral riffs intertwined with an articulate and open side for lush clean tones. This pickup set was designed for the duality of brutality and beauty. “Mastodon covers a wide array of sounds and tones, I needed a pickup that can pull off the gauntlet of tones needed for the band while leaving room to inspire new sounds.” Bill K.
With complex tones comes complex design and innovation. The Hellbender’s distributed coil design utilizes 2 different wire gauges for increased dynamics and smooth coil tapped tones. 2 different Alnico grades (2 & 5) are used to individually voice the neck and bridge pickups perfectly for complex tones and articulation with higher gain settings and inspiring clean tones. Finally ceramic magnets are blended in with the Alnico magnets to achieve tighter attack, more output, and just the right amount of sustain when kicked into overdrive.
ABOUT ESP:
ESP Company, Limited is a Japanese guitar manufacturer, primarily focused on the production of electric guitars and basses. They are based in both Tokyo, Japan and Los Angeles, California, United States, with two distinct product lines for each respective market. ESP Company manufactures instruments under several names, including “ESP Standard”, “ESP Custom Shop”, “LTD Guitars and Basses”, “Navigator”, “Edwards Guitar and Basses”, and “Grassroots”. www.espguitars.com
