Gojira set Paris and social media ablaze on Friday night as they became the first metal band to play at the opening ceremony of an Olympic Games – and Joe Duplantier stole the show for electric guitar fans by playing a custom ESP curated especially for the showcase.
The build is a chromed-out ESP XJ-1, complete with a matching EverTune bridge and a DiMarzio Fortitude bridge humbucker that packs some serious grit.
It’s a stone-cold stunner, with the all-chrome aesthetic giving it a slick, futuristic edge. If you’re going to make metal history with an estimated one billion TV viewers watching, it’s certainly the perfect instrument for the occasion.
Yet it was surprising to see him play this particular guitar – and not his signature Charvel guitar – for the historic occasion. It begs the question: Is Joe Duplantier set to leave Charvel for ESP?
The guitarist has been playing Charvel's Tele-style San Dimas models for over a decade, resulting in several signature runs that included a classy mahogany model that arrived three years ago.
“From the first time I tried that guitar, I never wanted to play anything else,” he said of his signature six-string back in 2021. “It fits perfectly on me and I absolutely love the shape. It’s as aggressive as it is beautiful.”
Yet he went into the band’s biggest showcase yet without his trusty Charvel.
An image of the custom-built ESP was posted to the luthier's Facebook stories over the weekend and has since been immortalized on Reddit.
Users have been admiring its beauty, with one calling it “simplicity at its finest”, while another said they'd “snap one of these up in a heartbeat” if ESP were to make a production run.
And perhaps that is very much on the cards. Could this be the first hint of a new collaborative relationship between Duplantier and the Japanese luthier?
Eagle-eyed YouTuber Augfish noticed that the band's other guitarist, Christian Andreu, had a new axe for the Olympics gig, too. He was playing a new black version of his signature Jackson Rhoads, with inverted inlays and a spoke wheel truss rod adjustment notable changes.
It’s a mightily impressive spot considering the band was positioned high up on the side of a castle – where Marie Antoinette was famously imprisoned.
But, where Andreu stuck with his trusty signature, it's Duplantier's jumping of ships that has got tongues wagging in the guitar world.
Of course, it's possible that Duplantier isn't leaving Charvel at all, and has instead merely signed a separate deal with ESP. Dual-brand deals aren't beyond the realms of possibility, either, with it becoming far more common for guitarists to sign with two or more companies.
Take Kirk Hammett for instance, who is both a Gibson and ESP signature artist.
Only time will tell whether Duplantier's guitar was a one-off or the start of a surprise new chapter, having been a Charvel loyalist for so long. We'll be sure to deliver further developments in the future, whenever that may be.
