I've got 2 LTD's, one sounds awesome...

anomaly

anomaly

Well-known member
I've got 2 ltd Vipers with similar specs. One sounds amazing (2014 Viper 1000 deluxe, emg 57 & 66), it's thick and full sounding, articulate, clear, great to play, and the other Viper (2004 Viper 400, emg 81 & 60a) sounds like shit! (thin, gross) but has great playability. I want to know what the deal is? They got similar pickups, similar specs. The only thing I can think of is the nut? the 2004 Viper has a earvana comphensated nut, and unplugged the guitar just has this plasticy sound and feel to it, and plugged in it's even worse... just really thin and shitty and I got the pickups adjusted nearly identicle (close to the strings) on both guitars. Do you think it's just a bad piece of wood that's doing this? or could it just be the nut?
 
Also, they both have newish strings, D'addario NY XL on the 1000 and regular D'addario's on the 400.

EDIT: not chromes on the 400
 
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Not sure what type of music you're playing, but with what an LTD Viper typically does, D'addario Chromes (flat wound strings) are not what I'd expect on the guitar. Have you tried standard D'addarios on it (XL or NYXL is you prefer those)? Also, the 81 is a much brighter/thinner bridge pickup than the 57. Both good places to start in my opinion.
 
check the pots on the shitty one and make sure they're the 25k's. Order a 24v mod or do the 18v mod also. I swear by that one now.
 
ibanez4life SZ! said:
Not sure what type of music you're playing, but with what an LTD Viper typically does, D'addario Chromes (flat wound strings) are not what I'd expect on the guitar. Have you tried standard D'addarios on it (XL or NYXL is you prefer those)? Also, the 81 is a much brighter/thinner bridge pickup than the 57. Both good places to start in my opinion.
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I ran heavy gauge flatwounds on a lp with emg's for years and it ripped.
 
Check your set up first but unfortunately I've had some BEAUTIFUL esp customs that sounded like total dead shit. Sometimes it happens.
 
anomaly said:
I've got 2 ltd Vipers with similar specs. One sounds amazing (2014 Viper 1000 deluxe, emg 57 & 66), it's thick and full sounding, articulate, clear, great to play, and the other Viper (2004 Viper 400, emg 81 & 60a) sounds like shit! (thin, gross) but has great playability. I want to know what the deal is? They got similar pickups, similar specs. The only thing I can think of is the nut? the 2004 Viper has a earvana comphensated nut, and unplugged the guitar just has this plasticy sound and feel to it, and plugged in it's even worse... just really thin and shitty and I got the pickups adjusted nearly identicle (close to the strings) on both guitars. Do you think it's just a bad piece of wood that's doing this? or could it just be the nut?
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Aren’t those emg pups pretty different?
 
ibanez4life SZ! said:
Not sure what type of music you're playing, but with what an LTD Viper typically does, D'addario Chromes (flat wound strings) are not what I'd expect on the guitar. Have you tried standard D'addarios on it (XL or NYXL is you prefer those)? Also, the 81 is a much brighter/thinner bridge pickup than the 57. Both good places to start in my opinion.
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Mostly playing metal.

Actually they are regular D'addario's, not flatwould, my mistake.

I've heard comparisons of the 57 and the 81 and they seem to sound pretty damn close to each other. Maybe it's just this particular 81 that my guitar has??
 
My first thought is the pickups the 81 is notoriously thinner sounding than the 57 at least with my experience.

Second thought could just me the type of mahogany “I believe that’s what the viper body is” that was selected that day for that guitar.

I have 2 lp same model same Marshall head pickups, same 500k pots and one is brighter and one is darker sounding.
 
the materials the guitar is made from matter, could be the body or neck wood, or finish, some part of the hardware, even the setup can have a big effect on sound.

I have a Korean made Schecter from mid 2000’s, supposedly mahogany (definitely not), it was always such a dull and dead guitar, acoustically or amplified, no matter what pickups, electronics, hardware, etc. Eventually for fun I stripped off the finish (very, very thick poly), and now it’s very resonant and clear sounding, both acoustically and amplified. So in the case of my guitar the finish did not gel with the rest of that guitar.

I have other guitars that clearly have thick poly finishes and they sound fine so maybe the problem was the specific formulation or just how it combined with all the other variables in that guitar.
 
I'm gonna try taking the tone pot (maybe it's bad) out of the equation and just run it with the volume pot right to the output, see if that changes anything?? I don't even use the tone pot anyways, it's always cranked, so what's the point?
 
Ahh see wood does matter. Check out the recent Paul Reed Smith video. He explains how two trees of the same type are different. Density is part of it but other factors aswell. Build a guitar from two different trees that grew right next to each other and the guitars will sound different.

At one point I went through a Charvel kick. I bought several of the japanese So Cals. All the same woods, pickups hardware etc…. Guess what …..yup you guessed it.
 
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81/85/60 need to be close and imho have a 18/24v mod.

Newer ones like Het Set or 57/66 need to have height similar to passives at least in my experience.
 
I'm thinking you just don't like the 81 and 60 pups. You should try and put the 57 and 66 in and see if that is the big difference. If you have the quick connect it shouldn't take but a few minutes to try.
 
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