Review : PRS SE CE24 Standard. Is it a top option for under $700 Canadian?
PRS SE CE24 Standard
Colour options are (left to right) Charcoal, Ice Blue Metallic, Gold, Silver, Turquoise, Vintage Red
I have to say that the paint chips on the site or in the PRS photos don’t accurately convey the different paint colours. In my opinion, based on live viewing, the Ice Blue Metallic, the Gold and the Silver look great. The Charcoal, Turquoise and Red left me bored. You pick the colour that suits you.
Specifications
I pulled these direct from the PRS website so as not to mess anything up and to saving time composing this part of the review.
First Impressions
As is consistent with every PRS SE I have played in the last year, the fit and finish is spectacular. The guitar comes with a gig bag. Please understand that while none of my own guitars live in cases or bags, none of them leave my location without being in a case or a highly protective bag. The included bag is ok for taking your guitar to lessons, if you are driving or getting a drive there, but given their thin and floppy nature, I would not recommend one as protection if you are travelling with the guitar or playing gigs with it. Fortunately, most stores, and this case The Arts sells a MASSIVELY better well padded and stiff gig bag for not too much money. You can use the PRS bag as a cat bed. It frustrates me because the SEs are so good, yet the gig bags are such junk. PRS should get themselves a Martin GS-Mini and copy the design of its included case. Rant over.
PRS 85/15 S Pickups
I liked the guitar right away, but as I have found with the 85/15 S pickups, they are quite warm and you have to be picky about the amp you are using if you want brighter tones and lots of high end. They work great into Fender style amps and I had particular success with my Fender Tonemaster Blonde Deluxe Reverb and my old blackface Twin Reverb. It was also decent into a Blackstar Club 40 and a VOX AC30. However, clean tones left me meh when plugged into my Laney LA-Studio or my Soldano Mini. Too bassy and no high end unless I dimed the treble and presence knobs and boosted the mids and highs with an EQ pedal. However, just because they are not my kind of thing, does not mean that someone else won’t love them. I often find pickup height settings from the box less than optimal. This guitar was in a very good state but I did lower the neck pickup slightly to remove some very subtle deadening of the high E string when played above the 15th fret. If a fretboard has 24 frets, I’m going to make an effort to use them.
Kick in overdrive and distortion and the guitar is great for downtuned metal or heavy distortion music.
I mentioned the fit and finish. The fretwork is perfect, so good that it has turned me off most other guitars in this price range because of how much time I would have to put into making them right. The paint is really nice, but I am not a fan of satin finishes on any guitar, so understand that I am biased against them. If it were me, I would save and pay more for the SE CE Custom 24 for the nicer gloss finish. Also, and not unique to PRS, the mahogany body while sanded has not been pore filled and so feels and looks rough to the touch. They’ve saved money and time in the finishing and so do you. But lots of people must like satin finishes because the darn things are everywhere and my response of “yuck” is probably not the norm.
Everything else from the vibrato bridge to the tuners was superb. The volume and tone pots were very smooth and while I like the look of the lampshade knobs, I find pulling up the tone control to get the coil tap sound is more work than I would like. I have mentioned before that I would glue a small black rubber band on the side above the number scale to make this easier.
The lower cutaway gives good access to the upper frets and the generous belly carve makes the guitar very comfortable to play. The satin finish is very slippery, and I had to shorten my strap slightly when playing seated as the guitar was slip-sliding away on my leg.
The image, which is courtesy of PRS Guitars, doesn’t do the paint justice. It looks much nicer in person. You can also see clearly here what I mean by no pore filler on the mahogany body
The controls are decently positioned and the volume knob is just close enough to the bridge to do volume swells while playing. It’s not my favourite place for the pickup selector but at least it doesn’t fall under the vibrato arm and be hard to get at.
One of the other things that you will notice with a guitar with no top cap, is that the natural body resonance might be greater. While it is a multi piece body, it still rings really nicely and when played. not plugged in (the only way to get a sense of the guitar’s resonance and natural sustain) it stands out over most of the competition.
The guitar includes a gig bag, but it is very thin, and I would not trust unless you are driving to lessons or to a friend’s. I wouldn’t trust it on public transit, at a jam session and certainly not for a gig. My recommendation for a reliable gig bag with neck support and good padding is the Profile PREB906, about $75
Sample Tones
To make these samples, I ran the guitar directly into the Hi-Z input of a UA Apollo. I wanted to use my set of EMI Studios plugins for the samples, so I did not use a preamp or channel strip in the UNISON slot, instead applying it during editing where I used the Abbey Road EMI TG12345 Channel Strip. I used two amps for the recordings, a Tone King Imperial Mk II on the clean channel which has a bit of bite to it, and then a Soldano SLO-100 for the real dirt. In the mixing and final export mastering using the Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain. These plugins are all part of the Waves Abbey Road Collection and I like them a lot.
Below is the screenshot of the amp settings for the Tone King Imperial Mk II
Next is the screenshot of the settings for the Soldano SLO-100
These are the channel strip settings for the Tone King Imperial Mk II samples. The settings are subtly different for the Soldano SLO-100, with the only change to lower the output levels to prevent clipping.
These are the settings for the TG Mastering Chain. Because it was used only in the Mastering phase, it’s the same settings for all the samples
Wrapping Up
It is my opinion that it will be very hard to beat this guitar at this price point. While I have found other guitars in this price range to be excellent, what I have not found is the same level of consistency from guitar to guitar. That consistency is a big advantage that PRS brings. Of course, and more important is that you have to be comfortable with the fit and feel of the instrument and that it delivers the kinds of clean tones that you prefer. I worry much less about how it sounds overdriven or distorted because there are so many ways of taking a guitar to those places. It’s my opinion that a guitar that sounds lousy clean, will be lousy all the time. This is not the case here. It sounds good clean.
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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