Hello Hello, and welcome back to Famous Guitars, everybody’s favorite heavy-metal centered column here on The Emerald Press. I’m your incredibly humble host Cassie, and I’m bringing you an especially fabulous article today. I’ve been dying to get this and the next one out to you guys, so I’m gonna cut my usual chit-chat short. So without any more rambling on, I present to you, Kirk Hammett and the KH Mummy!
Who is Kirk Hammett?
Wait a minute, what do you MEAN “Who is Kirk Hammett?” You mean to tell me you have absolutely no idea who Kirk Hammett is? I’m not mad, just… extremely disappointed. Although, I guess I can fix that. Kirk Hammett is the lead guitarist for a band no one’s ever heard of called Metallica. Dubbed “Master of Shredders” by Rip Magazine in the mid 80s, he has a very distinct playing style recognizable to his fans in less than a measure. His style is very choppy sounding. It lacks the usual “gracefulness” most guitarists have, which means his leads are good for me to play, because I, too, lack grace of any sort.
There. Now that you have been edumacated, we can get into the good stuff
The KH Mummy
The KH-2 “Mummy” was first manufactured by the ESP Guitar Company in 1992, but as far as I can tell it wasn’t used much until 1996 for the release of one of the most controversial Metallica albums ever, Load. Seriously, everybody hates Load. Couldn’t tell you why. Anyways, the KH-2 Mummy has a pretty wicked paint job, so I’ll talk about that next.
The paint job for Kirk’s Mummy is actually the poster for a horror movie-because Hammett is a huge horror fan. You’ll never guess what movie it is. Never in a million years. Did you guess The Mummy starring Boris Karloff from 1932? If so, you would be correct. Hammett loved this movie SO MUCH that he decided he wanted a guitar with the poster plastered on the front. He purchased the artwork some time in the late 80’s or early 90’s and contacted ESP to have it made.
Features and Electronics
Now if you’ve been here before, you should know the drill. This is when I refer you to the convenient Guitar Glossary at the end of this article if you’re unfamiliar with any nerdy guitar words I’ll be throwing around.
The KH-2 Mummy features an alder body with a neck that goes all the way through. (called a neck-through design for obvious reasons.) The neck features a rosewood fingerboard, and custom shaped fret-inlays. There’s actually more than one design for the fretboard, because Hammett has more than one of these guitars. Five to be exact.
The guitar is also equipped with 24 extra jumbo frets, Gotoh tuners, an Original Floyd Rose tremolo system, and all black paint (aside from the sick movie poster of course.) The Pickups are a set of EMG 81 humbuckers, and the top of them is painted to match the rest of the guitar.
Interesting Tidbits
The KH Mummy has a lot of interesting information surrounding it, so I’ll tell you all about it here. Like I said before, Hammett owns the rights to the artwork used on the guitar, which means an official signature model will never be released. The ESP Guitar company would have to pay Kirk to use the art, and I don’t think they’ll be doing that any time soon. Bummer. Despite this, rumor has it that a copy sold on Ebay for a low low price of $75,000.
There are five slightly different versions of the KH Mummy, and Kirk owns all of them. Obviously. Differences on these guitars include fret inlay designs, serial numbers, and ESP logos on the headstocks. All very subtle things, and if you’re not paying attention, they’d be hard to spot. Hammett still has and uses all five of these bad boys to this day.
Wrap-Up
Overall, I think the ESP KH-2 “Mummy” is super cool. I love the art on the front, and I’m always partial to old horror movies. I think the only things that bug me about the guitar would be; Number one, the pickups. As someone who has a guitar with EMG pickups in it, active pickups (which are what EMGs are) drive me nuts. The batteries die at the most in-oppertune times, and you never have the right ones to replace them. Number two, I don’t like that it will never be released by ESP. I want one in my collection, darn it! Granted if I had it my way I’d have just about every guitar in the world.
And that brings us to the end of another awesome article brought to you by your incredibly humble host. I wanted to do this one in particular because of not only the Metallica concert everybody but me got to go to, but also because Hammett’s birthday was last month! As always I had tons of fun writing this one, and I hope you had tons of fun reading it. With that said, I’ll try to pack as many of these in before Christmas as I can, but no promises. Anyways, I hope everyone had a rockin’ Thanksgiving, and until next time, Rock on!
Guitar Glossary
Headstock: The piece of wood at the top of the neck. Usually a triangle
Serial Number: The number that’s usually at the base of the headstock that the factory puts on
Pickups: The little boxes underneath the strings that push the sound through the amp
Tremolo: A device that temporarily changes the pitch of the strings
Tuner: The thing you turn to tune your guitar
Fret Inlays: Part of the fretboard that mark pretty much every other fret. Usually dot-shaped, but not always
Humbucker: A type of pickup designed to reduce feedback in the amplifier
Active Pickup: A type of pickup that uses a battery