Plugged, Unplugged
Looking for a bit of acoustic tone from your electric? It’s not a new idea but here are two 2020 examples of this hybrid genre aimed at stage and studio use
What guitar can best deliver authentic acoustic sounds while also handling your electric needs? We put PRS and Fender head to head on
It could easily be argued that while the electric guitar seems hampered by its past, one of the truly innovative paths in the past three decades has been to add acoustic-like sounds turning the electric guitar into an electric/acoustic hybrid. Although efforts appeared a lot earlier, this type of hybrid came to the fore in the 90s with guitars such as Hamer’s DuoTone and Parker’s Fly illustrating two very different ways of creating this duality. We’ve seen this trend peak and trough over the subsequent years with numerous brands usually offering piezo acoustic sounds on distinct models or simply as an option.
As those mid-90s designs showed us, there is definitely more than one way to skin this sonic cat. Hamer’s DuoTone was effectively a solidbody-sized thinline acoustic with a braced spruce top and acoustic bridge. It was powered by a pretty conventional piezo under-saddle transducer for its acoustic sound and a pair of humbuckers for its regular magnetic pickup electric sound. The Parker Fly, one of the most radical designs in the history of the instrument, was a soldibody electric with regular magnetic pickups and its acoustic voice came from individual piezo elements, mounted in its vibrato bridge and designed by Larry Fishman.
On review here we have two radically different yet very mainstream hybrids, both released this year. Now, we looked at the Fender USA’s Acoustasonic Stratocaster back in issue 458: a solidbody-sized acoustic with complex electronics (again created by Larry Fishman’s team) with a couple of magnetic electric sounds. That’s in sharp contrast to the brand-new PRS SE
Hollowbody II Piezo. The Chinese-made SE Hollowbody II and lower-priced Standard appeared at the end of 2019 (we looked at both back in issue 456) but this new Piezo version launched mid-year. It’s effectively a slightly souped-up version with a piezo system that’s designed in conjunction with LR Baggs, like PRS’s long running piezo option for its USA Hollowbody.
So, two very different ways of taking on the electric/acoustic challenge and a battle of styles, too, in terms of the ways they are achieved by the two leading lights in acoustic guitar transducer and amplification technology: Fishman and LR Baggs.
Setting The Scene
It’s not our intention to re-review either guitar. Instead, it’s the acoustic sound and how it’s implemented with the magnetic electric voices that we want to focus on here. Fender’s Acoustasonic platform launched in 2019 with the Telecaster version of this 2020 Stratocaster model. Along with their shapes, they’re a little different in terms of the sounds they offer. But both Acoustasonics shoot for a much more acoustic-like experience from a solidbody-sized platform, and instead of offering one acoustic sound – like the PRS – we have a host of digitally achieved acoustic sounds accessed from the five-way lever Voice Selector switch and the rotary Mod knob, which allows you to morph the sound pairs or add a little grit to the lone magnetic pickup in front of the bridge.
PRS’s USA-made Hollowbody models date back to the late 90s and were the first platform for the co-designed piezo system. Other more solidbody piezo-equipped
PRSes have been and gone over the years and today there’s just the solidbody Custom 22 and 24 Piezo models augmenting the single piezo-loaded Hollowbody II in the line-up. As ever, they’re not cheap. But as you’ll know, the SE range is about affordablility and the SE Hollowbody models, made in the same Chinese factory PRS uses for its start-up acoustic range, combine an old-school laminate construction that’s mainly hollow with a block under the bridge connecting top to back. This new Piezo version is identical to the earlier SE Hollowbody II save for some subtly upgraded cosmetics – figured maple binding instead of cream plastic and posher multi-coloured shell bird inlays as opposed to just pearloid – and, of course, the piezo addition. So, in contrast to the Acoustasonic, we have a fully functioning dual-humbucking electric ‘semi’ that you can switch to acoustic-only or blend that sound with either or both magnetic pickups.
Price wise, bearing in mind where they’re made, there’s not a huge disparity. The Acoustasonic is available in more colours and comes with a deluxe gigbag, the PRS comes with a case – although neither caters for our left-handed friends.
In Use
The Acoustasonic is Strat-sized, a rather beautiful design that is effectively an acoustic guitar with a braced spruce top. Its central soundhole, or ‘doughnut’ as it’s known, acts as a soundport and creates quite an intimate acoustic voice unplugged that’s ideal for practice, songwriting or simply sofa noodling. It does have an acoustic-style bridge and is strung with acoustic strings, so despite its size and shape, it’s an acoustic first and an electric second.
The SE Hollowbody is a complete redesign of the original PRS Hollowbody. As we said, unlike the USA version that’s hollowed out from solid wood, the SE version is laminate maple (with solid mahogany sides): the top and back are pressed into shape like the classic semis from Gibson and Gretsch, for example. It’s a bigger proposition, too – 356mm (14 inches) across its lower bouts as opposed to 330mm
Where both models score is in their ability to blend between electric and acoustic in a single instrument