Description

The LTD 400 Series is designed with the professional performing and recording musician in mind, but is available at a price that even casual players can afford. For people who love the asymmetrical double-cutaway ESP Viper shape but have been waiting for a guitar in a finish other than basic black or natural, the Viper-400 Pinkberry Fade Metallic lets you grab the spotlight in ways you couldn’t have dreamed of before. This classic set-neck design at 24.75” scale is ready to rock hard with a mahogany body and three-piece mahogany neck. You get pro features like Grover tuners, and the amazing and versatile tones from a set of Seymour Duncan’s vintage-voiced ’59 (neck) and hot-rodded JB (bridge) pickups.

SEYMOUR DUNCAN ’59 (SH-1N)
The ’59 Model neck pickup is one of our most popular pickups because it’s so versatile. It’s designed in the spirit of the original P.A.F. humbuckers of the 1950s, with sweet sustain, full-sounding chords, clear and bright attack, but we’ve made a few refinements to slightly modernize the design and make it more adaptable to different styles.

The ’59 has a full low end which is great for adding character to your clean sounds and sustain to your leads. The high end is slightly boosted for improved pick-attack clarity and the mids are a little scooped for an open, smooth sound that’s great for preserving the clarity of the individual notes in a chord. Play softly and the mids and highs seem to fade back, but pick hard and the note will be confident and clear. There isn’t a genre that the ’59 can’t work within. It pairs nicely with a high output bridge humbucker like the JB or Custom but is equally at home with more moderate pickups like the ’59 bridge. And it’s a popular choice for those with humbucker-routed Telecasters as well. And if you order a four-conductor version for coil splitting, its single coil mode is crystal clear.

SEYMOUR DUNCAN JB (SH-4)
The JB Model humbucker is our most popular pickup of all time. Blues, country, fusion, punk, hard rock, grunge, thrash; the JB has always sounded just right, even as new genres emerged around it. The low end is full and powerful, the highs are crisp and detailed and there’s an upper-midrange bump that adds crunch and chunk to heavy chords but translates to a singing, vocal-like quality when you play single notes or solos. Meanwhile the hot output pushes your amp just that little bit harder for more sustain and harmonics. Use it with a 500k volume pot for great high-end cut, or try a 250k pot to sweeten and soften the tone for smoother styles. It pairs particularly well with the Jazz or ’59 neck pickups, and some players even like to use a JB in the neck position for an extra-fat solo tone.

ABOUT ESP:
ESP Company, Limited is a Japanese guitar manufacturer, primarily focused on the production of electric guitars and basses. They are based in both Tokyo, Japan and Los Angeles, California, United States, with two distinct product lines for each respective market. ESP Company manufactures instruments under several names, including “ESP Standard”, “ESP Custom Shop”, “LTD Guitars and Basses”, “Navigator”, “Edwards Guitar and Basses”, and “Grassroots”. www.espguitars.com