A Classic Shredder Handcrafted to Perfection
The essence of ESP’s earliest guitar creations has been captured and elevated with the ESP Original Snapper CTM — a handcrafted pinnacle of design. Each Original Snapper CTM is hand built by legendary luthiers at ESP’s Custom Shop in Japan, a rare honor for a production guitar. The Snapper CTM features a stout and resonant swamp ash body, an eccentric burled poplar top, three hot Seymour Duncan pickups, and a rosewood-on-maple neck. With ESP’s “Thin U” profile, this neck is quite fast and comfortable, while the electronics offer three versatile humbuckers (one standard size and two stacks) with an impressive spread of capacitance and pickup mix options beyond just 5-way selection. The result is the versatility of a HSS guitar with a little extra beef, grit, and tweakability — so you can be sure it’s ready for anything you throw at it!
Top-notch tonewoods and hardware
Luthiers at ESP’s Custom Shop are serious about honoring their company’s earliest creations, which is why they choose only the finest tonewoods and hardware for the Original Snapper CTM. A swamp ash body provides classic vintage-inspired response laced with walls of sustain. This light, incredibly resonant species of ash has long been prized for its musicality and chameleon-like ability to turn both clean and dirty tones into something special. A burled poplar top adds interesting wood grain worthy of a custom look, while top-tier hardware like locking Gotoh tuners and an unbleached bone nut lets each of these tonewoods put their best foot forward.
Optimized for playability
The ESP Original Snapper CTM is a completely optimized version of what Sweetwater customers expect from ESP: effortless playability that streamlines and even enhances the relationship between you and your guitar. A rosewood-on-maple neck offers glassy smooth fretting made easier by an ESP “Thin U” profile for a speed neck that retains some rounded fullness in the overall feel. For enhanced fretwork, this neck also features a 240–305mm compound radius.
Hot Seymour Duncan pickups
A fine guitar is nothing without fine pickups, and the ESP Original Snapper offers nothing but the best! This guitar offers three premium Seymour Duncan passive pickups in a HSS-style configuration. The bridge, a ’59 Custom Hybrid humbucker, leverages one coil from the popular PAF-style ’59 Model and a second coil from the higher output Duncan Custom version. This combo yields a vintage voice but with slightly hotter output that’s harmonically richer — perfect for bombastic soaring solos and nuanced fretwork! In the middle and neck positions you’ll find powerful, noiseless Seymour Duncan Hot Stack Plus pickups. These Alnico V pickups feature a dual-coil design that eliminates hum yet also beefs up a traditional single-coil sound. Expect glassy highs, bell-like mids, and round low end with extra harmonic richness at every turn. The Orginal Snapper features classic 5-way pickup switching, but with the additional pickup mix toggle and capacitance switching options, the available tones onboard are practically double!
ESP Original Snapper CTM Electric Guitar Features:
- Handcrafted by accomplished luthiers at the ESP Custom Shop in Japan
- An homage to an early beloved ESP design that’s unmatched in build quality and tone
- Swamp ash body delivers thick, aggressive resonance
- Burled poplar top enhances tone with added visual appeal that’s one of a kind
- Smooth maple neck and elegant rosewood fingerboard with ESP’s “Thin U” profile that shreds effortlessly
- Compound-radius neck gives ideal anchor space at either end of the neck
- Unbleached bone nut delivers consistent string feel with enhanced resonance and sustain
- High-performance locking Gotoh tuners for rock-solid tuning stability
- Hot vintage-voiced pickups from Seymour Duncan — a ’59/Custom Hybrid humbucking pickup in the bridge and Vintage Hot Stack Plus single-coils in the neck and middle positions
- 5-way pickup selector plus push-pull capacitance selection and a mini-toggle for alternate pickup mix variations
