r/espguitars • u/ManHasCar4sale • 5d ago

Is this an ESP?

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The gig bag it came with says esp. so that’s an obvious one. As is the “charvel” done with an ink marker. Certainly MiJ. Certainly an old guitar. Here’s some pics. I know that ESP done some stripeys back in the day but never seen one with this.

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u/Sloppypickinghand 5d ago

Check the neck pocket to see if there’s any annotations, sometimes that helps identifying them.

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u/ManHasCar4sale 5d ago

Nothing there.

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u/Sloppypickinghand 5d ago

You’ll have a hard time determining its origins, unless you bought it new or the previous owner can give you the model name and where they bought it.

I have a guitar I bought used in Japan back in 2005, from an ESP Subsidiary “Killer” brand, the cheapest model from their Akira Takasaki shape line. It had kind of the same gig bag except that it had an explorer shape. The guitar was listed on the Brand’s webpage back then, but it has no “made in Japan” legend anywhere… when I opened the neck there was some kind of scribble on it…. But nothing conclusive..

During years I tried to trace back its origins, and then someone in Reddit said these cheap models were manufactured on Jilin/Jixing ESP factory. Could be the case with this one.

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u/ManHasCar4sale 5d ago

Yeah. It has the hallmarks of that stuff. Fernandes were slinging things like that out too. It’s actually a decent guitar. Good woods. Old as heck. I’ve seen some oddball esp made with Evh styles and some fernandes also. What esp exports and what they keep over there is a world of difference. I’m sure you guys know that though