ESP Custom Shop MX Explorer

John H.John H.
Updated
    ESP Custom Shop MX Explorer

    ESP Custom Shop MX Explorer - Wanted to share this ESP with the group and the great story behind the guitar.

    ESP custom order “1 of 1” with a wonderful history and is a true “law suit” guitar. This ESP MX Explorer guitar is very rare indeed.  It was built by John Gaudesi in the Hollywood California ESP custom shop in 1999 (John Gaudesi is a master luthier who now heads up the Schector USA custom shop).  This ESP custom shop guitar build was halted just prior to paint due to Gibson interceding and suing ESP for copyright infringement of the Explorer style back in 99’.  ESP let John Gaudesi hold on to this guitar since it could not be sold.  Ultimately it ended up with another ESP custom shop employee who worked with John and is still friends with John.  I bought the guitar from that gentleman.  His name is Carl Jah, who incidentally not only worked at the ESP custom shop but was the guitar player for Dread Zeppelin!   After being a “closet queen” for nearly twenty years this ESP was completed by Lee Garver (GMW Guitar Works).  The craftsmanship on this guitar is impeccable!  It looks, sounds and plays amazing.  The paint is like a black mirror and is superb. A one of a kind custom piece of ESP history never to be repeated.

    Features and Specs:

    • Mahogany body, set neck construction with solid maple neck and ebony fretboard
    • ESP custom shop rear heel scallop for better access to the higher register frets
    • The small star fret inlays were done for ESP by Ron Thorn of Thorn guitars. No CNC machines were used.  The routing was done with an old school overhead pin router back in the day.  
    • Jet Black Paint
    • Schaller tunomatic bridge and Tone Pros locking stop tail piece
    • Sperzel Locking tuners
    • Black phenolic nut
    • Schaller strap lock buttons
    • EMG 81 – 60 Active Humbucker set
    Dislike (0)
      Share
    Pushead
    Pushead wrote

    I didn't realize that he had built any Explorers in the US shop, but you can tell that the shape is a bit different than the Japanese guitars. Especially the little bevel for access to the high frets and the neck joint.

    Very cool.

    Reply
    Dislike (0)
      John H.
      John H. wrote

      Pushead, I spoke with John Gaudesi about this build and he was kind enough to tell me about the Hollywood Custom Shop as well.  He said that back then the custom orders were taking so long to come out of the Japan custom shop that theESP opened the Hollywood shop primarily for building guitars for their ESP artists but also did custom builds for other clients such as this Explorer.  John indicated that he had personally built 11 or 12 of James Hetfield's explorers in that shop.  He said that Jame's guitar tech had requested the Sperzel tuners for ease of string changing and thus they started using them on these builds.  This was a true custom order for a client and the neck on this one is specked like a KH2 Kirm Hammett signature strat (flat and wide). Nice big jumbo frets.  A very similar bevel for access to the high frets is on my Kamikaze Star model but I have never seen it anywhere else.  

      Reply
      Dislike (0)
        Pushead
        Pushead wrote

        Very cool. It looks great!

        Reply
        Dislike (0)
          Post to Thread

          Cancel