SE Uprising
They may be a lot more affordable than PRS’s USA guitars, but the SE range is on a roll, epitomised by the new Hollowbody models. We track down the man behind the mark: Jack Higginbotham
We’d been at PRS HQ for a matter of minutes when we were ushered into an office expecting to be shown the latest high-ticket guitars for 2020. Instead, we spent the following hour and a bit discussing the new SE offerings, primarily the Hollowbody guitars made not in Korea or Indonesia but in China – a first for a PRS electric. How? Why?
“It’s pretty simple,” Jack Higginbotham, PRS’s chief operating officer, tells us. “We are very happy with our SE acoustic guitars made in Dalian, China, through Cor-Tek. We have an incredible relationship with the man that runs that factory. Instead of him saying, ‘No, we do things our way,’ he has embraced our mission and our philosophy on what makes a good acoustic guitar. I feel very connected to him and very much a part of what he’s doing. His ability to make a guitar to our design is well proven.
“The way I look at the new Hollowbody,” he continues, “well, it’s a coin toss as to whether it’s an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. So it’s not a radical thought to me to have them make the guitar. As you know, you’ve played them, there are some intense acoustic properties about that guitar: it’s like we’re making an acoustic guitar with twin humbuckers.
“The Cor-Tek factory in Surabaya, Indonesia, is made up of several different factory buildings,” he adds. “The one in China is probably about the same [total] size, but it comes across as being larger because it’s all under the one roof. I’ve been in the factory many, many times, but I think I’d still get lost if I was left on my own. So it’s really large but extraordinarily well equipped and organised.”
Strong Links
As our review explains, the SE Hollowbody guitars are the first – and only – PRSes at any level to be made of laminates, a stark difference to the solid-wood construction of the USA Hollowbody models.
“You’re right, they’re not carved out of a huge hunk of maple or mahogany,” says Jack, “but it has a spiritual relationship to the original USA model, if you like. It’s not completely different and even though it’s made in a very different way, the philosophy feels very similar.”
Fundamental to the new design is the upscaling, as Jack explains: “I have one of the first USA Hollowbody models – it was the only guitar I played for many years – but I always wished it was a little bit larger. So, initially, we put the design onto graph paper and played around with it. Myself and [PRS engineer] Jon Wasserman printed out a zillion of those until we thought the slightly upscaled version looked pretty good. We did that and thought, ‘Well, now the headstock looks small,’ so we used the larger acoustic headstock shape. Then we took it to Paul [Reed Smith] who made a few changes and we landed on what you see today. To me, it’s just more proportional: it’s not big and clunky like a full-size hollowbody guitar
“It has a spiritual relationship to the original USA model, if you like: it’s not completely different”
but just that bit bigger than our [USA] Hollowbody design.”
In our review we wonder whether a secondary reason for the upscaling of the guitar is so that the relatively thin upper horn could actually be made in this laminate construction method…
“As far as that horn goes, part of the shape – and particularly that part – has to do with how you can effectively, in a mass-production way, pull that off and not have it split and crack. So there is some of that in a practical sense, but the overall size increase was really down to wanting the guitar to feel a bit bigger. I had an idea of what that would do from a sound standpoint with a bigger sound chamber.
“Early on in the design process I honestly didn’t particularly like the way the guitar sounded acoustically, so I started to talk with Rob Carhart in engineering here at PRS. He told me we’d changed something in the design of our hollowbodies: when we carve the inside of the top there is what is effectively another block that runs under the pickups from the neck-join to the bridge, and that seems to get rid of that slightly boxy sound of the original Hollowbody. Doug Shive performed an operation on a prototype and added the block, and it sounded great. So that’s why inside the SE Hollowbody there is no bracing but there is a block, just like the 594 Hollowbody and Hollowbody II, and I’m telling you if you were able to take that block out it would sound like a different guitar.”
High Five
While both guitars now use a five-ply laminate for the body construction, the mahogany Standard was originally conceived with a three-ply laminate.
“When I went to the factory I saw it was five-ply and asked why,” says Jack. “They said it sounded better – and they were correct as well. It sounded better and I believe that’s because the five-ply is just a little bit stiffer.”
Both our SE Hollowbody review samples have pretty big necks, a little fuller-feeling than the Wide Fat profile suggests.
“The guitars you have are very early in the production. Quite honestly, I like the necks on those early ones, too. But knowing what the market desires I shaved the neck down slightly so the current production guitars have less shoulder and slightly less backto-front depth, so it feels more like a proper Wide Fat. As far as consistency goes, that factory is amazing at being able to make a lot of product very consistently.”
Another unusual feature for a PRS electric guitar is the use of ebony for the fingerboard, which was influenced in part by the CITES rulings in 2017.
“When we started with the SE acoustics, because of the CITES restrictions on rosewood, and because of our ability to take a clean-slate approach, we choose ebony for the fingerboards. When the Hollowbody project came along we were very comfortable knowing that we could
“Everything I’ve learned is being applied to this project. All of the effort over the years is being put to very good use”
use ebony to make a guitar that sounded great: we just understood ebony out of that factory very well and obviously we had no idea the CITES restrictions would end [as of late 2019]. To be honest, my experience with ebony, much like Paul’s – certainly back in the 80s – is that it could create a very bright-sounding guitar. It didn’t seem to be the right recipe for us. But I think we’ve evolved, certainly in our pickups and in other areas, in such a way that [ebony] fits in nicely now. It’s all a part of an intentional design. So long as you build a guitar in a way that all the pieces work harmoniously with each other then it’s perfectly acceptable.”
Pickup Refresh
Continuing with ‘the first’ accolades, the covered PRS 58/15 ‘S’ pickups were specifically developed from the USA-made pickups for these guitars (although you’ll find that they are now fitted to the S2 Standard 22 and 24 as well).
“It’s a lower-output pickup to suit the Hollowbody project: Paul was the brains and I was the hands kinda thing. We were working to tailor a sound that would be appropriate, that lower-output vintage-vibe hollowbody thing we were looking for. We needed to use standard sourced parts that Asian manufacturing is used to, but by taking some of the philosophies of TCI – the way that Paul is measuring things and the way he is reinventing the way he looks at pickups – we were able to take those standard parts and formulate them in such a way that they come off as very far from what most of us would consider a standard Asian-made pickup sound. We were able to pull it off with standard parts: it’s not just the ingredients, it’s the recipe.”
The company seems to be hitting the SE range hard with a slew of excellent designs. But does this mean they are trying to compete with the USA-made guitars?
“Yes, I agree that it does seem that way, and I’ve heard others talk about that, but I think it’s dangerous. There is no competition internally: it’s simply a desire to do the best we can in every category, not one better than the other. Competitive? No, if anything, it’s more collaborative than ever. I think Paul is embracing it more, as we all are.
“It comes back to the focus we’ve put on it. More attention, more resources, more concentration, more love – it’s reflected in what you said about your left hand telling you things about a neck shape before you even know them. That’s music to my ears because it says that all the efforts we’re putting in are worth it.
“I’ve been learning stuff [about guitars] for 35 years and I’ve been learning in a lot of different disciplines, whether it’s marketing, sales, design or manufacturing. Practically everything I’ve learned is being applied to this project: the culmination of everything is all funneling into this moment. All of the effort over the years is being put to very good use.
“The question we ask is: what is the best guitar we can make at this price-point? How can we make these necks feel better? How can we make this a better instrument for more people?”
As we allude to in our review, these initial SE Hollowbodies are just the start.
“The Hollowbody platform is a new door inside the PRS SE series. It is a solid platform to build upon. As such, it presents opportunities to expand and grow within itself… and we already have plans to expand this model.” Watch this space!