ESP SG-Shaped Guitars

The Viper is part of the Standard series that ESP offers. The guitar is meant to rival the Gibson SG series, and it does it with ease. This guitar features a mahogany body with a set through mahogany neck and ebony fretboard, 24 extra jumbo frets with dot inlays and the name at the 12th fret, a TOM bridge, EMG pickups, locking tuners, one volume, one tone and a three way switch. UTILIZATION ESP does an amazing job on the Standard series. First of all, the necks feel wonderful. It's a thin U shaped neck which feels great in the hands. It's not quite Ibanez thin, but it's still fairly thin, so it's great for shredding. The fretwork is top notch on these guitars, too. The ends are beveled nicely, and the frets are level enough to really slam the action if you'd like. That's a huge plus for me as I love to run super low action. The guitar also comes with locking tuners, so changing strings is real easy. It also eliminates any binding or slip issues that might occur with normal tuners. SOUNDS The guitar is aggressive as hell. The EMG 81 in the bridge is super cutting, and it complements the mahogany body and neck nicely. You can get some extremely tight staccato metal riffs with ease thanks to this pickup. The EMG 85 in the neck delivers this super powerful, warm and fat lead tone that sings for days. The neck pickup, while kinda weak for clean, allows you to do some of those super fast legato licks with ease. The cool thing with EMGs is that, besides the fact that they record amazingly, they also are super easy to swap out with other EMGs so you can taylor this to your taste. OVERALL OPINION If you're looking at a Gibson SG alternative, I highly recommend picking up one of these guitars. The ESP Standard series is ESP's flag ship series, and it really shows. They put in a decent amount of time into these guitars, and they're packed full of features that the lower end LTDs don't seem to have. I recommend buying them used if you can as you'll save a ton of dough, which is always a nice thing. eBay is a great place to find these guitars cheap, as well as various guitar forums.