By: Steve Miller
Submitted: 2010-06-23 20:55:26 | Word Count: 542
Electric Sound Products, known as ESP, established in Tokyo Japan in 1975 as a corporation that offered custom replacement pieces for guitars. Nonetheless, the first ESP electric guitar was not developed until 1976. ESP Guitars and replacement parts continued to be sold exclusively in Japan for nearly ten years before moving into the United States marketplace. In 1983 their replacement parts were made obtainable in the U.S.. Finally, in 1984 their electric guitars made their American appearance.
In 1984 - 1985 ESP Guitars have been appealing some notice from famous guitarists such as Bruce Kulick (Kiss), Ronnie Wood (The Rolling Stones) and Vernon Reid (Living Colour).
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The next considerable guitarist to come across ESP Guitars was George Lynch of Dokken, when searching for electric guitar components when he was touring in Japan. When George found out that ESP built custom electric guitars, the model "Kamikaze" was made for him. The Kamikaze was the original signature model to be made.
Soon after, other guitarists started to take notice of ESP and began jamming on their electric guitars in the late 80's. Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield of Metallica were two of the superior names.
In fact, speakin of James Hetfield, an ESP electric guitar which he used when Metallica originally began to turn into widespread, got the ESP Corporation into some legal problems. The guitar he used, known as the EXP, was a duplicate of the Gibson Explorer. Regardless that guitar companies have been selling replicas of their guitars for years, Gibson chose to sue ESP. The craftsmanship of the EXP guitar was so fine that players ended up buying them like crazy and this was allegedly slicing into the revenue of Gibson's guitars. Finally, ESP lost the lawsuit and altered their design to the currently known 'EX' design.
In mid 2002, ESP sales began to increase at a swift pace making them one of the fastest rising organizations at that time. This upsurge in sales was directly linked to Fender buying out Jackson Guitars. Jackson was the company that ESP Guitars was competing with in the 80's and 90's the buyout of Jackson Guitars, most of the high profile axemen hopped ship and went over to ESP Guitars. Guitar players like Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, found it an easy transition to move over to ESP Guitars because of the prime quality and related thrash-metal aggresive designs.
ESP guitars are still extremely popular today. At the 2008 Winter NAMM show, ESP introduced over 50 all-new guitar and bass models. In addition they have an awesome choice of high profile guitar players on their roster including Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield of Metallica, Wayne Static of Static-X, Alexi Laiho Children of Bodom, Will Adler of Lamb of God, Ron Wood, George Lynch, and the latest member, Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi. With the nice quality that ESP Guitars harvest, its a no brainer to recognize they're going to be around for several many more years to come.
