By: Staff

As usual, this year’s NAMM show was filled with the big boys of guitar. Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Schecter, ESP and more were all on hand to show off their new models, to varying degrees of success. While there is always a large focus on the big-name makers, we like to wander around and talk to the smaller, up and coming luthiers as well, and one of the best guitars and makers we found at this year’s show is California based maker, Esoterik guitars.

We had heard about Esoterik from guitarist Dave Reffett, who’s DR-1 is the first signature model in the company’s lineup, and we were looking forward to playing through the guitar at the company’s booth. After Dave gave us a shredtastic demo of his signature model, he handed the guitar over to me to give it a run through, and the guitar was very impressive to say the least.

Right away I was impressed by the guitar’s playability, it seemed as if the guitar was playing itself, there was hardly any effort on my part to get great tone while ripping up a fast line, or chunking on a power-chord riff. Besides being good looking guitars, which are extremely well made, the Esoterik DR-1 played consistently well across the board, and was just a fun guitar to play.

I played a lot of guitars at this year’s show, but I have to say that the DR-1 was one of the hardest guitars to put down out of all of them. Check out Esoterik guitars, they don’t have the big name of a Gibson or Fender, but they do have the attention to detail and one on one attention that larger companies can’t offer.

We sat down with Esoterik’s Ryan Cook to get his thoughts on the DR-1, customization and why his guitars are worth playing.

Dave Reffett and his Esoterik Guitar

******

Tell us about Dave Reffett’s signature guitar, the DR-1.

Ryan Cook: With this model you get one basic body shape and then you can choose your own woods to use. You can go with walnut wood for the neck or maple. You can go with mahogany for the wings or you can choose alder. You can also choose your fretboard wood as well, either ebony or rosewood. The overlays can be done with ebony, rosewood or figured Koa.

For the pickups we’re mainly using Seymour Duncan Blackouts, which are Dave’s favorite choice and they sound amazing, EMG 81s and 85s are also very popular. The tuners are Gotohs. The DR-1 model is not a fully custom model, so you get the one body shape. But, to an extent you get to choose your wood, hardware and knob placement etc.

Do you build other models that are fully customizable?

Ryan: As of right now this is the first model, we’re a brand new company but if someone wanted something more customized all they need to do is contact me through my website, Esoterikguitars.com, just call me up and I’m sure we can work something out.

This is a right hand six-string, but we’ve been getting a lot of demand for 7-strings and 8-strings. Lefties also, and that’s probably how they’re going to develop, in that order. That’s probably how they’ll be added on.

What makes Esoterik guitars stand out against all of the other makers here at NAMM?

Ryan: These guitars are all hand done and everything is the made to the highest quality possible. Everything, from the woods to the hardware to the unique body shapes, the whole backside is cutaway so it fits the body, you also have the neck thru and you have dual truss rods which is a huge addition right there.

Because there are a lot of tunings these days and .a lot of different string gauges, after a while the fret board can tend to twist over time, and if you only have one truss rod you’re screwed. With two truss rods, no matter what the woods do, your tunings or string gauge, you can totally dial in your fret board and keep it completely accurate at all times.

******

Esoterik Guitars Gallery

Esoterik Guitars NAMM 2011

Esoterik Guitars NAMM 2011

Esoterik Guitars NAMM 2011

Esoterik Guitars NAMM 2011

Esoterik Guitars NAMM 2011