Review : Is the PRS SE CE 24 Standard Satin the answer to skyrocketing guitar prices?
The PRS SE CE 24 Standard Satin has been heralded as the answer to the pain of skyrocketing prices for new guitars. Is it the answer? Let’s find out.
What’s the Excitement?
The excitement is of course the equation relating quality and purchase price, particularly in the context of big name guitar makers. PRS is often included in what media calls the Big 3 with Fender and Gibson, yet the company itself never worries about this media positioning. “Are we number three, really” PRS execs have been quoted as asking.
What we do know is the PRS guitars made in Maryland have a long standing reputation for delivering superb quality in a production built intrument that is better than any of big, medium or similar makers. It has also become a standard belief that the SE line, built by Cor-Tek in a dedicated factory in Indonesia are unparalleled in their quality for the price. Whether this is true is solely the decision of the owner and never the media pundits or paid influencers. Nonetheless, I hear this CONSISTENTLY from PRS SE owners who actually play their guitars.
I want to thank Fraser at The Arts Music Store for arranging short term access to a PRS SE CE 24 Standard Satin for this review. These guitars are very popular and challenging to keep in stock and at $669 CAD including a decent gig bag, that is a very strong price point. Let me be clear here. I have tested and reviewed a number of guitars in this price range, and with the exception of the Ibanez S that I reviewed a few months back, all have left me with a bad case of lunch bag letdown and all needed significant work to make them decent players. All were fixable, but I don’t think you should have to pay to have a new guitar made playable. Good shops will fix the worst things before you take the guitar home, but even then some pieces will need extensive work.
First Impressions
The guitar provided for me is in the Turquoise finish. It is also available in a Black and a Wine Red finish, all Satin of course. The guitar arrived in a very decent gig bag, about the same as the bag provided with the far more expensive US Silver Sky. While I think the bag is a cheap thing for a Silver Sky, it is a very decent value for a guitar in this price point.
The first thing I noticed on opening the bag was an aroma. It was coming off the fretboard and was not pleasant. Moving on I found the guitar ready to go, right out of the bag with excellent action and playability. As it should be, no work required. This is consistent with the other PRS SE guitars that I have tried out, now numbering into the twenties. It really is good to go.
Specifications
This is a solid mahogany body, my example appearing to be three pieces. The body is sanded, but the mahogany has no pore filler, so it feels irregular and you can definitely feel the pores in the wood. This has no negative impact on tone. The top carve is what PRS calls a Shallow Violin and I would concur it is not as deep as on my most recent core CE 24. The lack of heavy finish and decent mahogany keeps this body reasonably lightweight.
The neck as 24 frets with a 25” scale that due to body design will not be a reach for a smaller person. I think that this is a good advantage. The neck is made of maple using a scarf joint for the headstock. This is a common neck construction model, and scarf joints have been proven to be reliable over many decades. The fingerboard is rosewood of a very decent piece of wood, but I think the smell is the dye used to make the colour dark and uniform. PRS makes no notations about this, it is assumption on my part. The fretwork is the usual PRS perfect, and while the frets are not stainless steel as we find on some China made imports, the fret quality appears to be very good, given my limited time with the instrument. The radius is 10” so easy to make chords on and no strings choke out on aggressive bends. There are the standard PRS bird inlays in the 24 fret layout. The neck is a bolt on, as on all CE guitars. The neck is referred to as wide thin, which I suspect is similar to the US Pattern Thin.
The hardware starts with the PRS Patented Tremolo bridge which as we know is really a vibrato. The tuners are “PRS Designed” which implies made elsewhere. They are very smooth and I found only minor slippage with the fresh strings. Aggressive use of my string stretcher alleviated that issue to a great extent. It specifies a PRS nut, but there is not comment on material use, which usually means plastic.
The electronics feature a pair of PRS 85/15 S pickups with a three way toggle and a coil split on the tone pot to acheive single coil tones as desired. The pickups sounded good to me, but in my testing are not the same as PRS US 85/15 pickups. They sound a bit more bitey and hollow than the US ones. Not bad, different, but not my cup of tea, The pots are very smooth and there isn’t that death by mud effect when the volume or tone is rolled off.
The guitar comes strung with PRS 9-42 strings. Whomever PRS uses for strings makes a nice string that stretches in well and has a comfortable feel and allows finger slide readily.
Playing Experience
I have long experience with PRS Guitars, most all US made although I do own a couple of SE models in the baritone range. The guitar hangs nicely on a strap and is very comfortable to play for extended periods. The pickups offer a wide range of tones, and all are usable, but different from US made 85/15s if that matters.
The guitar holds tune quite well and the PRS bridge works as expected. I was less enamoured of the tuners, but they are as good as the tuners in most all guitars in the price range although are much smoother to turn than most.
I played the guitar through a variety of amps including a 59 Fender Bassman, my Mesa Boogie Mark V, a Blackstar Club 40 II and my Tone King Imperial Mark II. The guitar is amp friendly. I also played it through my Strymon studio board that ends in a Strymon Iridium and it was fantastic, both clean and overdriven using Strymon overdrive pedals. Through FRFRs in stereo, the hollowness when clean is apparent but readily addressed by rolling off the tone control a bit on the guitar.
The frets are very smooth, not too wide and not too tall. I think that they will suit the needs of most any player.
Example Tones
To record the samples I ran the guitar straight into a UA Apollo into Logic Pro. I used Neural’s excellent Morgan SW50R amp and cabinet plugin. The Morgan is a boutique amplifier and perhaps costs a lot more than the amp that the target buyer might also own, but it is superb for listening to pickups.
The first sequence is to show the sound of the pickups in humbucker and then in coil split modes. The volume and tone on the guitar were both set to 10.
The sequence goes bridge, middle, neck for humbuckers and then repeats for the coil split variants. I found that the 85/15 S pickups sounded quite nice in this amp. For this sequence there are no effects enabled, and no other processing was done in Logic Pro.
The second sequence uses the same guitar and amp, but with some Neural effects engaged. The Amp settings remain the same and I include the screenshots for the effects prior to the example.
Good To Go Kit
When getting started or even upgrading, there is often more to the success than just the guitar, so I have decided to include a Good To Go recommendation kit. For this guitar, here’s my kit list.
This guitar deserves a versatile amp. Why not have a look at the recently updated Catalyst 60 from Line6
High quality guitar cable - 20ft or less. Good cables last and are quiet. Cheap cables are a horror show. Consult your sales professional for their recommendation but I like cables from Pig Hog, Ernie Ball, Digiflex and D’Addario. Avoid coiled cables, they look cool to some but are noise factories.
Gig Bag - This guitar comes with a gigbag.
Guitar Stand - Hercules make the best stands but you can often get a house brand that will hold the guitar when it is not in its case and you are not holding it. Note that for this guitar, the stand MUST be one of the headstock cradle type.
Guitar Strap - Every guitar needs a strap and every player, even sitting should use a strap. Gravity always works and a strap will save your guitar at some point. Lots of choices. Avoid fabric straps where the edges are sharp which hurts, Seat belt material is cheap, but the edges can be rough. I recommend real leather that has suede on the inside, which helps rein in instruments that are neck heavy. My favourite straps come from Walker and Williams.
Tuner - No guitar is complete without a tuner that goes with it all the time. Pedal tuners are great, but every player needs an in case tuner, and the Snark tuners are hard to beat. I prefer the cheaper models that take clock batteries as for the difference in price to the rechargeable unit, you can order a sheet of batteries from Amazon, or you may find a card of them in the shop from D’Addario priced very low.
String Changing Tool - The D’Addario tools are great. One tool has a string winder, a string cutter and a bridge pin puller. Every guitarist needs this as every guitarist should learn to change his or her own strings. It’s not hard, and that quality guitar shop might even offer a free session on how to do string changes efficiently that you can attend live. Also, there will be about a zillion YouTube videos on the subject.
Wrapping Up
This is a superb guitar for the money. It is an SE CE 24 model, but without the significant work on the body to fill pores and put a really beautiful finish on it. For the price point, I don’t see anything in the market that is superior to it, and only the Ibanez S model that I reviewed would be equivalent in quality, playability and tone. At $669, it’s pretty hard to beat. Also interesting is that more expensive SE guitars use Swamp Ash for the bodies and as that wood gets scarcer, more comes from low in the trunk or stump and gets really heavy. Unpleasantly so. That’s not an issue with this guitar. You could wear it on a strap and play it for hours.
If you decide to get one, please consider getting yours from The Arts Music Store as they help support the channel and please support the channel yourself by becoming a member on Patreon. Send in questions or post comments, I read and respond to all. Thanks as always. I’m Ross Chevalier and we will speak again soon.
