About ESP/LTD: I'd agree, except that it's a little more specific, anything from the LTD 400 series and above will be a solid player.

ESP guitars are made in Japan using premium woods. While the production process is pretty automated, actual luthiers work the machines, and the guitars to get a lot of hands-on attention. These guitars also get much better finishes.

LTD (the higher end 400+ models) are made in Korea on pretty automated assembly lines. They use good quality woods. Not as good and expensive as ESP, but still good quality. The manual work is done by trained workers, but hardly luthiers. I'd assume there are a few luthiers on site overseeing the process, but in general, most of the people working on these guitars are just trained factory workers. These guitars get a cheaper polyeurathane finish instead of expensive laquer.

Low end LTD models (below the 300 series) are made in Indonesia. They're geared as starter instruments and are made of cheap wood and hardware. Assembly lines are pretty much all automated with little human input, and the guitars get only the hands-on treatment that they need to get them assembled.

As for the Highway 1 suggestion they are indeed nice guitars, by way of example, a close competitor would be any guitar in the Gibson Faded series, the guitars are US made, made of the same wood, use the same electronics as any standard production run Gibson except instead of using a normal finish it uses a WAY cheaper dye/ matte finish that feels almost like the wood is raw as you can see and feel the grain pattern and they are at about the same price point with some models.



Not that there's any need to list but I'll play along:

8 years playing guitar
3 years slangin' guitars ranging from $99 - $25K
Owner of a buttload of crap over the years

Blackout wrote:

Stick to a fixed bridge, if you're starting out you do not want to fuck around with the god awful mess that is tuning a Floyd Rose!

QFMFT