Before the cooperation between ESP and Hetfield, Hetfield’s explorer style guitars belonged to Navigator band. In the late 1980s, ESP made many explorer guitars for Hetfield, including many famous guitars as raised middle finger inlayed "EET FUK" explorer, dots inlayed explorer bearing words " A Year and A Half In the Life of Metallica; pt. 1". These guitars were called EX at the beginning and later called MX-220ii.
Meaning of this name:
M- Metallica
X- Explorer
220- a typical price tag
II- 2 pickups
MX-220II is a little shorter than the length (from the strap button at bottom to the tip of the headstock), the angular is smoother a little, the distance between the toggle a switch to the knob is a little nearer than the current explorer guitars. And it has a unique truss rod cover which is parallel to the nut and has two screws. The structure of this guitar concerning the conjunction of the body and the neck is set-in.
The further adjustment to MX-220II is using a metal plate with 4 screws to fix the jacks. The truss rod cover still has 2 screws, but is not parallel to nut any more. No change is made for the rest parts.
Later, in the evolution of the MX-220II, the ESP changed the structure back to bolt-on structure.
The following MX-220II is very similar to Hetfield’s first explorer. This guitar is owned by EXPCustom with old fashioned body shape and no serial number. It’s said that there is no serial number and round trademark on the headstock back of the MX-220II guitar.
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