the mini-toggles are faster than trying to pull up the tone control electronics
“Look, it’s difficult to have a very clear sounding pickup that doesn’t sound like an ice-pick and as we learn how to do that, we apply it. So, high-end is never the problem, beautiful high-end is not the problem: it’s ice-pick high end that’s the problem and every time we learn how to get a more musical, less ice-pick, high end we do it.” And we didn’t hear that ice-pick at all. Clarity, yes, from either the single coil or the quite clear, classic output of the humbuckers. It’s part of the modern PRS recipe.
Unlike the preset sounds of the standard Custom, the 24-08’s mini-toggles are a little faster than trying to pull up the tone control of the McCarty electronics – you can also split the pickups individually, not just simultaneously – but you do have, potentially, two moves to make: the three-way lever and the specific pickup mini toggle. It’s a different drive.
Verdict
It’s hard to see how PRS can better the ‘do-it-all’ Custom 24. No, it’s not – and never has been – a replacement for your Les Paul or Stratocaster: its validity lies in its ‘duality’, mixing elements of both. It’s tuned to the highest level too: stage-ready with more than enough sounds to get you through a huge range of styles and gigs.
On top of that, this new 24-08 gives us three more sounds – bridge single coil, neck single coil and neck humbucker with bridge single coil – and edges the Custom into a more Fender-y camp yet is far from a ‘Fender’… or indeed anything else. It remains, 32 years on, a PRS.
The choice over which Custom you buy is up to you of course, but whichever one you select you’ll be buying into, arguably, the only real progression, and a constantly evolving one at that, of the electric guitar since about 1965.