ESP USA

What happens when you take exacting Japanese guitar design and craft it in California, the spiritual home of the electric guitar? We meet the elite luthiers of the ESP USA workshop to find out…

- Jamie Dickson

Tucked away amid the anonymous industrial units surrounding the Bob Hope Airport in Hollywood, some sleek machines are taking flight. These ones have strings rather than wings, admittedly, but they look fit to break the sound barrier nonetheless. The ESP Guitar Company has always built guitars to an exacting standard, but the instruments built at its unique US workshop positively glow. Stepping inside, we admire the deep, lustrous, mirror-flat finishes over quilted maple that adorn the finished guitars on display. Looking more closely, we also note the perfectly finished frets and sculpted heels that add function to the beautiful form of these high-spec instruments.

It’s no surprise, then, that the cadre of luthiers working at the ESP USA workshop are very proud of their work. But that pride is based upon more than just the quality of the guitars that are built here. ESP has a carefully tiered range and only the very top echelon of guitars built by the company as a whole actually wears the ESP logo on the headstock, with the premium E-II range and workhorse LTD line forming the bulk of the company’s output.

For ESP to grant full title to the instruments built here, in California, was thus a big step for the Japanese company, which put the fledgling shop under heavy scrutiny during its early days to ensure that the quality lived up to the name. Furthermore, it gave an unusual role to ESP USA workshop: building highly configurable versions of standard models. While these stop short of full customs, which are the preserve of ESP’s Japanese workshop only, the guitars built here in Hollywood are available in a bewildering array of finishes, specs and tonewoods via a Configurator tool on the ESP USA website, making them a great choice for players looking to combine top quality with a touch of individuality.