Longtermers
A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist’s longterm test reports
“Shipping to PRS in the USA is more than the guitar is worth so I’ll have to do it myself”
Writer Dave Burrluck Guitarist, Gear Reviews Editor Needing a little bit of vibrato action our reviews ed dusts off his old CE 24 to see if he can bring it up to modern PRS standard… without spending too much cash!
PRS is known for constant tweaking. No sooner have you purchased a guitar than it’s upgraded with the latest twist that Paul Reed Smith and his owl-eared cohorts believe is better. It usually is. You might own or see a used guitar from 2008, 1998 or even 1988 but it’ll fall well below the current PRS spec. That said, used, you can easily get a cracking USA-made instrument for far less than their modern equivalent.
Well over a decade ago I put together a PRS ‘bitser’. It had started with a pre-1998 CE 24 bolt-on neck that I’d acquired. I’d talked with the late luthier Sid Poole about making me a PRS-style body to go with it, but sadly we lost him before that idea was achieved. Relating the story to the then PRS marketing manager, Peter Wolf, he graciously supplied me with an unfinished body, which I had sprayed by Clive Brown – in a very aged, nitro gold-top. I cobbled together a PRS vibrato, post-1998 winged locking tuners and asked luthier Terry Morgan to age the neck and put it all together.
My relic’d PRS CE 24 might have a cool backstory but when I recently dusted it down, as I said, PRS has moved on. After a production gap of nearly eight years, PRS re-introduced the CE 24 in 2016. Designed to fit in the price gap between the newly conceived USA S2 series and the full-blown USA Core series, the new CE uses a threepiece S2-style maple neck, a slightly thinner, less arched maple-topped body, PRS’s latest generation 85/15 uncovered humbuckers, a three-way toggle selector switch, master volume and partial coil splits from the pull switch on the master tone control. It’s risen in price over the past couple of years and is now £2,329 – only a couple of hundred pounds less than PRS’s latest bolt-on, the Silver Sky.
Back then I’d tried to fit as much PRS real estate as I could find. So, that meant second generation winged locking tuners, a twopiece PRS USA vibrato, a Dragon I Bass in neck position with a DiMarzio Air-something in bridge, USA pots and a three-way toggle. The chassis specs are different to the current model, with the original-style deep top-carve and indented controls, a one-piece quartersawn maple neck, a black-painted headstock and abalone dot inlays instead of birds. The obvious upgrades would be to the tuners, nut and pickups.
In the USA, PRS owners can simply send their guitar to the PRS Tech Centre (PTC) where they’ll undertake all manner of repairs and mods – at a price, of course. All you have to do is to ship it to them. I’m not sure how much that would cost me outside of the USA but I’d wager it’s more than the guitar is worth. Whatever I do, I’ll have to do it myself.
PRS Europe’s webshop has numerous parts, so I considered the latest open-backed Phase III Tuners (£176) and a new spec USA nut (£27 for two). PRS does sell some pickups, usually older specification like the 57/08s, but they’re not cheap, costing £199 a piece! Newer 85/15s or covered 58/15s? No chance – you can only buy those on a guitar. Yet even with a pair of 57/08s the parts alone would cost nearly £600.
Before I started to spend any cash I stepped back to consider what I wanted to achieve: what was ‘wrong’ with my well-gigged CE?
I gave it a good clean and some new strings. Compared to the current CE 24 it does sound a little dark and rawk. Classic rock is about as far as I need to go, but a lot of the sounds need to fit into that ‘between humbucker and single coil zone’: clean, clear and with a smattering of vibrato. I have my ‘Les Paul’ (Knaggs Kenai) and my Fender Strat so the CE 24 should fit the bill with its hybrid style.
I loaded in a pair of used Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers simply because I’ve been gigging with the same pickups on that Knaggs Kenai. The Kenai and the CE’s construction disparity can’t be overlooked: The CE features a thinner body with much higher maple-to-mahogany ratio, bolt-on maple neck, vibrato, and a 24-fret neck meaning the pickups are closer together and the neck humbucker sits further south and is brighter sounding. It’s a little woodier too, a definite ‘bolt-on’ character.
Coil splits, as on the current CE 24, would add a little more Fender flavour – that the build supports – but I can’t split those Seth Lovers as they only have single conductor outputs. D’oh! What I want are a pair of the latest spec PRS 58/15s, but I can’t buy them unless someone who swapped them out wants to sell. Time to call an eBay addicted friend. I might get lucky.
In the meantime, I can look and listen to the CE 24’s acoustic sound. And what on earth is a PRS vibrato upgrade kit?