ESP

Hisatake Shibuya founded ESP in Tokyo in 1975, and the company built its early reputation supplying thrash metal players through the 1980s and 90s, most visibly James Hetfield's Explorer-shaped guitars for Metallica. The LTD series, launched in 1995, brought ESP's designs to a much lower price point by manufacturing in Korea and Indonesia, and it's since grown into a major line of its own alongside ESP's high-end Custom Shop and Original Series instruments. ESP guitars, both LTD and Custom Shop, remain the default choice for a large share of extreme and technical metal players. On GuitarBomb we cover it through signature models and the Hetfield/Hammett gear stories that keep resurfacing. Here's everything we've written.