PRS SE 24 Custom on it's way- thoughts?

[Steve2112]

After many many years of jonsing for PRS- remember when CE22 could be had for 1200 new?- I finally got one on clearance at MF.

This is prolly gonna be big lol"





I do have high expectations. What do YOU think?

[chimi]

Nice! Those are super nice guitars. Ready to play out of the box. I love the necks and quality is fantastic.

[DeepEnd]

Congratulations. Happy (Pending) New Guitar Day.

[wankdeplank]

I love how PRS has improved their budget line to really reflect their top-line stuff. Everybody swears they're amazing guitars (never played one). I love PRS, lucky you, big congrats.

[seibertdr]

I have a friend who has the red one. Plays it in church each week. Sounds great. Would love to get a sunburst.

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

Probably the best reasonable PRS money can buy?

[BeanoBoy]

I got an SE Custom so I could gig with it and leave my '91 PRS Artist home. Swapped out the pups, probably needs new tuners. Cool guitar, very happy with it.

[Steve2112]

Guitar arrived yesterday. First thing is Musician's Friend packed very poorly. Outer box flimsy and half open. No PRS gig bag. Seemed to arrive undamaged. So...okay.

Not very much of a setup job. Neck had quite a bit of bow, the trem was set high and also rocked backward. My experience is a trem works best when set parallel with body. So I fixed all that, and gave it a first run through.

Wide thin neck is really nice. I found lower barre chords easier to do, I've always had trouble there because of a nasty broken wrist. Going up the neck seemed easy enough. The wide spacing makes it easy to solo and bend. The tuners seem firm and positive. Frets seems smooth and solid- but not extremely jumbo. The trem worked very nice for delicate to medium use. Pickups seemed open and smooth and conveyed about everything I wanted them to do. Coil tap is...er ok I guess.

The fit and finish was nice- I didn't notice any blemish or poor workmanship. The binding already has a vintage yellow-ish look. The guitar seemed quite light to me, but then I play LP's and tele's, lol.

Many reviews are very glowing. They all say this guitar is worth 2 or 3 times it's price. I'm not a USA PRS expert- but I've played my share of different guitars, expensive and cheap. In fact my two favs are opposite ends- USA Jackson Custon Dinky and my Epi LP. I'm going to say this guitar is worth about what it costs. Fine. You could say it needs locking tuners. You might want to put a nice set of pups innit. Which would make it a 1000 dollar guitar. Not particularly cheap. Even 700 isn't in the economy class. MF has them on sale at 599...and if you work them over really hard you might get a few more bucks off.

All in all, it's a good guitar. You get decent playability, decent sound, great PRS looks. If you are in the market for a new import SE- now might be a good time. I would not say it's a steal or priceless like many reviewers say. I will probably try 10's on it, it seems little slinky right now. Will also do a follow up review as well.

[BeanoBoy]

Guitar arrived yesterday. First thing is Musician's Friend packed very poorly. Outer box flimsy and half open. No PRS gig bag. Seemed to arrive undamaged. So...okay.

Not very much of a setup job. Neck had quite a bit of bow, the trem was set high and also rocked backward. My experience is a trem works best when set parallel with body. So I fixed all that, and gave it a first run through.

Wide thin neck is really nice. I found lower barre chords easier to do, I've always had trouble there because of a nasty broken wrist. Going up the neck seemed easy enough. The wide spacing makes it easy to solo and bend. The tuners seem firm and positive. Frets seems smooth and solid- but not extremely jumbo. The trem worked very nice for delicate to medium use. Pickups seemed open and smooth and conveyed about everything I wanted them to do. Coil tap is...er ok I guess.

The fit and finish was nice- I didn't notice any blemish or poor workmanship. The binding already has a vintage yellow-ish look. The guitar seemed quite light to me, but then I play LP's and tele's, lol.

Many reviews are very glowing. They all say this guitar is worth 2 or 3 times it's price. I'm not a USA PRS expert- but I've played my share of different guitars, expensive and cheap. In fact my two favs are opposite ends- USA Jackson Custon Dinky and my Epi LP. I'm going to say this guitar is worth about what it costs. Fine. You could say it needs locking tuners. You might want to put a nice set of pups innit. Which would make it a 1000 dollar guitar. Not particularly cheap. Even 700 isn't in the economy class. MF has them on sale at 599...and if you work them over really hard you might get a few more bucks off.

All in all, it's a good guitar. You get decent playability, decent sound, great PRS looks. If you are in the market for a new import SE- now might be a good time. I would not say it's a steal or priceless like many reviewers say. I will probably try 10's on it, it seems little slinky right now. Will also do a follow up review as well.

I got mine used on eBay at a fair price. The seller barely used it and it was set up perfectly He even threw in a hard shell case. The tobacco sunburst finish is really fine, like most PRS guitars, high end or budget.. If I paid $800 , I probably wouldn't be so positive about it. Definitely felt it needed a pickup swap, but tone/pickups are VERY subjective. I had a set of WCRs hanging around, it wasn't like I bought pickups for the guitar.The WCRs are only 2 conductor, I didn't care about coil splitting. I used it at only one rehearsal so far and seemed to be in need of tuning A LOT more often than my '91 PRS Artist. I bend strings A LOT, if that matters. The neck plays well and in tune though, definitely a solid gigging guitar ( for recording, I'd look to the '91 or my Les Paul Std.), especially with a tuner upgrade. All PRS guitars are very comfortable on the upper frets. I never got the tremolo to stay reasonably in tune, not a deal breaker, I'm not a tremolo player. I blocked my '91 and I blocked the SE. I agree, the SE Custom seems a tad light, lighter than my '91 or SE Singlecut , IMO, a better guitar than the Custom, overall. Swapped the Singlecut pickups to Lollar P90s, the Singlecut, to me, has more "mojo" and "girth".

[peskypesky]

I actually played one of those yesterday when I went to the new GC in Times Sq. I had been trying out a bunch of SGs and the PRS was close by.....so I gave it a whirl.

The first thing I noticed was how much thinner the neck profile is than the SG's, with their baseball bats. But after my hand adjusted....I was having a blast playing the PRS. It was my first time playing one, and I can see what all the fuss is about. It was a super nice guitar. Neck is probably a bit too thin for my tastes....but overall build, sound and playability was quite impressive.

[Into Nation]

Sort of a bummer they dropped including the gig bag. Those PRS gig bags are sweet. I was looking at the 245 and the gig bag only came with the Tobacco Burst...

[badpenguin]

Personally,, not my cup of tea. Great build quality, nice finish, etc etc, but it didn't jell with me for some reason. I don't know why it was, but, just couldn't love it. (98 Santana SE)