1990 ESP Maverick

Details

I found this one on Reverb for a great price, and actually ended up buying two more guitars from the seller over the course of the year (Kramer Proaxe and Hamer Californian - seems we have similar taste). It also included a spare ESP Sinclair trem, a very hard to find part, despite having one bad saddle the extra saddles will be nice to have if I ever crack one on this guitar or my other Maverick Standard.

I love the ESP Power Rail in the neck position, but I rewired it first thing in series instead of parallel to increase output and thicken up the sound for leads. I replaced an odd unmarked Dimarzio in the bridge position with a Dimarzio Breed I had extra, as I felt the guitar was a little on the thin side and could use a bassier pickup. This pickup definitely improved the sound, although the guitar is still quite bright sounding even with this pickup, likely due to the single volume control and no tone to shave off that very high treble. Potentiometers even when turned fully open still have a load effect on pickups, so only having a single control like this guitar (and others) will result in a brighter tone - in fact I have wired in a tone pot just set fully open inside the electronics cavity in the past to help mitigate this issue.

The neck has a reversed headstock, as well as the offset dot inlays but lacks the 12th fret “ESP” inlay - I have seen these necks both with and without this. It’s kind of the reverse of my other Maverick Standard, which has a maple board, regular headstock, and the 12th fret inlay.

Overall this is a fantastic short scale shredder and offers fantastic playability.