Seeing Ben without his PRS is heartbreaking, it was him and Mark Tremonti that first made me look into a PRS. LTD's and ESP's are brilliant guitars mind and some of the ones with active pick ups are brilliant for really high gain aggressive stuff. But they are not in the same league in terms of quality or tone.
THIS +1,000,000
I've recently sold my ESP Eclipse EC-1000, a guitar that I found to be the biggest let down when it came to expected quality considering it was made in Japan. The painted on binding was uneven or incomplete in a couple places (black w/gold), the 3 way selector was always loose, and one of the pots almost fell off because it was so loose. BTW, the biggest differences between the LTD and ESP versions is that the ESP has 22 frets instead of 24 and the LTD has an extra compartment for the 9 Volt.