Archive for October 28th, 2008

LTD Viper 50 by ESP

I have recently decided I needed a new axe, most of my studio guitars are fine but I wanted something with a nice low action for live playing and something I could keep at home for personal playing as well as taking to work with me.

I could have ordered the guitar through the studio shop but it was some what of an impulse purchase so I popped over to Roadhouse music in Boston and they hooked me up with the LTD Viper 50.

The Brief…

I wanted a cheap, (sub £300) guitar with a fixed bridge, dual humbuckers and a nice responsive feel. I am amazed with what I got, Roadhouse gave me a good price, as cheap as any on the internet and even out of the box the set-up was good. None the less I set the truss rod and intonation back at the studio and now the guitar is awesome. The neck is so quick and responsive it makes the guitar easy to play, the pickups are OK but lack the depth of my favoured Seymour Duncan PAF 59 Humbuckers so I think I will upgrade them when I get around to it.

I would be happy to use the stock pickups for live and studio use as they have a certain charm and have a good balance with the bridge pickup nicely breaking up a good valve amp on demand. The machine heads are very smooth and sensibly geared however the head is a little small but for the price I am not even nearly concerned.

The finish is a little patchy and a close inspection reveals a few inperfections but again the guitar is great value for money and will live with much more expensive competition.

My rating 8/10

Other options -

Ephiphone SG (7/10)

Yamaha Pacifica (7.5/10)

Various others.

POTS of Fun!

Guitar repairs can be great fun and they are often not to difficult. By taking  your time and being methodical you can even carry out simple repairs yourself. Often however people don’t want to deal with hacking apart their pride and joy and hand them over to me for repairs.

This week has seen a fanastic Fender Jag-Stang in the shop for a simple volume pot replacement. Strangely the wiring inside the guitar had been modified from the original specification and also many of the joints were in poor condition.

After consulting the client the guitar was restored to original specification with a complete re-wire and a new volume control.

In testing the guitar sounded great and all the tones of my youth came flooding back to me, I can feel my credit card itching in the direction of a Jag-Stang! So in short fixing other peoples guitars is a little bit like the classic TV show “Bullseye” losing contestens were always taunted with, lets have a look at what you could have won!