Anyone have trouble finding a good variety of ESP guitars in guitar stores in the US?
Anyone have trouble finding a good variety of ESP guitars in guitar stores in the US?
I have been to two guitar stores in the Chicago area, and both seemed to have a very wide variety of Gibson and Fender guitars—especially Les Paul and Stratocaster—but virtually no ESP guitars at all. At most, they usually have a limited selection of LTD and that's it. Virtually no E-II's, no ESP USA's, no signatures series except for a select few LTD's and nearly no pre-owned guitars either; but for some reason they have thirty different varieties of Les Paul. Why is this? Does anyone have this problem? Is it a sponsorship issue? It seems that ESP's tend to be focused on a select few shops in the US and I couldn't find one in the Chicago area. I really want to try out a variety of ESP's but it seems impossible given that many shops have a very limited selection of them. Any solutions?
This is obviously not to say I don't appreciate the quality and variety of guitars offered by Gibson and Fender, but I just wish the stores would offer the same variety of ESP guitars as well.
Gibson and Fender produce nostalgia pieces for a shrinking market. They want you to remember how awesome Woodstock was, even if you weren't born for another 10 years, or 20, 30, or 40 for that matter. They want you to think about how good Hendrix would have been if he wasn't such a pill-popping addict, or how cool Jimmy Page was before he started living on heroin or his drummer died of the same fate of the aforementioned. They want you to think that Eric Clapton wasn't a degenerate heroin addict who let his son die though sheer negligence, they want you to think that he is cool and legendary, and not the elevator music that you hear from Muzak's version of "Wonderful Tonight".
They are going after your retirement funds. They want you to still think that it is 1965 but take your wallet out like it's 2065. It's a cash grab for their CEO and litigation team. They have one motivation, and one motivation only - shareholder dividends. They're on Retirement Road, and they don't care about quality - they care about charging you as much as they can get you to pay them.
They might as well make stamps, or bottles, or baseball cards, or Beanie Babies, or Cabbage Plastic Kids.
Maybe bingo chips?
Gibson (and probably Fender) have mandatory stocking/purchasing requirements for stores. So the store has to spend a fair amount to stay as a dealer for those brands. I assume ESP/LTD either doesn't have one or (more likely) have a significantly lower requirement to stay a dealer.
Plus, the market for non-"big two" brand guitars over $1500 is pretty low. It's hard to justify having a lot of the E-II / ESP brand guitars at the shop when the majority of what they sell is sub $1k.
May i take some of your time? can you tell me is it fake or real ltd?
Here:
https://www.espguitars.com/forums/1963220/posts/4692265-is-it-real-ltd-kh602
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I can't attest to why, but yes it's both common and widespread that brick and mortar stores frequently don't stock ESPs. if you're not lucky enough to live near one of the handful of shops that regularly deal ESPs or you don't want to drive to one (Sweetwater in Fort Wayne is 3 hours from Chicago, just sayin'...) your only real choice is to make sure where you order from has a good return policy.