NGD: ESP Craft House Snapper CTM24-7 FR

[cardinal]

Thing is awesome. Plays incredibly well and has that perfect blend of sustain, snap, and resonance that can be hard to find. Just a monster guitar. At this point I’ve had Kiso, Sado, and “standard” ESPs, plus this Craft House. They all were very nice, but at least this particular Craft House is a cut above the rest IMHO.

Looks to be a total custom order. I don’t think ESP ever had something quite like this in their catalog.

 

[xzyryabx]

wow...wow...wow

 

[technomancer]

Needs cleaned but damn does that look amazing

 

[cardinal]

Yeah, it looks like it was someone’s road warrior for a while.

 

[Wizard of Ozz]

Nice score. Love the quilt top and color. Nice to see some ESP love here.

 

[EXPcustom]

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...

 

[Jon BCN]

Looks to be a total custom order. I don’t think ESP ever had something quite like this in their catalog.

They have the Ohmura signature, which is a Snapper too.

 

[cardinal]

Looks to be a total custom order. I don’t think ESP ever had something quite like this in their catalog.

They have the Ohmura signature, which is a Snapper too.

Yeah, I want one of those bad too. $5k and the scalloped frets are a bit off putting to me, so I haven’t been able to pull the trigger.

 

[cardinal]

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?).

 

[EXPcustom]

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?).

In an effort to make their confusing branding even more "less confusing" ESP got rid of the SS series and turned it into E-II which in my opinion is garbage, have no idea why someone would buy that crap as opposed to a second hand real Japan made ESP. Kept the LTD line and the Japan line did away with the letter prefixes to number suffixes to indicate factory.

01 is Takada, 02 is Kiso, 03 is Sato or the one that starts with S I believe. I have no idea with what they did with Japan domestic market stuff like technical house.

The T serial prefix didn't even appear till late 2002 early 2003. Before than all the good artist stuff was K serial or no serial.

Anyways I could go on about this but I should probably post on the ESP forum where they would appreciate this info.

I have a feeling someone is going to post about how their E-II guitar is as awesome as any ESP ever.

 

[cardinal]

Ah, cool. I didn’t realize they still used numbers to distinguish the “custom” lines from the more production lines. And the Standard Series/E-II always seems to have been different from the other ESP shops, but ESP hasn’t helped to clear up the confusion. I’m not even sure if that’s where they assemble the Edwards stuff and if they ghost build for others like JDM Schecters.

I haven’t played an E-II, but the old Standard Series stuff was nice. Next to a Kiso build there was a clear difference, but the price is different too.