PRS Guitars SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo | Electric Factory | RRP: $2899
You’d be hard pressed to find a more versatile guitar, that covers all bases, than the PRS Guitars SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo. Unveiled earlier this year, this Custom 24 is a dual humbucker’d, PRS Patented Tremolo equipped tone machine, all wrapped up in the beautiful finishings and aesthetics that PRS are so distinctly known for.
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The Custom 24 is a 24 fret model, with PRS’s famous bird inlays communicating the frets to the players along the rosewood fretboard. The neck is constructed from maple, with a neck-thru design onto the semi-hollow body featuring a single F-Hole. The back wood is mahogany, with a maple top and flame maple veneer to complete the look. The top carve is a subtle and classy ‘Shallow Violin’, borrowing from more classical stringed instruments.
Dual 85/15 “S” Pickups power the guitar, both tappable via the Push/Pull tone control for a wider array of sounds. What elevates this Custom 24 is the addition of a piezo pickup, with a separate output if you wish! The PRS SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo has two output jacks, the ‘Mix/Piezo’ jack that allows you to blend the different pickups together via the separate Master Volumes, or by separating the magnetic humbuckers and piezo pickup to send to separate effects, amps or channels for live or recording!
In the hands, the PRS Guitars SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo is comfortable. The carves and body shape make way for your arms and body to nestle in against it, the Wide Thin neck shape providing great access to every fret. The deep carve at the lower horn further aids and abets your ability to shift up to the 24th fret and beyond, without any guitar body getting in your way. The guitar is well weighted, the gloss finish is solid but not sticky, and the whole affair stays in tune well, thanks to the PRS Designed Tuners and Tremolo at the other end.
SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo
Sonically, the PRS Guitars SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo really moves into a league of its own. Even acoustically, the semi-hollow design offers some extra chime and body to an otherwise solid-body guitar, the semi-hollow nature not attracting the feedback that fully hollow guitars do. A semi-hollow design really is the best of both worlds!
Plugged in, and using just the humbuckers initially, the guitar rocks; literally, emotionally and sonically. The 85/15 “S” pickups are featured in a huge swathe of PRS’s range, and for good reason. They have the heft and punch of a big fat humbucker, but retaining the clarity and present voicing of a single coil, all without the hum! The 85/15 “S” pickups specifically allows the carefully chosen woods to shine through, helped by high quality hardware that let the strings breathe, resonate and sing.
Blending in a little of the piezo and the acoustic quality of the semi-hollow guitar is brought to life. There’s more clarity, depth and snap to my playing, particularly when I venture beyond the 12th fret into shred territory. This isn’t to say that the lower frets aren’t augmented, they as well have an articulate, present voice to them, especially when the piezo volume is dimed and the tone is split 50/50.
Piezo pickup
It would be amiss of me to not explore splitting the signals, sending both signals directly to separate amps for testing, allowing me to further blend and process them independently. Frankly, the piezo sounds stellar alone, the emotive, bright nature of the acoustic sound of a guitar is often missing from an electric guitar’s tone, but thankfully here I am blending it back in.
The humbuckers offered me a little room to move, sounding great on their own, but equally good with a little grit via pedals or my dirtier amps. Big, bolstered humbuckers tone or snappy, funky grooves a plenty. There’s nothing missing from the PRS SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo!
PRS are known for quality builds, both in aesthetics and in sound. The PRS SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo is no exception, tying together PRS’ classic design with some modern, albeit classic, additions. The addition of an F-Hole revitalises the design, offering a really classy aesthetic as well as a subtle acoustic quality that chimes and sings throughout the guitar and into the pickups. The pickups themselves, PRS’ own 85/15 “S”, offer a wide array of tones, and that’s even before you’ve added in the piezo.
Clarity and definition are just two buzz words I had buzzing around when playing with the piezo, either blended in subtly or overtly, both ends of the spectrum sounding fantastic.
The maple and mahogany body blend well with the maple neck and veneer, offering a solid instrument that resonates like only a PRS can, their in-house hardware doing the job and keeping everything in tune for a whole afternoon’s worth of testing for this review. The PRS SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo is a well built, great sounding guitar from PRS. Who’s shocked? Not us.
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