Paul Reed Smith CE24
A USA made series instrument, at a great price. In these days, that marks a winner. Why would I, a long time PRS owner, with sufficient PRS guitars already, consider another one? Particularly a bolt neck version?
If I answer “because it’s great”, while accurate that’s not a lot of help I fear.
Here’s my reasoning.
I have only two other PRS guitars that are 24 fret versions. While I don’t spend a lot of time at the dusty end, I like the option to do so. The CE24 also has the neck profile similar to my 1990 PRS that was called Wide Thin back in the day. All the other necks are either Wide Fat or the normal Pattern neck, whatever that means. Descriptors should actually be descriptive in my opinion and Pattern tells me nothing at all.
I’ve been playing the guitar through a Tone King Imperial II and a hand wired VOX AC30. It sounds great, and is very quiet, even when the coils are tapped. The neck is thinner than I am most familiar with, but that is with intent on my part. The fingerboard is rosewood and while I have no issue with other fingerboard woods, rosewood is both familiar and comfortable. The strings will need replacing as I do not know how long the guitar was hanging in the store and I will be dropping from 10s to 9.5s which are my preference. I did receive a set of PRS 9.5s as a gift so I will be using those instead of my usual NYXL 9.5s in this case.
The finish is described as Sapphire Smokewrap. It is very nice and while this guitar is not a 10 top, it looks a ten to me. The mahogany body is stained dark, and the edges of the maple cap are not scraped to reveal the light coloured maple as on most of my other PRS guitars or as shown on the PRS website as I write this. This leads me to believe that this guitar is an older version. I cannot tell when playing it and it looks brand new to me. The maple neck on this beast is stained dark, different from my other CE guitars, both CE22 instruments. The pickups are different from my older guitars which tend to be darker and less bright. The pickups in the CE24 have a wider tonal range, and if you use the coil split function can even get a bit Stratty.
The PRS trem is as smooth as expected, helpful as I work on the skills to play with my fingers only and to ride the trem with the tip of my little finger a la Jeff Beck. Once I have that skill to a partially competent level, I will add to it by doing volume rolls as well to learn to create the strings sound that the masterful Mr. Beck achieves. Learning is a lifetime endeavour.
The Tone King has a lovely reverb, but the AC30 is completely dry, so I am using a pedal board for effects in front of the amp switcher (a Radial Big Shot ABY for those interested). I am using a Walrus Fathom for the reverb on the VOX. The Tone King has a really nice drive channel that is foot switchable, but I tend to set amps clean and use pedals for drive. The Nobels ODR Mini has turned out to be an excellent light overdrive, and if I need something more, there is a JHS Morning Glory on the board after the Nobels. Both are great individually and stack together nicely with these very open sounding pickups into either amplifier.
I like the versatility of the CE24. It delivers a wide range of tones from the flexible pickup infrastructure and is incredibly easy to play. It’s not a guitar that I have to struggle with and while I advocate stretching and loosening up first, I will often just pick up the guitar and I don’t develop any pain in the wrists or hands.
Fit and finish are superb. I understand that the SE models are all inspected in Maryland prior to shipping to PRS dealers, but there is a difference between the fine SE models and the Maryland built models. This is obviously my opinion, based solely on my own experiences. I have had the good fortune to play a number of SE models and while all were fine, none screamed at me to take any of them home. The CE24 is certainly more money, but it also just fits so very well that when I picked it up, it was like I had been playing it happily for years. At this point in my life this is really important to me.
The other thing I always check for, as regular readers will know, is what the guitar sounds like acoustically. I have been very fortunate, due to superb craftsmanship from PRS, to never pick up a Maryland built guitar and find it lacking acoustically. This body has incredible sustain and tapping the body produces a clear tone with no mud, or enharmonic overtones. I have determined that wood matters and the wood in this instrument has great native tone and resonance. This contributes to excellent clean tones when plugged into an amp set clean. I also find it a strong launch point if I will be using an overdrive pedal, or simply overdriving the amp itself. I look for a tonal openness in the instruments that I buy. I fail to adequately describe what I mean by openness but it’s one of those things that I know when I hear it.
Short Samples
For the two attached short samples, I placed a Sennheiser 906 about a foot away and on axis to the Tone King Imperial Mk II. The 906 ran to an Apollo Solo with an SSL E channel strip in the Unison slot using the Chuck Zwicky Rock Guitar preset. The solo is connected via Thunderbolt to a Windows 11 machine running Presonus Studio One for recording.
Pickup Tones
This sample is the guitar with no board effects and no post process plugins at all. It’s just a set of basic chord tones as follows;
Bridge
Middle
Neck
Coil Split Bridge
Coil Split Middle
Coil Split Neck
The two sets of three were recorded on different tracks with the coil split fader set a bit higher as there is less output from the guitar in the coil split mode.
Overdrive Tones
This recording has effects active on the pedal board. There is a Nobels ODR-1 Mini for the overdrive, followed by a JHS Clover boost at unity gain. This is followed by a Walrus ARP-87 delay and finally a BBE Sonic Maximizer. In post processing the single track was duplicated and each track was panned, one left and one right to create more space. No post processing effects were used. The pickup selector was in the middle position and tone was at full. Volume was about 3 ½ as in the first recording as I keep the guitar volume lower so I can turn the amp up more. I learned this recording technique from Rick Beato and find it very agile.
This final sample was done differently. It’s the guitar into a REVV D20 amplifier using the Marshall 1960A Two Notes model going direct into the Apollo Solo. No pedal board effects, the guitar is dry into Studio One. The initial track is copied twice. Track 1 is panned 45 left, Track 2 is panned 45 right and Track 3 is in the centre but with it’s level way down. Tracks 1 and 2 have a UA Pure Plate plugin applied with the mix at about 30%. Track 3 has a low speed, short delay flanger plugin followed by a Kramer tape plugin set to normal bias and used tape configuration.
In Conclusion
I expected nothing less from a USA made PRS guitar. This CE 24 is superb and I have no gripes or concerns at all. At first I was a bit concerned about the finish on the back of the neck until I played it. It’s as smooth as the roasted maple neck on my Tom Anderson Guitarworks custom build. The pickups sound great, rich but never muddy. From the factory, the setup was perfect and I find the coil split useful when I want that tone. It’s my opinion that you cannot go wrong with a Maryland built PRS in general and that the CE series whether a CE 22 or as in my case a CE 24 is a win.
If you have any questions, post them here. Thanks for reading and until next time, peace.
