SEE THE "NEW FOR 2026" COLLECTION NOW

Following an entire year of celebration for the company’s 50th anniversary in 2025, ESP Guitars (NAMM Booth 210D) will spend 2026 recognizing another huge milestone: the 30th anniversary of their LTD series of guitars and basses. LTD instruments first became available to the public in 1996.

“It was the introduction of LTD in 1996 that made ESP a global brand with accessibility to every level of musician,” says Matt Masciandaro, president and CEO of the ESP Guitar Company. “ESP was already recognized as a very high-quality guitar builder. But it was LTD that put those outstanding guitar and bass shapes into the hands of musicians around the world.”

ESP Guitars had already established itself as a high-end boutique-level luxury guitar brand when, in 1995, ESP’s USA-based distribution company broached the idea using ESP instrument shapes to build high-quality, mass-produced guitars and basses using higher volume OEM factories outside of Japan. This allowed for a larger volume of instruments to be made than what was possible with ESP’s handcrafted instruments, built one at a time by their Custom Shop in Tokyo. In turn, it made the retail pricing of these LTD instruments accessible to far more musicians than their handcrafted ESP-branded counterparts.

The success of the LTD Series was immediate, and within a short time frame, LTD became a significant brand for musicians and musical instrument retailers alike. Six years later in 2002, the company added their LTD Deluxe Series, which added upgraded pro-tier build techniques and components to the already-popular LTD brand. Today, LTD guitars and basses are manufactured with superb quality in multiple countries, and are sold at hundreds of US-based retailers and 80 countries worldwide via ESP’s network of international distributors.