Review : PRS SE Custom 24 with Piezo
This colour is called Orange Tiger Smokeburst and it’s as gorgeous in real life as in the photo
Given my expressed love for piezo pickups, you might be inclined to expect harsh words out of the gate with this guitar. Not this time. With a PRS/LR Baggs piezo in the bridge and two PRS 58/15S pickups in a semi-hollow body, this is the best SE guitar that I have ever played, which is saying a lot considering how superb the SE family has been over the last few years.
With thanks to The Arts Music Store, I was able to spend some quality time with this PRS SE Custom 24 Piezo in Lake Blue. I have owned PRS semi-hollow Core models with piezos for some years, and I would go so far to say that this latest piezo offering surpasses even my Artist Hollowbody II with piezo and my semi-hollow Single Cut with piezo in terms of acoustic sound. Given that very high praise let’s take a look at this instrument, starting with the specifications and then moving on to what I have learned in the time I have been playing it. PRS features a different colour in their stock images, so I wanted to share with you folks the colour that I actually have for the review. It’s beautiful.
Now that friends is a beautiful colour
Specifications
Available colours are (left to right) Charcoal, Lake Blue, Orange Tiger Smokeburst and Vintage Sunburst
You may then ask as to how this differs from a Core Semi Hollow with Piezo? The differences are subtle. In the SE model, the tuners are PRS designed but not made by PRS, The pickups are the S version vs the US version. You’d have to do a side by side in a quiet room to hear the difference in an all clean scenario. The maple neck on the SE is laminated. This actually makes it stiffer, but the Core maple necks are quartersawn which is as good as you can get. The maple caps on the SE are not figured and the figuring is accomplished with a veneer maple top. On the SE the headstock veneer matches the body. The SE bridge system is a PRS unit, but not the Gen 3 on the Core model. My proposal? The violin carve on an SE is not as deep as on a Core model. Core models offer more colour options. Try both and see if the Core is that much better in terms of playability, sound and feel. If you cannot find a difference worth the significant difference in price, the SE is for you. While the Core comes with a hardshell case and the SE with a gig bag of questionable protective ability, you could buy a really superb Mono gig bag with your savings and laugh all the way to the gig with thousands left over in your bank account.
85/15 S pickups with coil tap on the tone knob
There is one other difference. SE models are far more available than Core models in general. Personally I would put a higher end SE up against anything made in America by Gibson or Fender in terms of quality and be confident of winning every time.
I really like the veneer on the headstock that matches the body
Initial Impressions
The guitar fits and feels great. The pattern thin neck carve felt a bit thicker than the neck on the SE Hollowbody that I recently reviewed. This guitar is also heavier because it is not fully hollow. While I have heard some complaints about the fret end work on the model, this one was perfect right out of the box. The action was 2mm and 1.75mm as expected and the truss rod needed no tweaking. The six point vibrato is nice and smooth and while it is not built for dive bombing, it does what I want and I can try to do my Jeff Beck stuff with the arm held by my little finger and get what I like.
The semi hollow body is a bit warmer than a solid body but not by a lot. You can rock out if you want. The pull up tone knob taps the coils of the pickups. Contrary to some YouTubers, it does not split the coils. A truly split coil kills one side of the humbucker making a single coil with all its perks and annoyances. A tapped coil doesn’t get as bright as a split coil but also is less prone to noise. I only noticed this with an aggressive drive pedal engaged, and that’s not a surprise at all. Enter a simple noise gate, or that function as found on the Ibanez Pentatone, serving on the board as clean boost, paragraphic equalizer, OD/Distortion, Post Boost and Noise Gate. I digress but there is a lot value in the one small box.
If I plug one cable into the guitar’s output jack labeled Piezo/Mix and that’s the only cable, I get the sound of both the magnetic and piezo pickup systems. You balance them using the volume knobs. The piezo output doesn’t sound awful into a traditional guitar amp, but it doesn’t sound acoustic either. If not using the piezo capable output there is a Magnetic pickups only output. If this is used, there is no power to the piezo and no battery drain and the guitar functions like any electric guitar. If I add a second cable into the Piezo/Mix output while there is a cable in the Magnetic output, only the piezo signal comes out the Piezo/Mix output and I can run that into an acoustic amp, a PA, an FRFR or direct to the recording interface. Using the guitar in this way allows me to use different effects for each pickup system as well as record two separate tracks simultaneously, one for each pickup system. Fortunately the LR Baggs / PRS Piezo sounds quite good as it is without that nasal spike found in so many others. There’s a small preamp in there somewhere. The combination is really awesome and that’s the primary reason why I would choose a guitar with humbuckers and an acoustic pickup rather than one with only magnetic pickups.
The fit and finish are superb. PRS has really stepped up their colour game on the 2024 SE models. The Lake Blue one that I have is gorgeous and the two sunburst options look beautiful too. The black finish is, well it’s black, so with those beautiful tops, why would you pick that? Of course if that’s your jam, enjoy!
The controls are oh so simple. A three way magnetic pickup selector. A tone knob that when pulled up activates a coil tap. A third knob dedicated to the piezo. As mine was brand new right out of the box, I found that pulling up on the tone knob with their new lampshade knobs (as found on Core models) was a pain. It gets easier with some use, but I still would prefer a rubber ring on the knob to make grabbing it easier. If it were my guitar, I would be adding a narrow black rubber band for that purpose. I have those bands on an early Seventies Ibanez Artist Doubleneck and don’t understand why more folks don’t make them. (Ibanez still does on their Artist guitars). The lampshade knob sits just above the body, and with short nails I cannot slip a nail edge under it to pull up.
The guitar includes the regular PRS SE Gig Bag. It’s very thin and provides minimal protection. It’s probably ok for heading to lessons by car but if you are going to a gig or travelling, it’s not good enough, and you will want to buy yourself a much better gig bag. Hard cases are also an option, particularly with Semi-Hollow and Hollow Body guitars, but they are also heavy and cumbersome. My recommendation for a reliable gig bag with neck support and good padding is the Profile PREB906, about $75
The Playing and Recording
I played the guitar through a variety of amplifiers and found it excellent in everything that I tried. I found it works well with pedals and sounds very smooth when pedals are involved. I want to be very clear, that this instrument is warm sounding. It doesn’t do super bright, which is in keeping with a semi hollow guitar with humbuckers and humbuckers with a coil tap. For electric guitar amps, particularly for recording, I will suggest a Fender Deluxe Reverb style amplifier. For acoustic amps, I like the Laney A series or AER, but if you already have a decent PA, use that.
For the electric pickup and combination recordings, I used a Laney LA Studio going direct into a UA Twin X interface. For the piezo only and the piezo portion of the two amp scenario, I plugged directly into the interface from the piezo out. The LR Baggs / PRS allows for this because of its preamp function. However I also played it live through my AER Compact 60 and my Laney A-Fresco 2 acoustic amps and it sounded great. I used no pedals in the testing and would still add a really good compressor, but with this piezo set, I don’t require an EQ pedal as I do with most piezo pickups. Were I using the two cable output method in a live gig, I would probably take the piezo output to my TECH21 NYC Acoustic Fly Rig which has a nice comp, enough EQ to fix room issues, a subtle reverb, a subtle chorus and and a nice simple delay. It also has a DI out to go to the sound board or PA. I don’t like running high impedance cables from a piezo for any distance at any time.
Sound Samples
There are a number of short cuts here to give you a sense of the guitar. To make the recordings, I used a Fender Blonde Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb going DI to a UA Apollo on channel two for the magnetic output. For the piezo output, I ran direct to channel one’s Hi-Z input on the Apollo with a short cable. I put each input on its own track and recorded both tracks simultaneously for everything, even if I had no signal coming out of one of the inputs by design. The raw audio was recorded using Logic Pro and the recording engineering was very simple. Run the inputs as high as possible without clipping. For the mix, and final production, I also used Logic Pro. I have mentioned many times that any piezo pickup needs a preamp in the chain somewhere, and while I could have loaded a preamp or channel strip into the UNISON slot for recording, I decided to do this after the fact to find what I thought was the best sounding preamp for the PRS/LR Baggs Piezo pickup. I also used a channel strip for the magnetic pickups track.
For the recordings and to keep the production simpler, I created three buses to use to provide preamp and eq to each sample. There is an acoustic bus containing a Neve 1073 preamp and a Toneboosters EQ Pro. There is also a clean electric bus containing a Helios 69 preamp and a Toneboosters EQ Pro. The third bus for magnetics with overdrive uses a Helios 69 preamp and a Toneboosters EQ Pro. Each plugin uses settings unique to the bus it resides upon. Finally I used the superb Waves Abbey Road Mastering plugin for the final production before exporting to MP3s.
The first clip is of the pickups separated. It offers Neck, Both and Bridge magnetic pickups in regular mode, then with the coil split active and ends with the piezo on its own.
The next clip is of magnetic pickups and piezo all at ten for volume and tone, with the magnetics switching from neck to both to bridge and then again with the coil split active
The next clip is a simple chord progression using the same settings as in the previous clip.
The next clip is a series of notes played in a sequence using the same settings as in the second clip
The final clip is a simple chord riff but this time the magnetics are running through a Greer Lightspeed for some overdrive, whereas the piezo is not affected.
Wrapping Up
This is a fantastic guitar. It plays beautifully and sounds great. The magnetic pickups are not at the level of the pickups in my Artist II w/piezo or my Single Cut Artist w/piezo but I do think that the LR Baggs/PRS Piezo in this guitar is better sounding than the piezo pickups in those older instruments. At under $2000 CAD MAP, I do not think that there is a better semi-hollow on the market with these capabilities. If I did not already have a number of electric guitars with magnetic and piezo pickups, I would buy this one right now. So yes, I recommend it. The piezo version is more money than the regular PRS SE Custom 24, and is so by a decent chunk of change, but if one wants both true electric and true acoustic sounds in one guitar, this is one to beat. I recently reviewed the very nice and considerably more costly Taylor T5z which is marketed as an electric guitar with acoustic capabilities and to my ears and my use cases, the PRS SE Custom 24 Piezo wins in every case.
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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