In the paper, two adaptive control schemes based on characteristic model (CM) method are proposed to achieve great dynamic performance for servo motor drive applications. Two second‐order CMs of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) are established based on the difference equation method. An adaptive controller consisting of four control laws is designed based on CMs. The proposed controller implements an improved maintaining/tracking control law that considers load torque ripple, plus a golden‐section adaptive control law, a logic differential control law, and a logic integral control law. In addition, two different servo systems using adaptive controllers are established, both of which are simple to implement and can achieve accurate position‐tracking or speed‐tracking in a servo drive system. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed adaptive control schemes are experimentally tested and verified on a servo motor drive platform.