one for the road
PRS expands its cut-price USA S2 line with a version of its most notorious guitar, the Singlecut
Launched in 2013, PRS’s S2 range sits between the high-end USA-made ‘Core Line’ guitars and the lower ticket, Korean-made SE range. And although the S2 models do use some Korean-made parts – primarily tuners, pickups and vibratos – the guitars are 100 per cent made in Maryland at the PRS factory. The difference between the Core Line and S2 guitars lies with a redesigned production path: necks are threepiece, not one piece; bodies swap a complex top-carve for a more simple flat top with ‘asymmetrical bevelled edge’. Maple tops, where used, are still figured, but not in the same league as the Core Line, and the finish process is different and faster to achieve. The S2s are still very much USA-made PRS guitars, just less expensive. The Core Line SC 245 won’t leave you with much change from £3,000, even on the street; knock 50 per cent off, and you have the price of the S2 Singlecut.
The original PRS Singlecut – which caused much legal wrangling with Gibson, soon after
it was introduced in 2000 – has always been popular with artists, but for all that, has proved to be less so with the higher-ticket PRS purchaser. The Core Line has just one Singlecut, the SC 245, plus of course the longrunning Tremonti. Conversely, the SE line has eight models, not including Zach Myers’ new semi-hollow Singlecut.
Like the existing S2 Custom 24 and the new-for-2014 S2 Custom 22, the S2 Singlecut has the same original 635mm (25-inch) scale, Pattern Regular neck profile and ivoroid bird inlays as standard – there are no options. Both the Custom 22 and Singlecut use new Koreanmade versions of PRS’s #7 humbuckers – which were originally fitted to the Singlecut – and both guitars have coil-splits via a pull switch on the tone controls. Here, unlike the first S2s, the coil-splits are partial: instead of dumping one whole coil, part of it is retained, giving a slighter fuller sound in the split mode – and it’s a little more hum-cancelling, too. Plus, with individual tone controls, you can split one or both, and dial in volume and tone changes per pickup. All this makes it potentially the most versatile S2 guitar yet.
The bevelled edge flat front certainly gives the S2 a different look – less classic perhaps – and it’s thinner in depth at 50mm as opposed to the Core Line Singlecut’s more Les Paul-like depth of 58mm. As a result, there’s less neck pitch and a slightly different playing feel. Based on the old regular profile, the Pattern Regular neck is a full, though very subtly V’d C shape, with a depth of 22mm at the 1st, and 24mm at the 12th. Fretting is superb, and intonation is spot on, as is tuning stability. The tuners are Korean-made replicas of PRS’s Phase II lockers with unplated brass posts, a motif mirrored by the USA-made Stoptail’s anodised brass studs; the bridge itself is machined, not cast, aluminium.