Review : PRS SE Hollowbody II with Piezo. Is this the best hollowbody for the money, period?
Hey folks. Let me start with a couple of acknowledgments. First to reader Vernon for the question about this guitar and of course to the amazing people at The Arts Music Store for doing the work to get me this instrument for my review. I could not do this without them and if you are located in Canada, you should shop with them, either live or online.
Overview
The PRS SE Hollowbody II is made in the dedicated PRS factory operated by Cor-Tek in Indonesia. I find the Cor-Tek guitars better than a lot of USA or Mexico made guitars, so I take the position that country of manufacture is irrelevant so long as there is no compromised in quality of components or workmanship. It is as close to a true hollowbody as one might hope while retaining a partial centre block to hold the bridge posts and allow mounting of the pickups. It is not a solid centre block and that allows the sound waves to move around inside the body increasing the overall resonance. You can play this guitar unplugged and it is loud enough for practice and still sounds very good indeed considering the body depth and limited sound holes.
I found the guitar to be beautifully finished, consistent with what I have come to expect from PRS. And of course it sound great from both pickup systems and when they are combined. PRS is using their own custom build with LR Baggs for the Piezo system and it is one of the few that I can stand into most any acoustic amplifier. Into my AERs, the piezo is superb, better in my opinion than the piezo system in my now twenty year old PRS Artist Limited Edition.
The woods are superb of course and in this instrument, the Birds inlay are abalone not mother of pearl and look amazing. The wide fat neck is very comfortable for me to play and is consistent with my other true hollowbodies and better semi-hollows. As expected, the guitar brings the sound of a solid body, but warmer and more resonant.
Specifications
As I try to do, I have screen captured the specifications and colour charts direct from the PRS website to avoid mistyping on my part.
The controls are super simple. I like that. No push me pull you stuff, just two volume controls, one each for the magnetic pickups and the piezo pickup and a tone control for the magnetic pickups. As I usually find with PRS instruments, rolling off the tone does not send you to Mudville. I don’t take guitars apart for review, but I am confident that there is a treble bleed in there.
I should note here that there are two output jacks. One for magnetic pickups and one for the piezo so you can run them to different amplification platforms, but if you only use the mix/piezo output jack, you get the output from both pickup systems with the blend controlled by your choices on the individual volume controls. Don’t forget to unplug when not playing low lest you kill the battery.
Colours
There has been a trend at PRS of late that as an owner of many PRS guitars that I really don’t like. PRS is known for top grade finishes, perhaps the best in the industry, but they have gone to some really fugly finishes of late and the doghair versions are an example of some truly excreable choices. The current Hollowbody Standard is infected with this ugliness and while the 2025 model is a great guitar, I would never consider one due to the horrible finish options. I really cannot even call it doghair, more like hairy dogshit.
Fortunately, clearer heads have prevailed with the PRS SE Hollowbody II. While it lacks the colour repertoire of the USA made Core versions, the two options noted below are gorgeous. The Orange Tiger Burst as seen in the opening image, courtesy of PRS Guitars, is deep and rich and my review instrument is in the stunning Peacock Blue Burst shown below. Yes this is a flame maple veneer instead of a solid flame maple top as in the core model, but the finish work is absolutely outstanding.
Out of the Box Playability
As I am making an effort to do with each review, I compile measurements for the instrument exactly as I receive it without any tweaking on my part. Here’s the numbers on what I found. Please be advised that I was getting really wonky readings of resistance from the magnetic pickups, i suspect because the piezo is in the circuit when measuring so I referred to PRS documentation which provided the DC resistance.
So was the guitar playable right out of the box? Absolutely. I sat down and started playing and realized a couple of hours had passed without my noticing, the only adjustments made were to the strap length as I always use a strap when I play. A measure of playability to me is if I don’t notice the time passing and if in my noodling, I come up with something new and interesting. in my case, this means that I am not fighting the instrument and it is inspiring me to create something new. Certainly there is nothing wrong in playing other people’s stuff, but that’s already been done so for me, better to try to create something interesting on my own. You do what you prefer.
The sound is superb and the ability to blend in the acoustic tones with those from the magnetic pickups really makes the instrument versatile. Unlike many hollow or semi-hollow instruments while they tend to be warm, they can also tend to lose brightness and spark. That is not the case with this guitar.
Example Sounds
I was very pleased with this guitar in to a variety of amps and platforms. I chose to record some samples using a variety of Dumble amp sims from IKMultimedia. I have included the amp model specs for each sample.
The first sample is just a really quick thing featuring balanced output from both magnetic pickups and the built in piezo.
The second sample is just the sequence of major chords using the magnetic pickups only
The third sample uses a different Dumble amp model, with a Klon Centaur for overdrive without the piezo
The fourth sample uses the same Dumble model as the third replacing the Klon Centaur with an Ibanez Tube Screamer without the piezo.
The fifth sample goes to a different Dumble model with a Wampler Metaverse tape delay and a UA Brigade Chorus added in post. Both magnetic and piezo pickup systems are active in this sample.
Wrapping Up
The PRS SE Hollowbody II is an incredible guitar. It is incredibly well built, offers a great range of tones, has depth and girth in its tones without being huge and is an utter joy to play. While a Gibson ES-335 isn’t necessarily an equivalent comparison as the PRS SE Hollowbody II Piezo is both physically smaller and much less expensive, if pressed I would choose this guitar over a current release ES-335. The acoustic voice is in my opinion better, and the piezo when blended adds room and character. More versatile but without compromise in my book. Would I buy one? If I did not already have more than one PRS Core Hollowbody I and Hollowbody II guitars including a rare Artist model with piezo, the answer is YES. In fact I prefer the LR Baggs/PRS piezo in this guitar to what is in my old Core versions.
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