ESP USA Viper Guitar, Flame Maple Top, Seymour Duncan Saturday Night Specials, Violet Shadow Fade

PLAYER'S PERSPECTIVE

It's always a treat to get a beautiful USA-made ESP into the shop. Built in ESP's USA factory right here in California, these instruments are top-of-the-line instruments on par with their renowned, artisan-made Japanese Custom Shop guitars. This one's in an absolutely stunning Violet Shadow Fade gradient finish with a flame maple top.

The Viper has long been one of ESP's most popular body shapes, and this luthier-built version is for the more discerning players wanting a bit more in terms of build quality and craftsmanship. This is a shredder's dream with killer playability in a simple and sleek package. The unmistakably meticulous attention to detail from top to bottom is stunning. The fretwork is pure perfection and allows for incredibly low action. A simple control layout gives you everything you need and nothing you don't.

This guitar features Seymour Duncan Saturday Night Special pickups. These pickups are intended to capture that 70s/80s rock tone - think somewhat in the ballpark of Van Halen - and do so amazingly. They're not necessarily super hot, but just a little more overwound than vintage PAFs - just enough to scream and hold up awesomely under higher gain settings for hard rock and metal whilst retaining clarity to play classic rock, blues, and jazz with lower gain. The versatility is even further increased with the coil-split on the tone pot.

Details

Crafted at our ESP USA facility in Southern California, the USA Viper ups the ante on the ultimate offset double-cutaway guitar shape that so many ESP players have used over the years. The USA Viper offers a mahogany body with optional flamed maple and quilted maple tops and a wide variety of gloss and satin translucent finishes to allow the figured wood grain to be highlighted (solid colors are also available). These guitars offer smooth set-thru construction at 24.75” scale, with a three-piece thin U-shaped mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard with 22 extra-jumbo Jescar stainless steel frets and mother-of-pearl split-flag inlays.

We chose the very best components available for the USA Viper, including Gotoh locking tuners, TonePros locking TOM bridge and tailpiece, Dunlop strap locks, and a bone nut. Pickups for the USA Viper include a variety of world-class Seymour Duncan (passive) and EMG (active) models, with a push-pull coil split control on the tone knob for passive pickup models. The USA Viper includes a high-quality ESP USA form-fitting hard shell case.