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 👋
6 comments:
SGD to MYR in 2011 = 2.44 (I remember the exact forex because of Maiden Singapore)
SGD to MYR in today = 3.08
wow, that ESP considered affordable back then
Definitely - should have considered a few more, I'm not into the E-II label in the mean time.
Its that MIJ labeling that makes E-II price
Its crazy, I paid $600(usd)new for my Jackson soloist pro in 2014, now they're running upwards of 1K. Used prices have gone up too. guess I'll just have to practice on the guitars I have lol,
I regret not looking into Jacksons too... 🙃
@robbedzombie The E-II is basically a re-labelled ESP Standard & those bear the Standard's price tags.
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