Review : The PRS S2 Standard 24 - How Have I Missed These?
PRS S2 Standard 24 in Scarlet Sunburst
As regular channel readers know, I did a LOT of guitar reviews in the last quarter of 2024, and most of them were of PRS SE models. I was motivated because I thought that they were amazing when I tried them in the shop, and when I got them to my recording space, I was utterly impressed. Another thing was an encounter with a rather unpleasant snob who went on at length, as if I cared about how Indonesian built guitars were all crap and terrible purchases for “real” musicians. You cannot fix stupid and arrogant, but you can show up with data and factual experience to form a personal opinion. The SEs are the best electric guitars for the money, in all their price ranges. Period.
However…
As the New Year approached (like the day before), I was in The Arts Music Store to wish the team there a happy and healthy 2025 and I realized that not only had I never reviewed an S2 guitar, after what will be 25 years this year as a happy PRS owner, I had never even played one.
Why, I am not sure. Certainly other players have been really happy with the S2 models and the Vela subgrouping. My pal Keith Williams of the superlative Five Watt World is a big fan and now I have the same opinion.
The PRS S2 Family Overview
I am speaking in this review from the perspective of the PRS S2 Standard 24, the guitar in hand right now. I will do a Vela Semi-Hollow review in the coming time, but for now, it is the Standard 24.
This is an all mahogany body and neck guitar, with a slim body and a bevelled top cut instead of the deep violin carve found on the Core models. I chose the 24 fret version, because if available, I prefer 24 fret guitars, not because I spend all my time up at the dusty end, but because I have very wide shoulders and find them comfortable for me.
The S2 Standard has a PRS Pattern Thin neck. My first PRS was, and I still play it regularly, a Custom 24 with the wide thin neck in Vintage Amber. The neck on the S2 Standard 24 is not that thin, but then that neck shape has been gone a long while. I usually prefer a fatter neck, but the PRS wide thin carve has always been super comfortable for me, playable for hours unlike the Wizard necks on Ibanez guitars that bring my arthritis to screaming levels in short order. The PRS S2 Standard 22 has a Pattern Regular neck carve as an FYI if you prefer a thicker neck, and the McCarty 594 has a Pattern Vintage carve which is more like a 59 Les Paul, thick but not the log of the 1957 models.
There are Custom editions which include a maple cap and the commonly expected flame tops. Maple over Mahogany sounds different than plain Mahogany and as I have lots of guitars with maple caps, I wanted to review the Standard 24 because it costs less and of course sounds different
The S2 series, other than the Velas and the Custom 24 408, commonly have USA made PRS 85/15 or 85/15 LT pickups. Both sound excellent but my own experience proposes that the LT pickups having less winds have more headroom and are a bit more versatile for my needs. Can you hear a difference? Yes, but you need to go direct into a super clean tube amp to hear it. I would recommend a Fender Twin Reverb to make those comparisons. LT stands for Low Turn
The fretboards are all rosewood and the frets are nickel silver. I have picked up four different S2s as I write this with more before I publish I hope, and the fretwork and setup from the factory has been perfect in every case. The S2 Standard has the current PRS Tremolo bridge system which is smooth and non-binding. It looks like a Fender six screw but isn’t. It’s really a knife edge pivot and that makes it better and smoother. Each guitar from the factory had a tiny bit of relief dialed in and even for me, who prefers no relief at all, they were all immediately and eminently playable. The Vela and McCarty models have fixed bridges.
All S2s other than the Customs and McCarty models have a scratchplate, one volume, one tone and a pickup selector.
Finishes are nitro cellulose lacquer either in a beautiful high gloss or a fugly satin. To be completely clear, I think satin as a guitar finish is horrible, in the same way that primer grey paint on an automobile indicates a serious mental issue on the part of the owner.
Bare Bones Workhorse
Whichever person at PRS came up with that tagline needs some guidance. The S2 Standard is hardly bare bones, although it would be a perfect workhorse guitar.
PRS S2 Standard 24 Specifications
As I like to do, I have captured the data from the PRS site and placed it here.
Before I go further, let me talk about the gig bag. I consistently hammer PRS for the flacid piece of crap that masquerades as a gig bag for SE electric guitars. Anything that floppy provides marginal protection at best. PRS could use the S2 gig bag instead for the SEs and the premium Silver Sky and do a lot for their customers. The bag is manufactured in China and is really terrific. It uses a tear resistant fabric, water beads on it, and the internal padding feels like the same quality of closed cell foam as was used in the original CME LowePro camera bags back in the 1980s, when Greg Lowe was personally involved. It is a great gig bag, and all that most players will ever need.
The Colours
I hear the buzzword bingo term “colorway” a lot. It’s just a long way of saying colour while sounding pretentious and rather ignorant. The S2 Standard 24 is available in five colours. Antique White, Black, McCarty Tobacco Sunburst, Scarlet Sunburst and Space Blue. My review instrument is in Scarlet Sunburst and I like the colour best because it shows the natural grain of the mahogany but doesn’t have the old Yeller feel of the Tobacco Sunburst. The solid colours are fine, but I find them boring, and would prefer to see more ‘50s auto colours that are less bland. I think that this guitar would be brilliant in Candy Apple Red or Candy Green, or that Purple from a Dodge Challenger. But colour is an opinion and you will choose what appeals to you.
Pickups
All the versatility you could want from a simple two humbucker guitar
For those unaware, PRS has consistently called the bridge pickup the treble pickup and the neck pickup the bass pickup. It’s just naming. The five position switch gives a wide variety of tones and the pickups work brilliantly through a wide variety of amplifiers. For those looking for that special Strat squonk, position 4 is really great, but with no noise, and without the tone loss that one finds with the Fender Noiseless single coils. You won’t get a classic Telecaster sound from this guitar, but no one promised that in the first place.
Running the guitar into a real high gain amp, there is no serious pickup noise, but a noise gate on the amp will be beneficial because of how nicely these pickups will drive the inputs of the hotter channels on the amp. However, on the clean channel of the UA Knuckles ‘92, which is like a Mesa Dual Rectifier to my ears, there is no noise and the clean tones are gorgeous. These LT pickups are massively versatile and will deliver on most anything that you want.
The controls layout is pretty good in my opinion. If it were up to me, I would like the volume pot a bit closer for simpler swells when one has short fingers, and while the tone pot is not far away, I would prefer it closer as I am one of those players who uses the tone pot a lot. As many players just run the tone pot wide open all the time, I am nitpicking. The switch is positive without being sticky and changing selector position is positive and thus far I have not missed a position when switching quickly.
Playability and Example Tones
I am very sensitive to the playability of any guitar, and for myself, if I have to fight with the guitar at all, it’s not the right guitar for me, but may be perfect for someone else. I have yet to find a PRS of any genre that was not really playable, although the original Silver Sky remains farthest from the mark for me. The S2 Standard 24 fit me and my hands perfectly once I put a strap of appropriate length on it. (That would be a real leather Walker and Williams strap to be clear). I am uncomfortable playing without a strap and so always use one. The strap lugs are large enough to keep the strap on, and have a decent lip unlike the crappy vintage lugs found on Gibsons and the like. I replace all the factory lugs with the D’Addario Oval Lugs when I don’t trust the factory units, but if I owned this S2 Standard 24 would leave it alone. They aren’t the nickel diameter sized lugs found on my old PRS guitars, which makes mounting the strap easier but are big enough to hold the strap without needing rubber lock washers.
The frets feel great and PRS guitars are the only instruments where I do not change the strings immediately upon getting home. I do know where PRS sources their strings, but will not disclose that as it was shared in confidence. Suffice to say that they are using really excellent strings on their guitars. A decision that both Fender and Gibson could really stand to copy instead of shipping their guitars with the rusty barbed wire that they currently use. The 10” fretboard radius is very comfortable. Bends do not fret out and there is enough curve to leverage the biomechanics of how your fingers work. The action from the factory was under 2mm at the 12th for the low E and about 1.75mm at the 12th for the high E. I no longer bother with measuring pickup resistance or inductance on evals, preferring to stick with whether I like the sound of the pickups or not. I like the sound of these pickups into a clean amp very much. It is my position that a pickup that sounds good clean, will sound good overdriven, whereas the opposite is not always true.
I had no fatigue in hours of playing this guitar even though the factory 10-46 strings are heavier than my preferred 8.5 -40 custom Curt Mangan strings.
My first play was as I noted, into the UA Knuckles ‘92 Rev F Dual Rectifier Amplifier. It was so great, that I kept turning the FRFR up until my daughter gently pointed out that I could be heard clearly in the driveway. Oops. Ok not so much oops. I then played through my Fender Blackface Twin Reverb and again found the guitar sounded wonderful. I also plugged it into Mikey, my Tone King Gremlin, the amp that hates everything, and it was really a pleasureable sound in both channels of that particularly finicky amp. The Gremlin is pretty much a Fender 5E3, but with a lead channel, and no content filters. it is, the perfect test amp because it is utterly unforgiving.
I made two recordings here. The first is just a single chord starting in the neck position, then 4th, 3rd, 2nd and bridge to give you a sense of the tonal variety of these pickups. Then a riff. The pickup selector differences are much more subtle in the second recording, but you will understand why when you know what the amp is.
To provide a quick sense of the flexibility of the guitar, this first short recording is of the guitar direct into my standard desktop recording clean amp, a UA Dream ’65 Reverb Amp. This is, to my mind as close to a real 1965 Blackface Deluxe Reverb. It’s done from a stock 1965 with Volume at 3, Bass at 7 and Treble at 6.
The second recording goes from guitar direct into my standard desktop high gain amp, a UA Knuckles ‘92 Rev F Dual Rectifier Amp. I do not own a real Dual Rectifier, having neither the space or the funds to support one. If I did, I would buy one from before Gibson bought Mesa Boogie and fired Randall Smith. Pricks. It uses the orange channel with a mid boost into a Mesa 4x12 V30 cabinet.
Wrapping Up
Obviously, two massively different amplifiers that clearly demonstrate that the PRS S2 Standard is a do it all guitar. Couple that with light weight, incredible playability and the question isn’t whether it’s amazing but why you aren’t heading out to your local PRS dealer to try one out? If you are within reasonable driving distance of The Arts Music Store, please consider going there to try one out, or purchase one from them through their online store.
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