Review : PRS SE Angelus A60E

In this review, I take a long look at the PRS SE Angelus A60E.

Regular readers know that I am a fan and customer of Paul Reed Smith guitars. I own a number of them acquired over 30+ years. The ones that I have bought, I have kept because although I may have more than one of a particular model, the instruments are sufficiently different to warrant doubles. I play for my own pleasure and except for this site, never share anything that I record, because I choose not to do so. Call it lack of confidence, selfishness or anti-social behaviour, it doesn’t matter to me, so long as I get some joy out of playing the guitar.

I own two PRS SE products. Both are baritones. The first is a semi-hollow with soapbox pickups. It plays nice and has a distinct sound. The second which I play much more than the first is a few years old and is the same as the currently available SE 277 model with humbuckers. It fits me better, and as I tend to use baritones for ambient stuff rather than metal or other music happy in the lower register.

I have tried other PRS SE electrics and come away underwhelmed. The Paul’s guitar and the 7 string signature (apologies, I cannot recall the name of the artist) did not work for me, and with the exception of the recently released DGT SE have never bonded with one of the SE models, despite their high build quality. A guitar fits me, or it doesn’t. In this, we are all unique.

I only preface this review because I enter the SE deep dive process with some negative bias. I had tried the P20e and returned it within a week. I love parlour sized acoustics, but the P20E was disappointing. It didn’t feel good and I really disliked the acoustic and the amplified sound. I have played in stores the Angelus SE A40E and the Angelus SE A50E and they were fine, but I thought at the time, that I could do better in tonal quality for the same or less money. They were not bad in any way, they just did not fit me.

My friend James Ridings over at Sweetwater said that I would probably like the SE Angelus A60E better but they were out of stock, and being in Canada, I prefer when I can, to support local music stores. In speaking with the owner of The Arts Music Store, i was told that they had recently cancelled an order for an A60E but could likely reopen it. I asked if they could, with the understanding that I would not buy the guitar if I did not like it. The owner agreed and the guitar arrived.

Initial Findings

The guitar comes in a very nice hardshell case. While I have a storage unit full of cases, I was impressed to get a properly fitted and well built case with the A60AE given that most acoustics in this price point come packed in a cardboard box and do not even include a gig bag. This particular guitar was built in June 2022 according to the handwritten label inside the guitar and the case contained a PRS Maryland inspection tag dated April 2023.

The action was set up perfectly for me but as expected, the guitar was out of tune. Tuning up with the excellent PRS closed tuners was smooth but a bit stiff and I would hear regular ping noises indicating that the strings were catching on something. A string should never make a ping noise in final tuning. That is a flashing red light that there is something wrong. The fingerboard is bound in maple, and the fret ends did not protrude in any way, but the frets looked dirty and whatever the factory strings were, they were long past dead. When I removed them, they had painted ball ends, like D’Addario does, but I do not believe that they were D’Addarios. PRS does have their own line of strings, but I do not think that they make them in house. I checked them with a measuring tool and found them to be 12-53s and very stiff.

As BB King often said, “why do you work so hard”, and I keep coming back to an excellent video done by Rick Beato and Rhett Shull that surprised everyone that string gauge made no audible difference in recorded tone. I tend to prefer D’Addario XS 11-51 coated acoustic strings in general but as I intended to try more finger style than strumming on the Angelus A60E, I went with a set of D’Addario 10-49 XT coated acoustic strings. The XT strings are a bit less bright than the XS and I expected that the hard woods and stiffer back and sides might sound better with the less bright strings.

As I always do, I used a set of fret erasers of increasing smoothness with a fingerboard guard. This brought back a nice shine and definitely made the fret surfaces smoother. I do not believe that they were bad, but who knows how long the guitar spent in a container on the sea and in transit before reaching PRS Maryland for final inspection. I also used some Jim Dunlop fretboard cleaner and the board was not so bad. Following that I applied two coats of Monty’s Instrument Food, the version without the dye. The fretboard was much better with the wax.

The nut on this guitar is bone, and using the tool that I use for nut lube, I could feel irregularities in the nut slots that would account for the ping noise while tuning. I have a set of professional fret files in different gauges and having practiced extensively on sacrificial nuts, felt comfortable that I could improve things on a guitar that I do not own. It only tool a couple of gentle passes in the slots to smooth things out without cutting the slots deeper. Then some nut lube and time to restring.

When I was removing the old strings I found that none of my bridge pin pullers could get a grip on the bridge pins, because the sit in recesses. This necessitated in the use of a small probe to get under the pin and raise it enough to use any pin puller, including the PRS string winder that appeared in a Christmas stocking. PRS does not specify the pin material, but it felt like plastic to me. The saddle is bone and while if I were buying new pins, I would buy bone or the Martin Liquid Metal pins, these held the strings in place well. I also put some nut lube on the saddle as I always do. I will go into materials detail further, but I have to say that the dark ebony fretboard with abalone birds and curly maple binding looks fantastic and after the work I did, the instrument sounded like a completely different guitar.

I do not know what the Maryland inspection entails. I know that inspections have to be fast otherwise they turn into cost blackholes. Overall the guitar arrived in excellent shape, so all I can say on that is that the PRS SE acoustics will need the string change and the usual tweaking one finds with any new guitar. I have seen worse acoustics out of the Gibson Boseman factory on opening.

As you would expect, I was dubious about the Fishman piezo pickup. Everyone knows I have a firm dislike for piezo pickups with particular disdain to those from Fishman. That’s a personal thing for me. The specs say that this is a PRS voiced Fishman Sonitone with sound hole mounted volume and tone controls. Good news is that the controls are positioned to not interfere with the sound hole humidifiers that I use. Plugged into the AER Compact 60 Tommy Emmanuel amp, I will say that I did not get that icepick in the ear stabbing nor an overload of sibilance. I found that the guitar was acceptable without the TC Electronic BodyRez that I usually find mandatory with piezo pickups. I did use a curve on the Source Audio EQ2 to bring up the bottom end and drop the extreme high end a bit before running through an Empress Compressor Mark II and then into the amp. The PRS SE Angelus A60E needs only a bit of pre amplifier work and is nearly as good as the Graph-Tech Ghost Piezos in my Emerald Synergy X20 Harp Guitar which are the best piezo pickups that I have ever heard. The samples that appear later on are the guitar direct to the Hi-Z input on an Apollo without any pedals in front.

Construction and Materials

The body of this guitar is composed of a very nice, although not AAA, solid Sitka Spruce top. There are some inconsistencies in the grain pattern that you would not find in a higher end AAA top. That said, it sounds great. The sides and back are Bocote. They are laminates and I do not know if there is something else between the layers of Bocote. While I used to believe that laminates were bad news, I learned a great deal about this subject from Chris who is the high end luthier / proprietor of Driftwood Guitars in northwest Florida. He shows scientifically that the stiffer the sides and back, especially the sides, a well designed instrument with effective top bracing can actually be more consistent in tone and sustain. You should choose what you like, but I have no problem with a conclusion being disproved scientifically. My Martin SC-13e also has laminate sides and back, and it too sounds great, albeit quite different from this Angelus A60E.

The fit and finish of the build is excellent. Looking inside the guitar with a cheap camera probe showed very good work. I would say based on limited samples in my own observations that the finish work inside is as good or better than some American built acoustics. The outside is gorgeous and the figure in the Bocote, the Spruce and the Curly Maple binding along with the abalone inlays makes this guitar absolutely stunningly beautiful. The finish is a very well done high gloss. I will say that the whole guitar benefitted from a polish using Music Nomad’s excellent guitar wax. Many guitars in this price range only come in satin. As far as I am concerned, any satin finish looks cheap and is factually cheaper and easier to do in manufacturing. There are some commentarys on the internet that espouse that a satin poly finish breathes more than a gloss poly finish. Such statements have no basis in fact and qualify as stamper options for your next game of bullshit bingo.

The neck is mahogany and is a gloss finish on the back, which surprised me in that it never gets sticky. The fingerboard is ebony with beautiful abalone bird inlays and a lovely curly maple binding. The neck is a very comfortable shape, very similar to my Martin D-28. Very smooth with no V sense at all. I should be clear that my 000-28 EC has a pronounced V neck that I really like a lot. That said, I think that the neck on the PRS SE Angelus A60E will be pleasing to the majority of players. The headstock has a Bocote veneer on top.

This guitar is absolutely beautiful, without being overly bling oriented. Sort of Martin D-41 esque, fancy without nauseating overkill.

The under saddle pickup is as mentioned previously a Fishman Sonitone voiced by PRS. I have no idea what that actually means, although I suspect that there is some tone shaping going on in the 9V powered internal preamp. The output jack is not in the strap button which earns PRS a big clap on the back. This means that your strap fits properly, and there is no chance of losing the outer screw on ring found on strap pin jacks. The output jack is on the rear lower bout, similar to where you would find it on a PRS electric. The battery box is located there as well so there is no fishing in the sound hole required and there are no boxes, latches and controls on the upper front bout. As mentioned earlier the volume and tone controls are mounted inside the sound hole but recessed sufficiently not to interfere with sound hole humidifiers.

The materials and overall construction earn an excellent rating. It’s in the QA process that I take the points away for the nut, the frets and shipping an “inspected” guitar with hopelessly dead strings.

Playability

I am very fortunate to have been very picky over the several decades that I have played and collected and have a very nice set of choices in acoustic guitars. My Boucher guitars are my faves, but they are somewhat expensive and as consequence I tend to grab them less often for casual playing or practicing. Subconsciously I suppose I feel like I owe them something. They never let me down and the fit is superb.

I wanted to try this Angelus SE A60E because I wanted a less expensive acoustic that would handle humidity and temperature changes perhaps better than my Martins, Taylors, Gibsons and Bouchers even though I try to be scrupulous about guitar maintenance and storage. I also wanted something that I would be more inclined for grab and go playing, similar to the Martin SC-13E, but with a warmer tone and a more comfortable (to me) fit. The neck and body shape fit me well and my hands and wrists have not ached or had pain after sitting and playing the A60E for some time. A guitar of course has to sound great, but if it’s not a fit for me, all the tone in the world does not help it stay. The acoustic sound, with the XT strings is superb, warm and smooth, without loss of high end and no biting spikes. Plugged in, it’s good and when using my default pedal setup with my AER amplifiers sound great. I do have to use a notch filter if I have the amp turned up, but there is nothing new with that. I find the tuners a bit stiff and hope that if I keep the guitar, they will work in over time, and if not, Graph-Tech Ratio tuners would be an excellent solution. Sustain is very good, and a bit of gentle compression increases that when using an amp or in the studio.

I find the placement of the output jack most convenient although I would like to see a battery check light on the compartment. While I do not expect to have to change the D’Addario XT strings a lot, I have put a small probe in my kit to lever up the bridge pins so my pin pullers can get a grip. If I found this to be an issue, I suspect that I could find alternates that would not require the probe for initial levering.

Sample Audio

There are three separate samples for you here. All samples use an Apollo Twin X as the interface to Logic Pro. The first sample is the guitar plugged directly into the Hi-Z input of the interface and recorded with no post processing at all. The second sample adds a second track to the first, with the input to that track being an Aston Origin microphone into the second input of the Apollo Twin X. There is no channel strip in the Unison slot. The levels were matched for Tracks 1 & 2 prior to recording. The third sample is the same recordings as in sample two, but with an Avalon VT-737sp channel strip applied in post. Compression is gentle at 4.5 :1 and the Eq rolls off the bass a bit and boosts the low mids about the same amount. High mids and trebles are unadjusted. The low shelf filter is set at 60 Hz and the high shelf filter is set at 15KHz so no sibilance is being cut. The low mid Q is at 150Hz. A screenshot of the Avalon channel strip is shown below the sample it is applied to. The Avalon VT-737-sp is my current favourite pre/channel strip for recording acoustic guitars.

Conclusions

I like the A60E very much, Despite having the same body shape as the A40E and the A50E, it felt better in my hands and definitely sounded better. In fairness, the other two were plucked off the wall of a guitar shop and would have been as the guitar came out of the box. I cannot recall, maybe the strings were dead on those as well. I think that for the cost (about $1200 CAD if I recall) this is a superb guitar. The factory is Cor-Tek and I have great respect for the work coming out of their factory in Indonesia, this guitar came from their factory in China. I conclude that this is a superb instrument for the investment and will last a very long time. From a resale perspective, the PRS brand will help it hold value over some unknown brand or instrument that appears under numerous house brands. Obviously, the final choice is up to you. I do encourage anyone looking for an excellent acoustic guitar to try the PRS SE Angelus lineup. They also have the SE Tonare line without cutaways. Play them acoustically and try them plugged into a great acoustic amp. As AER amps are pricey and like hen’s teeth my recommendation is going to be the superb LANEY A-SOLO or LANEY A-DUO for your play test if your guitar shop carries them. I’ve said it before, the Laney amps blow everything else out of the water until you get to an AER at over twice the price.

Given my own experience, if you find the guitar fits you, check the strings. If they are obviously dead, that’s something to discuss with the guitar shop. A good one will throw on a set of new strings to help you decide, and if you are serious you might be willing to pay the difference between whatever they would normally use and a set of D’Addario XT or XS coated strings. Do not be afraid to go lighter than the default 12-53 strings. Why work too hard for no tonal benefit?

Thanks as always for reading. Leave a comment or post a question. I’m Ross Chevalier, until next time, peace.