Beyond the horizon

Mid-year is here. On any other pandemic-free year, we would have plotted our vacation & look forward  to some R&R time. But not this time.

That aside, was in the mood for some ESP goodness & got this Horizon NT out. Till this day, I still believe that the ESP quality is up there in terms of prestige. I stopped buying because in this series, the instruments are now labelled as E-II instead of ESP. Such a trivial matter to some of us but it shows how the commercial entity bends over to segregate products to serve placements. They can do anything they want to their own manufacture, it's an open market & we are free to move on with others. I'm keeping my options open, if there are enticing E-IIs out there calling to me, I'll gladly oblige. I already own one.

Anyway, just to put things in context, I bought this for $1.7K - $1.8K (2011), hard case included. Let's take a look what this much money could get us today (comparable quality/ functionality):

Prices are trending up, it's beyond our control. If you think a certain amount of money dictates the instrument to be of certain class quality & manufactured in a reputable plant, that is not the case today. Manufacturers are constantly residing in countries with low cost production, currently, Indonesia is hot on the list. The thing about Indonesian-made instruments (in this price range) is that their quality exceeds expectations & manufacturers dare to peg prices against the quality on show per se. I'm coming from the perspective of someone who owns Indian & Vietnamese instruments which could see better outcome in terms of QC-price considerations. 

I had a special bond with ESP & glad to have acquired some models which were made available in the stores here. I'm not saying the ESP quality is now dead or a second tier performance in view of prices - definitely not. For the same quality standards today, the E-IIs are on the higher end of the price bracket & it's nothing Ibanez, Jackson, Charvel, Schecter & Co. could not oblige. Even LTD, ESP's subsidiary company, has something to offer. 

Enough ranting. Let's say hello to June 👋