EXPcustom":xwngvyjo said:
Most people don't know this but ESP has three types of custom shops, craft house, technical house and custom shop. I have heard that Technical House is the best or a cut above the other three, they have a TH serial.
I always assumed custom shop with the T serial number was the best since that is headed by the guy who makes all the ESP artist guitars like for Kirk, James, Slayer, etc...
I think when Kirk displayed a bunch of his guitars at SFO, there was a mix of T and K serial numbers. I think T is for the Takada shop, which does a lot of custom order and artist work. The Technical House (TH serial number) is different. I think the Technical House and Craft House are ESP guitar stores that happen to have luthiers on site to build custom orders. They are smaller operations and tend to do some wacky stuff. The Kiso Shop seems bigger and seems to handle export custom orders and catalog signature guitars.
And of course now I don’t even think the Kiso and Takada shops are a thing anymore. ESP seems to have consolidated their shops in Tokyo and now the serial numbers just start with an E. It’s simpler but kinda obscures who is building what (presumably there still are “teams” that tend to do certain types of work more often?).