Hey folks. Now this is pure hypothesis, but what would you do if you had more SE Silver Sky bodies and necks than you needed? Perhaps put in different pickups and call it a different model?

I’ve heard this story and have no sense of its veracity, but it did make me chuckle. It cannot be true because the headstock on the SE Silver Sky is flipped and it has a 25.5 scale length and a different neck carve than the NF 3 which is a pattern thin carve with 25 inch scale length. The bodies though…

There is another physical difference and that is the colour options, where the SE Silver Sky colours are kind of staid, whereas the NF3 colours are more alive and “fun” particularly the Metallic Orange on my sample arranged by the fine people at The Arts Music Store. Under bland lighting it’s boring but hit that colour with a spotlight and it makes me think of an old Plymouth Barracuda in Tor Red. Way cool.

But no one buys a guitar based on colour right?????

Overview

What makes the SE NF3 different from all the other SE models are the pickups. While the SE Silver Sky has single coil pickups the SE NF3 has PRS Narrowfield Pickups, specifically DDS types which sounds like a Chicago pizza. DDS stands for Deep Dish Type S. These are made in Indonesia and are supposed to be similar to the pickups in the far more expensive NF53 USA made guitar which are called DD or Deep Dish. Regular readers will recall that I reviewed the PRS Myles Kennedy earlier this year and it too has narrowfield pickups but different from the NF53. As I did not care for the MK at all, I was hoping that the NF3 pickups would sound better. In short, they do.

Narrowfield simply means that the way the pickup is designed, the magnetic field that the string vibrates in is narrower than in a traditional humbucker, but be assured that the Narrowfield pickups are humbucking. And they sound like it. If you are looking for single coil spank, this is not the guitar for you. I also wanted to compare them to the very unique Narrowfields in my 25th Anniversary Swamp Ash Special. a guitar that sounds like no other PRS, or any other guitar for that matter.

Specifications

My evaluation instrument came with the rosewood fingerboard, so I am putting in the PRS specs for that version. You can also get an NF3 with a maple fingerboard and that is the only difference between the instruments.

Impressions

I was surprised that with a poplar body which is a very soft wood, that it would be a light guitar. Nope, it’s heavier than any alder body of the same size. Not awful, but if you have bad wrist arthritis holding it at arm’s length is not fun. Once on a strap, it’s fine.

I mentioned the beauty of the Metallic Orange but the guitar is also available in Ice Blue Metallic, Gunmetal Grey and Pearl White. I have seen the Blue and the Grey and they look awesome.

The scratchplate is looks to be two ply but is still quite thin. My example guitar has a black scratchplate with a fine white reveal which looks pretty nice. It has a five way switch and thankfully the volume and tone pots are normal, no push pull challenges with them. They are equipped with the same lampshade knobs as PRS Core models. I would prefer to have the volume knob closer to the bridge pickup personally but it’s position is not awful and the vibrato arm is not always in the way with this layout.

There is really good upper fret access, very much like the SE Silver Sky and the Pattern Thin neck is very easy on the hands. The fretboard radius is very comfortable and it never fretted out even with excessive bends. Action at the 12th was 2mm on the low E and 1.75mm on the high E. There was no relief in the neck, so there was nothing to my mind that needed tweaking to fit my preferences. The fretwork is excellent, well polished and no fret sprout. Pretty much what I have come to expect from PRS SE guitars. Top line work in a very well priced instrument.

The three Narrowfield pickups were set to reasonable heights and produced decent tones, not single coil but not full humbucker either. In my Tone King Gremlin, called Mikey because it hates everything, the sound was warm, but never bright. Going to a Blackface Fender Twin was a very different story and to me, more pleasing because as I can still hear past 14KHz, I notice when it’s not there. However in the Lead channel on the Gremlin, the NF3 roars beautifully. With the right amp, these pickups will produce a beautiful overdrive without any pedals needed. It’s a real pleasure to get decent OD with a pedal on the clean channel on the Gremlin because it’s not really a pedal friendly amp. I used a Tumnus, a Diamond J Drive, and a Hudson Broadcast with the Gremlin’s clean channel and was very pleased, but I still ended up preferring the Gremlin’s lead channel without any pedals. Punching in a JAM Pedals Rooster Treble Boost brought the high end back on both channels so I am impressed because if Mikey can tolerate it, that tells me that the guitar has the right bones.

Unlike the SE Silver Sky, the headstock has the same orientation as the rest of the PRS family. The tuners are PRS designed as found on most all SE models and work just fine. While they are not locking tuners, which I prefer as a rule, they are smooth and never bind.

The volume and tone knobs are smooth, and the sound doesn’t turn to sludge until you roll the tone off completely. I did not find a massive loss of treble when rolling off the volume, and while I didn’t remove the control covers to check for a treble bleed, I like what PRS has done here.

Switching is just like a five way Stratocaster, no secret squirrel stuff, just what you expect. A good thing considering the reality that well over 90% of buyers never look at a manual or spec sheet.

The spring cover on the back is not recessed into the body. I know some people get annoyed about this, but this way you don’t need suction cup to lift it off. You can see from the photo that the guitar arrives with four springs installed. The neck mount is a four bolt system with a smooth rounded neck plate. The belly cut on the back is nice and aggressive which aids the comfort of sitting with the guitar or playing it on a strap while standing.

The guitar comes with the standard PRS SE Gig Bag, which is probably ok if you are driving to or being driven to lessons, but it has poor protection and is very thin. If you are travelling or going to gigs, you want to get a much better gig bag or case. My recommendation for a reliable gig bag with neck support and good padding is the Profile PREB906, about $75

Example Tones

I vacilllated a lot on what amplifier to use for the recorded samples and finally decided to use the Twin Reverb, and recorded it old school by sticking an SM57 on axis at the speaker grill positioned at the edge of the dust cover. Basic, but a proven setup.

The Twin has a dedicated pedal board and for the clean tones, I disabled everything but the Cali 76 compressor. When I wanted to get some overdrive, I used my Origin Effects Halcyon Orange pedal as one of the great things about a Twin is that it stays clean no matter how deafening it gets. I used the built in spring reverb for both clean and OD.

I took the SM57 to a UA Apollo and used UA Console to put a Helios 69 preamp in the UNISON slot with a setup that I like for electric guitars. There is a snap of the Helios settings below the examples. That then went into Logic Pro. This is the first time I have used the 11.1 version and there were no issues with this session.

I was getting some ambient noise from the neighbour’s leaf blower so I used Apple’s own included Noise Gate to knock that out in the quite sections of each sample clip.

I recorded each sample clip raw except for the preamp, and after the recordings were done, sent the tracks to their own bus where I used a Toneboosters Equalizer Pro to my preference. Very subtle, snap is below. When I got to the clip with the Origin Systems Halcyon Gold drive, in addition to the Equalizer Pro, I added a Toneboosters Multiband Compressor with 4 separate bands. The Toneboosters stuff is still new to me, and I am very impressed with the quality of these very inexpensive plugins. A shoutout to Studio Life 101 for the introduction and great videos.

The first clip is just an E Major chord played in all five pickup selector postions, starting at the neck.

This clip is a simple chord progression, again repeated for each pickup selector position, starting at the neck

Next is a basic B minor riff using position 4

Pretty much the same thing but this time with the pickup selector in position 2.

The final clip is with the selector in position 1 and an Origin Systems Halcyon Gold with mid level overdrive. Interesting, not single coils but brighter and more open than humbuckers.

My closing take is that the NF3 delivers a nice variety of tones out of its pickups, and from a versatility perspective, it’s probably more usable than just a pair of humbuckers, or a set of single coils, or even humbuckers with coil taps.

Wrapping Up

It is my position that this is a fabulous guitar. The fretwork is perfect and so was the setup right out of the box. The factory strings on PRS guitars are much better than what you find on Fenders and Gibsons, so it is immediately nicer to play. The guitar sounds great into clean amps, but also held its ground into amps that are really designed to be overdriven. It fared very well in my Soldano Mini and the PRS HDRX head. As I write this in November 2024, PRS has a 15% on all SE guitars, fulfilled right at the store. No coupons, no codes, no mail ins. The discounted price is on the tag. That means that right now the NF3 is only $917 CAD, and that makes it a heck of a good buy in my book. I would choose it, because the player isn’t going to need an upgrade in a few years or grow out of it. My personal opinion, is that it is a better player and I like it over the PRS SE Silver Sky, although that too is a terrific instrument if you want that three single coil thing happening. Invariably someone will ask, “ok but would you buy one?” Presuming I had the space, the funds, and did not already have a 3 pickup guitar with the US version of these pickups, I would. I recommend this guitar.

If you want to get yourself one, please consider buying from The Arts Music Store, either live in person or via their online store. They help me get units to share reviews with you and I would appreciate it if you choose to support the store.

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