Hello, and welcome to the recurring segment called “Who Sold This?”. This is focused on all the super weird (cringey, awesome, etc.) guitars I find in my travels throughout the used gear sections of the Internet. Because if I’ve gotta see some of this stuff, you do too. Check out all the previous iterations here!
Sometime around 2002 or 2003, ESP LTD rolled out 100 of these Devil Girl guitars and it’s gotta be one of the most “early 2000s” looking pieces of gear I’ve seen in a minute. If you had this, I assume you were also:
- Divorced (bonus points for step kids)
- Owned several pairs of JNCO jeans and those button down flame shirts
- Had a CD collection that was entirely nü-metal
- Had a goatee, frosted tips, and wore those sunglasses that every doofus with a goatee and frosted tips did
- Bonus point for big, dumb sideburns
I also just described Guy Fieri, but whatever. Maybe he had one too.
I originally came across the Devil Girl guitar on Guitar Center’s website and after some digging, found a little more information thanks to The Trogly’s Guitar Show.
According to the show, the Devil Girl guitar offers a 22-fret bolt-on Maple neck, Rosewood fretboard with fire and devil-tail inlays, and a composite plastic/carbon fiber body. The guitar came equipped with a single EMG HZ H4 passive pickup, one volume knob, string-through-body construction, and a tune-o-matic bridge.
It was ugly as hell, with some more than others thanks to some unpainted hair and features. The one specimen I found at Guitar Center is one of the terrible all-red ones, and is being sold for $2,449.99 – which is about what these things go for online.
Verdict: I want one. As Reddit user Johnny_B_Asshole so eloquently put it, “I love the fact that they make guitars like this. It’s a ‘We Wanna Rock’ guitar. It’s the essence of why a teenager wants to play the guitar after watching Spinal Tap.”
And yeah, as doofy as this thing is, I guarantee you 16 year old me would’ve thought this is the sickest thing he’s ever seen. 30-something year old me thinks something similar, but there’s also a little shame attached to it.
