Assuming it's a standard KE2, that'd be alder wings with a maple neck-through. Same as your WR1.

Just look at the body styles, though. I'm thinking the Kelly has a fair bit more body wood and mass that haven't been "carved out" as much to fit a Warrior's body style. More wood = more sustain and resonance, typically. Then again, what you're hearing could just be typical variances. Every piece of wood is different, even within the same species. Some are more special than others, just luck of the draw.

its a standard KE2, but it feels more like a Les Paul You're right, the WR1 is a little bit sleeker, but is it that much?

I have two Marty Friedman Kelly models (KE1 and KE1T). The former has a poplar body and is much heavier than the latter which has an alder body.

I've had many Kelly's, many... And there has been a reasonable difference in many of them. The most consistent being the KE3's, but have also owned several KE1's and KE2's and a King Kelly KEXMG, etc.... Shreddermon is right on the money, 2 similliar pieces of wood can have different characteristics, from porosity and density to a gamut of other fancy terms...

I've always wondered what type of wood my 87 strat has.
Something tells me it has poplar body. It sounds so hot

I didn't mean to say that the sound of those guitars is inherently different from each other but because of its weight and a distict difference in its sound I'd thought that maybe from time to time different woods for the "standard" USA-models were used but it was sold as stated in the specs.

From what I understand is that Poplar and Alder were both used interchangeably during the 80s if you didn't spec any particular wood. Both are inexpensive soft hardwoods that Jackson used quite a bit.

I thought older models used poplar, then they switched to alder. Both poplar and alder sound a little similar, but they could both vary in weight.

That's true. I've just checked the catalogues from 1998 and 1999. In 1998 and before they used poplar for USA models and as of 1999 they switched to alder for USA models.

Alder, poplar...

yeah, in the day alder was cheap...not any more, it's become quite the 'designer' wood in homes...looks nice, can be very rustic with knots and such, can be stained to pretty much look like cherry...cr@p for doors though as it swells like a **edited** when subjected to humidity on an uncontrolled jobsite...

IIRC in '83 the Rhoads and whatever other neck throughs were being produced were alder winged, then they changed to poplar in '84, then back to alder sometime later...shrugs shoulders (don't really care about the history of it all per se.)

what I can say is this: as a carpenter who's been chopping up wood and nailing it to walls for the last 30 years I know alder is much more consistent than poplar...sure, it's hard to find in furniture grade (e.g. no knots) in wide pieces, but it's a better wood IMHO...poplar varies greatly in density and properties of being milled...and to boot it can have some intense internal stresses that become quite evident when removing mass amounts of wood (like taking a 1x12 and ripping it down to a 1x10...the stuff can just twist and curve insanely...I rather HATE it, yet am forced to work with it all the time as it is the paint grade wood of choice these days)

point being, I'd much rather have an alder winged instrument than poplar...admittedly that is a generality as each piece of wood is different, and there are surely quality pieces of poplar floating around, just as there are junk pieces of alder around.

Jackson would use whatever wood was spec'd by the dealer that ordered the guitar. Poplar was used quite a bit in the early days, as well as alder and ash. Mahogany was used when requested.

I have a '92 Kelly Custom and a brand new 2016 Kelly Custom Masterbuild. Both has the same specs but I did not specify the type of wood.

My 92 Kelly is about 1/4 to 1/2 pound heavier than my new Kelly. My new Kelly sounds a tad warmer than my 92.

I assume the 2016 Kelly is made of Adler while my 92 is poplar(?).

Do you have any pictures of them?

Jackson seemed to use poplar a lot on their bolt-on guitars from the mid-late 80s. Alder and poplar are fairly similar in tone, but as xenophobe mentioned, poplar tends to be a bit heavier. It can sound really good, but is maybe a tad less consistent than alder. When you get a bad piece, it can be kind of dead and flat-sounding.