Disclosed are methods and apparatus for initializing an equalizer in a diversity receiver. In one aspect, the initialization includes estimating a channel impulse response (CIR) for each receiver chain of the diversity receiver; determining noise power estimates for each receiver chain based on the CIRs; and adaptively adjusting equalizer taps of each receiver chain based on the noise power estimates. In one aspect, the adaptive adjusting of the equalizer taps is based on scaling the CIR and covariance metrics for the receiver chain with higher noise power by a scale factor determined from the noise power estimates. In another aspect, the adaptive adjusting of the equalizer taps is based adaptive conditioning on the diagonal of the covariance matrix.