Просмотр новости
Найдите то, что Вас интересует
Спутники
РН
SpaceX
Роскосмос
NASA
ESP’s Ryan Dominguez: Crafted by Fate
Дата публикации: 01-10-2026 19:15:02
Ryan Dominguez’s path to becoming ESP USA’s shop manager, master painter, product/color developer, and, now, Director of USA Manufacturing Operations, was cast by fate. It was his last year of high school, and he knew he wanted to do something with art as a career. He floated the idea of becoming an animator, but everyone kept telling him there was no money in art. Little by little, he began feeling lost. “I didn’t really know where I wanted to go in life,” Dominguez tells PG. “One day I was walking home through the alleyway where my friends and I used to do alleyway things. In the gutter there was this brochure for Guitar Craft Academy, and I read through it and thought, ‘That’s a pretty cool way to blend art and music.’” Dominguez went home and talked it over with his grandparents, who were willing to let him give it a shot. “It honestly could have been clown college, as long as it led to work,” he jokes. “They were cool with whatever direction I decided to go in.” It paid off. About two weeks after graduating Guitar Craft Academy, Dominguez landed a job at ESP as a tech. He has since spent most of his adult life with the company, clocking in around 20 years collectively so far.ESP, short for Electronic Sound Product, was formed in Tokyo in 1975 as a repair shop and replacement parts maker. They later built guitars for the Japanese market under the ESP and Navigator brand names. By 1983, ESP parts were available in the U.S. market. The company’s ascent coincided with the rise of the Sunset Strip metal scene in the ’80s, where bands tried to out-glam one another through heavy makeup, bold fashion, and big hair. ESP seemed to perfectly match that aesthetic, creating guitars with exciting graphics and unusual body shapes.The turning point for ESP happened in the mid-’80s when George Lynch was on tour with Dokken in Tokyo. He had a very specific idea for a guitar build and heard that ESP made fully custom instruments, so he set up a meeting. At first, they discussed specs for a neck that Lynch wanted them to make, but over the course of a few hours, they collectively designed Lynch’s “Kamikaze” guitar. That instrument, which features vivid military-themed graphics and a reverse headstock, would become ESP’s first signature model. Lynch’s equally famous “Tiger” guitar would also be released by ESP as part of its Signature Series. The unforgettable visuals of “Kamikaze” and “Tiger” quickly made ESP a household name among guitarists.“[W]e know what people expect when they see ‘ESP’ on a headstock. We always want ESP USA to live up to that legacy.”The timing of Lynch’s signature models coincided with ESP’s move to New York City, where they operated out of a loft on 19th Street, before moving to Manhattan's then-famous music row on 48th Street in 1989. After landing in the Big Apple, ESP started making guitars for NYC-based artists like Vernon Reid, Page Hamilton, and Bruce Kulick. Then the company made the move west in 1993, relocating its U.S. headquarters to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. That was the place to be for metal at the time, and ESP quickly became a major player—for decades since, ESP’s artist roster has been a who’s who of metal guitarists. In addition to Lynch’s guitars, ESP has crafted many of the genre’s most distinct instruments—including Kirk Hammett’s “The Mummy,” “Ouija,” and “White Zombie,” James Hetfield’s “Snakebyte” and “Truckster,” and Akira Takasaki’s “Random Star,” to name a few. In 1996, ESP introduced their affordable—and highly popular—LTD line, which helped put their guitars into the hands of budget-conscious players. ESP’s unique designs are a perfect match for Dominguez’s creative and musical inclinations. Since he was young, the self-taught artist has always had a sketchbook and pencils in hand. “I used to love opening up a skateboard magazine or a surfing magazine or a music magazine, and drawing something from the pages—especially if it was a Reef girl,” he says. Dominguez also played guitar as a kid, starting on a 3/4-scale acoustic his mom got him when he was around nine. She also signed him up for guitar lessons, but he admits that he “didn't really take it too seriously.” In fact, in one of his lessons, Dominguez had stopped paying attention to the teacher and instead used his pick to carve an anarchy sign into the back of his acoustic guitar. “I’m pretty sure that was the last lesson my mom took me to,” he chuckles.By around 8th grade, he wanted to pick up the guitar again. He asked for an electric for Christmas and, this time around, started taking it seriously, even forming a pop-punk band with some friends. “I think every kid that has a guitar kind of dreams of being some sort of a rock star, or at least for being able to play or write a song or something,” he says. “I entertained the idea. I was probably a little bit of an emo kid in high school and thought I could write songs and play the acoustic, that sort of thing. But it was never really something that I tried to actively pursue.”“Sometimes I feel like a kid who snuck into a candy store that someone forgot to lock up for the night.”Instead, Dominguez entered the world of guitar building. When he first joined ESP in 2004, he started off doing set-ups before eventually moving on to the repair department. After about a year and a half, he left the job and moved to Arizona to attend the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, aiming to explore the acoustic side of guitar building. Roberto-Venn also had a month-long course on guitar repairs, and Dominguez was interested in learning how to do heavier repairs, like neck resets. “My original intention was to be a builder. I had gone to Roberto-Venn to kind of expand on that,” he says. “And when I graduated, I had a little bit of money left over from the student loans, so I bought a bunch of tools to go out and build some guitars in my garage and go down that path.”During that time, Dominguez also took on work painting cabinets for a company in Arizona. This proved to be beneficial, as he developed a considerable amount of his painting technique over the approximately two years he was employed there. Unfortunately, once the recession hit, everyone got laid off. Dominguez called his old boss Todd Binder—now president of ESP—to see if he could get his job back. “That was on a Friday in August, 2008—I packed up my little car that weekend and started on Monday,” he says. “When they decided to open the USA Shop in 2013, they knew I had experience painting and asked if I wanted to try it out [there]. I said ‘no,’ but then Todd called me out and said, ‘Well, you know, sometimes we just gotta step up and do what’s asked.’“When I first moved over to the USA Shop, I was doing a little bit of everything,” he continues. “Everyone was—woodworking, assembling, building, painting. My role within USA has changed quite a bit over the years. I’ve shifted mostly from doing paint stuff to managing the shop, working with the woodworkers on processes. ‘How can we make this faster?’ ‘What kind of pain points are you guys seeing out there?’ A lot of it entails what we’re going to be offering on the year as far as products and finishes: working with suppliers to find unique woods to be able to use for limited-edition builds; coming up with all the limited-edition models that we’re going to be offering; and a lot of managerial, sitting-behind-the-computer stuff, too, like creating SKUs and entering things into the system—part numbers, all that stuff.”
Typically, Dominguez goes through about three to four guitars a day—the sweet spot where he can still keep a close eye on quality control. “We don’t build as fast as some shops do, but we know what people expect when they see ‘ESP’ on a headstock,” he says. “We always want ESP USA to live up to that legacy.”
ESP USA and ESP’s Japanese Custom Shop, Original Series, and Signature Series are the elite tier of the company’s brands. (There's also an LTD version of the Signature Series.) Each serves a different purpose but shares the common goal: delivering the absolute best ESP products. “There’s definitely been a collaboration going on between USA and Japan. If I have a question like, ‘Hey, how’d you do this finish?,’ or ‘What’s your process for doing the side of the headstock?,’ they’re more than willing to work with us on any questions that we have. They’ll show us different processes and procedures, different ways of doing things,” he says. “They’ve come to me as well with, ‘How do you get this finish?,’ and, ‘What's your technique for this?’
“I just want to be clear that all of our custom guitars and artist Signature Series guitars from ESP are built at the ESP Custom Shop in Japan, not at the USA Shop,” he adds, hoping to clarify some common confusion. ESP USA isn’t like the ESP Custom Shop in the sense that you can customize every single detail of a build like body shapes or unique graphic designs. Rather, it’s a ”select shop” where you can personalize some aspects by choosing from a curated list of shapes, tops, finish types, and pickups. However, ESP’s Custom Shop won’t take every single request thrown at them. “Have they ever turned down a request?,” Dominguez says. “Yes, but probably not because they couldn’t do it. They have super high standards and won’t put the ESP logo on just anything. At the USA Shop, I can’t recall turning down a request. We try to be as accommodating as possible, and I do like a good challenge.” One perk of Dominguez’s job at ESP is the amount of free rein he’s afforded with his artistic explorations. “Sometimes I feel like a kid who snuck into a candy store that someone forgot to lock up for the night,” he admits. “I almost feel guilty about the amount of creative freedom I have. Almost. I’d like to think that I’ve been with ESP long enough to understand the company’s design philosophy, aesthetic standards, and, most importantly, what our players expect from the brand. I think that’s what has given me some confidence and relieved a lot of the guilt in the freedom I have to experiment. That, and failures. I’ve failed enough times behind the scenes to realize that another idea will come … sometimes when you least expect it. Sometimes it even wakes you up at 3 AM.”
Dominguez’s Instagram handle, @spongebrick, encapsulates everything about his work ethic and desire to build ESP guitars to the highest standards possible. “What Spongebrick, the person, represents, I’d like to think, is tenacity and dedication to a craft,” he explains. “It would have been really easy to throw in the towel for a dust-free environment and some air conditioning at a place where the stakes don't feel as high. Building guitars with ‘ESP’ on them—and the expectations people have as a result—can be constant high pressure.”
But, he continues, “there’s that little voice that’s constantly nagging me to be better—and to not blow that tiny mistake completely out of proportion until I can see it again the next day to realize it’s actually okay. That voice wouldn’t let me walk away. If I did, it would nag me about that, too.”
Основное содержимое страницы с новостью.
Ryan Dominguez’s path to becoming ESP USA’s shop manager, master painter, product/color developer, and, now, Director of USA Manufacturing Operations, was cast by fate. It was his last year of high school, and he knew he wanted to do something with art as a career. He floated the idea of becoming an animator, but everyone kept telling him there was no money in art. Little by little, he began feeling lost. “I didn’t really know where I wanted to go in life,” Dominguez tells PG. “One day I was walking home through the alleyway where my friends and I used to do alleyway things. In the gutter there was this brochure for Guitar Craft Academy, and I read through it and thought, ‘That’s a pretty cool way to blend art and music.’”
Dominguez went home and talked it over with his grandparents, who were willing to let him give it a shot. “It honestly could have been clown college, as long as it led to work,” he jokes. “They were cool with whatever direction I decided to go in.” It paid off. About two weeks after graduating Guitar Craft Academy, Dominguez landed a job at ESP as a tech. He has since spent most of his adult life with the company, clocking in around 20 years collectively so far.
ESP, short for Electronic Sound Product, was formed in Tokyo in 1975 as a repair shop and replacement parts maker. They later built guitars for the Japanese market under the ESP and Navigator brand names. By 1983, ESP parts were available in the U.S. market. The company’s ascent coincided with the rise of the Sunset Strip metal scene in the ’80s, where bands tried to out-glam one another through heavy makeup, bold fashion, and big hair. ESP seemed to perfectly match that aesthetic, creating guitars with exciting graphics and unusual body shapes.
The turning point for ESP happened in the mid-’80s when George Lynch was on tour with Dokken in Tokyo. He had a very specific idea for a guitar build and heard that ESP made fully custom instruments, so he set up a meeting. At first, they discussed specs for a neck that Lynch wanted them to make, but over the course of a few hours, they collectively designed Lynch’s “Kamikaze” guitar. That instrument, which features vivid military-themed graphics and a reverse headstock, would become ESP’s first signature model. Lynch’s equally famous “Tiger” guitar would also be released by ESP as part of its Signature Series. The unforgettable visuals of “Kamikaze” and “Tiger” quickly made ESP a household name among guitarists.
“[W]e know what people expect when they see ‘ESP’ on a headstock. We always want ESP USA to live up to that legacy.”
The timing of Lynch’s signature models coincided with ESP’s move to New York City, where they operated out of a loft on 19th Street, before moving to Manhattan's then-famous music row on 48th Street in 1989. After landing in the Big Apple, ESP started making guitars for NYC-based artists like Vernon Reid, Page Hamilton, and Bruce Kulick. Then the company made the move west in 1993, relocating its U.S. headquarters to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. That was the place to be for metal at the time, and ESP quickly became a major player—for decades since, ESP’s artist roster has been a who’s who of metal guitarists. In addition to Lynch’s guitars, ESP has crafted many of the genre’s most distinct instruments—including Kirk Hammett’s “The Mummy,” “Ouija,” and “White Zombie,” James Hetfield’s “Snakebyte” and “Truckster,” and Akira Takasaki’s “Random Star,” to name a few. In 1996, ESP introduced their affordable—and highly popular—LTD line, which helped put their guitars into the hands of budget-conscious players.
A set of finished ESP USA guitars (l-r): M-II DX FR USA, Eclipse USA, Horizon-II USA.
ESP’s unique designs are a perfect match for Dominguez’s creative and musical inclinations. Since he was young, the self-taught artist has always had a sketchbook and pencils in hand. “I used to love opening up a skateboard magazine or a surfing magazine or a music magazine, and drawing something from the pages—especially if it was a Reef girl,” he says. Dominguez also played guitar as a kid, starting on a 3/4-scale acoustic his mom got him when he was around nine. She also signed him up for guitar lessons, but he admits that he “didn't really take it too seriously.” In fact, in one of his lessons, Dominguez had stopped paying attention to the teacher and instead used his pick to carve an anarchy sign into the back of his acoustic guitar. “I’m pretty sure that was the last lesson my mom took me to,” he chuckles.
By around 8th grade, he wanted to pick up the guitar again. He asked for an electric for Christmas and, this time around, started taking it seriously, even forming a pop-punk band with some friends. “I think every kid that has a guitar kind of dreams of being some sort of a rock star, or at least for being able to play or write a song or something,” he says. “I entertained the idea. I was probably a little bit of an emo kid in high school and thought I could write songs and play the acoustic, that sort of thing. But it was never really something that I tried to actively pursue.”
“Sometimes I feel like a kid who snuck into a candy store that someone forgot to lock up for the night.”
Instead, Dominguez entered the world of guitar building. When he first joined ESP in 2004, he started off doing set-ups before eventually moving on to the repair department. After about a year and a half, he left the job and moved to Arizona to attend the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, aiming to explore the acoustic side of guitar building. Roberto-Venn also had a month-long course on guitar repairs, and Dominguez was interested in learning how to do heavier repairs, like neck resets. “My original intention was to be a builder. I had gone to Roberto-Venn to kind of expand on that,” he says. “And when I graduated, I had a little bit of money left over from the student loans, so I bought a bunch of tools to go out and build some guitars in my garage and go down that path.”
During that time, Dominguez also took on work painting cabinets for a company in Arizona. This proved to be beneficial, as he developed a considerable amount of his painting technique over the approximately two years he was employed there. Unfortunately, once the recession hit, everyone got laid off.
Dominguez called his old boss Todd Binder—now president of ESP—to see if he could get his job back. “That was on a Friday in August, 2008—I packed up my little car that weekend and started on Monday,” he says. “When they decided to open the USA Shop in 2013, they knew I had experience painting and asked if I wanted to try it out [there]. I said ‘no,’ but then Todd called me out and said, ‘Well, you know, sometimes we just gotta step up and do what’s asked.’
The ESP USA Shop, with guitars in progress hanging on the back wall.
“When I first moved over to the USA Shop, I was doing a little bit of everything,” he continues. “Everyone was—woodworking, assembling, building, painting. My role within USA has changed quite a bit over the years. I’ve shifted mostly from doing paint stuff to managing the shop, working with the woodworkers on processes. ‘How can we make this faster?’ ‘What kind of pain points are you guys seeing out there?’ A lot of it entails what we’re going to be offering on the year as far as products and finishes: working with suppliers to find unique woods to be able to use for limited-edition builds; coming up with all the limited-edition models that we’re going to be offering; and a lot of managerial, sitting-behind-the-computer stuff, too, like creating SKUs and entering things into the system—part numbers, all that stuff.”
Typically, Dominguez goes through about three to four guitars a day—the sweet spot where he can still keep a close eye on quality control. “We don’t build as fast as some shops do, but we know what people expect when they see ‘ESP’ on a headstock,” he says. “We always want ESP USA to live up to that legacy.”
ESP USA and ESP’s Japanese Custom Shop, Original Series, and Signature Series are the elite tier of the company’s brands. (There's also an LTD version of the Signature Series.) Each serves a different purpose but shares the common goal: delivering the absolute best ESP products. “There’s definitely been a collaboration going on between USA and Japan. If I have a question like, ‘Hey, how’d you do this finish?,’ or ‘What’s your process for doing the side of the headstock?,’ they’re more than willing to work with us on any questions that we have. They’ll show us different processes and procedures, different ways of doing things,” he says. “They’ve come to me as well with, ‘How do you get this finish?,’ and, ‘What's your technique for this?’
“I just want to be clear that all of our custom guitars and artist Signature Series guitars from ESP are built at the ESP Custom Shop in Japan, not at the USA Shop,” he adds, hoping to clarify some common confusion. ESP USA isn’t like the ESP Custom Shop in the sense that you can customize every single detail of a build like body shapes or unique graphic designs. Rather, it’s a ”select shop” where you can personalize some aspects by choosing from a curated list of shapes, tops, finish types, and pickups. However, ESP’s Custom Shop won’t take every single request thrown at them. “Have they ever turned down a request?,” Dominguez says. “Yes, but probably not because they couldn’t do it. They have super high standards and won’t put the ESP logo on just anything. At the USA Shop, I can’t recall turning down a request. We try to be as accommodating as possible, and I do like a good challenge.”
Dominguez hand-taping an Eclipse USA headstock for natural masked binding.
One perk of Dominguez’s job at ESP is the amount of free rein he’s afforded with his artistic explorations. “Sometimes I feel like a kid who snuck into a candy store that someone forgot to lock up for the night,” he admits. “I almost feel guilty about the amount of creative freedom I have. Almost. I’d like to think that I’ve been with ESP long enough to understand the company’s design philosophy, aesthetic standards, and, most importantly, what our players expect from the brand. I think that’s what has given me some confidence and relieved a lot of the guilt in the freedom I have to experiment. That, and failures. I’ve failed enough times behind the scenes to realize that another idea will come … sometimes when you least expect it. Sometimes it even wakes you up at 3 AM.”
Dominguez’s Instagram handle, @spongebrick, encapsulates everything about his work ethic and desire to build ESP guitars to the highest standards possible. “What Spongebrick, the person, represents, I’d like to think, is tenacity and dedication to a craft,” he explains. “It would have been really easy to throw in the towel for a dust-free environment and some air conditioning at a place where the stakes don't feel as high. Building guitars with ‘ESP’ on them—and the expectations people have as a result—can be constant high pressure.”
But, he continues, “there’s that little voice that’s constantly nagging me to be better—and to not blow that tiny mistake completely out of proportion until I can see it again the next day to realize it’s actually okay. That voice wouldn’t let me walk away. If I did, it would nag me about that, too.”
Схожие новости
Классификация: . Схожих патентов: 0. Схожих новостей: 10. Тональность: 0. Информативность: 6.86. Источник: www.premierguitar.com.