Cort KX500
Seven strings, totally brutal tone, multi-scale... This is gonna be poplar
Occasionally you pick up a guitar and you’ll be a little unsure as to what you are going to get when you switch on the amplifier. But usually there are some subtle (and not-so-subtle) tells. Take the KX500MS. You might call Cort’s flagship seven-string a multi-scale extended-range exercise in not-so-subtle tells. It has fanned frets for enhanced intonation and feel, and, complementing those, you’ll also find an angled nut and an ingenious hardtail of six independent saddles arranged in similar fashion to Ibanez’s Mono-rail bridge design – adding yet another angle into a soupedup S-style that is all angles. With two active EMG-707 humbuckers in the neck and bridge, there’s probably a little too much fire for the open-mic folk night. Indeed, the KX500MS might have too much firepower for all but the most extreme styles – chug-heavy contemporary metal, death metal, djent, that kind of thing – but, hey, that’s what Cort built it for. That they built this and put it on the market for 700 bucks is really the big story here.
The KX500MS has a genuinely premium look and feel. It has a lightweight swamp ash body with a poplar burl top that lends a three-dimensional quality to the finish, and a matching headstock that might have one of the less-celebrated names in guitar manufacturing, but is nonetheless one of the coolest – definitely easier on the eye than, say, the similarly 4+3 profile offered on Jackson’s fleet of seven-strings. And, again, it’s all angles, sharp, kinda dangerous. On that headstock you’ll find a set of Cort locking tuners in black nickel, matching the bridge and volume and tone controls.
The KX500MS feels a little neck-heavy at first, but that could be said of many extended-range electrics. Its five-piece maple and purple heart (aka amaranth) neck is certainly packing no extra flab; it is flat and slim, topped with a macassar ebony 400mm-radius fretboard with Raindrop inlay. Speedsters will love it. The satin-smooth finish won’t gum up on you. The sculpting around the bolt-on heel-joint offers safe passage to the upper registers. The multi-scale fretboard is certainly a boon when it comes to intonation and keeping the solidity in that low-end, and if it takes a little getting used to, with the KX500MS’S scale running 27-25.5” from seventh-string to first, the greater leap for anyone visiting the KX500MS from a regular six-string is adjusting your style so you can make full use of the low B string.
The KX500MS is certainly voiced for low-end shenanigans. There have been a number of active humbucker sets wound for seven-string players who need plenty of gain, but the EMG 707 remains a firm favourite, not least for its clarity. Featuring an
AND, AGAIN, IT’S ALL ANGLES, SHARP, KINDA DANGEROUS…
alnico V magnet with wide aperture coils, the EMG 707 brings plenty of crunch and definition for open chords, and is good and tight when playing busy, high-gain leads, ever ready for pinch harmonic squeals – especially on the bridge humbucker.
The controls are fuss-free; you’ve got master volume and tone and a three-way selector, while the 9V battery for the pickups onboard preamp is easily accessed via a compartment on the rear of the body. Clean tones are excellent, so long as you enjoy the precise piano-esque attack when using EMGS. However, such are the EMG 707s’ output you’ll want plenty of headroom on your clean channel or your tone will start to break up pretty early. This is by design; these active high-output humbuckers hit your amp hard. If there’s a weakness in the KX500MS’S tone it’s in that breakup. The cleans are fine, pare excellently with a little modulation and would take a pedal such as a Boss CH-1 Super Chorus like mother’s milk. The high-gain tones are total nuclear sustain and crunch – riff with abandon. But milder overdriven crunch tones don’t quite have the dynamics as you might find on a passive humbucker. But that’s the point, right? Ultimately, that compressed quality will serve you well when it gets down to playing modern metal, splitting the atom with shred and weaponising your rhythm tone so it could saw through concrete.
Jonathan Horsley