honeyiscool
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2015
- Messages
- 9
New to this forum, but hello! I'm a proud new owner of a PRS S2 Standard 24 in Surf Green w/ dot inlays. I just can't put this thing down. This is my very first PRS.
I've noticed that there is almost zero discussion of this guitar here or anywhere, really. Maybe it's because it seems like a PRS made for people who don't really do PRS, but I think that's why it drew me in so much. I've always admired Paul Reed Smith as a builder and consider him and Bob Taylor to be the two of the brightest American minds in guitar building today, but I just couldn't ever fall in love with PRS guitars at first sight. A couple of models here and there, like the SE Dave Navarro, but for the most part, they just didn't really look like the kind of guitars I normally buy, which are solid finish w/ pickguard type affairs, i.e. Fenders. Even when I venture into Gibson, I generally end up with something like a white P90 Les Paul, i.e. not very fancy. I don't even do burst finishes except on a semi- or a hollowbody. I like my guitars to be very humble but colorful, I guess.
I honestly don't really know all that much about the politics and specifics of S2 guitars and how it all fits in with the SE and the Core lineup, but I know what I like, and I love this guitar. I've been looking to improve my speed for a while now, and I've made a lot of progress through exercise and practice, but I've been shopping for a "shredder" guitar I could tolerate. You know, not so much in the pointy Ibanez RG sense, but I wanted something that doesn't slow me down, is lightweight, has humbuckers, 24 frets, vibrato, thin neck, geared to help people play fast and not slow them down, but the problem is, most guitars with those specs have awful style and are sold to 14 year olds. After weeks of staring at Ibanez, ESP, and Schecter and trying to convince myself that one of those will do, and slowly increasing my price range, I'm shocked that PRS is the one that knocked it out of the park for me, and now I have an instrument I not only tolerate, but can truly love.
Here are the things I love most about this guitar:
1) The neck and scale. I think this is what people call a standard neck, but it's close to something I'm used to. I have guitars from 24" scale to 25.5" scale, and this seems to fit just perfectly. The radius is great, too. It's not too flat, but just a bit different to provide me a little bit of change. I can easily bend whole notes on the high E string. I also love the dots. The birds were not worth an extra $200 to me, and the dots complete the utilitarian look and feel of the instrument.
2) The weight. The guitar is a bit over 7 pounds, and it's perfectly distributed. Even with the upper bout only going to the 15th fret, there's no neck dive. It sort of goes with my entire philosophy on guitar weight. I have 6 electric guitars and 4 electric basses, and all of them are lighter than 8 pounds and have perfect strap balance. I am picky because it is my experience that great tone doesn't come with great weight.
3) The tuners. I don't know if higher end PRS has better tuners, but these tuners are simply great. Locking tuners are wonderful for doing things like removing the pickguard without having to change the strings.
4) The access! I can easily reach the 22-24 frets. The nice thing about having a 24 fret guitar is this. I'm a neck pickup guy. My favorite guitar is a Fender Mustang, and I love the neck pickup on mine, but if you look at a Mustang, the neck pickup is slanted such that it is well past where most neck pickups are (usually at 2nd octave). The nice thing, then, is that I can get neck pickup tone and not have to worry about open string harmonics. My Standard 24 is the same way. So while some people consider the repositioned neck pickup to be a bug, I consider it a feature.
5) Basic wiring configuration. While I am not 100% happy with how the guitar behaves electrically speaking (more on that later), the basic idea is great. Volume, Tone, Blade Switch is exactly how I think all guitars should work. I've even modified my Jazzmaster and Jaguar to blade switches because I just love their feedback and security, and also they enable lots of great wiring mods, too. A lot more versatile than toggle switches. And on humbucker equipped guitars like this one, it's absolutely the right call to have a push-pull split on the tone knob. I've done this to every humbucker guitar I have, and I use splits a lot.
6) The bridge is really, really good. I understand that people upgrade theirs with bigger sustain blocks or whatever, but the point is, the bridge is pretty flawless out of the box. It reminds me a lot of my favorite fulcrum type bridge: the Wilkinson tremolo. I'm normally a fan of bridge + tailpiece combinations, but this fulcrum vibrato is something I can absolutely live with, and I love having the extra range on this one guitar.
7) Pickguard. I think it's a very attractive and utilitarian idea to have a large piece of plastic holding all of the controls. It protects the instrument and makes upgrades and repairs very easy. I'm also very glad that the humbucker route is cut big enough for a covered bucker. Something I wish Fender would do on their HH guitars.
8) Overall cosmetics. The solid color finish is wonderful! My bandmates have commented on how beautiful the guitar is. The design is so attractive, too. While it's the same body shape as the iconic PRS shape, I feel like it takes on a completely different life in this more modest trim.
9) Great gig bag, too. I'll still use my Mono most of the time, but the PRS gig bag is quite nice.
Now, I have a few issues with the guitar, too, but none are deal breakers. Here are some:
1) I hate the truss rod nut. I have a set of really nice truss rod wrenches with T handles, which make truss rod adjustments a breeze. And then there's this guitar, where I have to use the tiny truss rod wrench that came with the guitar. I need to loosen the strings just to get at the truss rod, and I have to be careful not to knock anything while I adjust it. Why, PRS? Why?
2) The tone knob does not stay on. It's not a big deal because I plan on changing out the pot and knob (for CTS and Gibson style speed knobs) anyway, but I pulled off the entire tone knob while trying to split the pickup. You make this wonderful guitar and then cheap out on $2 pots and knobs? Also, it seems like all the pots are metric, and not the high quality metric import kind like Alpha, more like the no-name stuff that comes on Squier Affinity. Fender definitely has better quality wiring at this price range. At least the jack is a Switchcraft.
3) Zero shielding in the cavernous wiring cavity. It doesn't result in much added noise because the humbuckers are well-shielded, but once again, I expect most guitars in this price range to have shielding.
4) The humbucker split was a good idea, but the execution not perfect. It is easy to wire a split such that you split to RWRP coil pairs, and then you have noise cancellation when both pickups are on in the split position. When I wire splits, I do this. PRS did not do this. When the split is engaged, there is hum in all three positions.
5) Also, the pickups aren't... umm... very good according to me. Let's get this out of the way, I like a lot of cheap Asian made pickups, I'm not a pickup snob. One of my favorite pickups is whatever came stock in the Daisy Rock Retro-H Deluxe, and I put Dragonfire Screamers ($35 a set ceramic Artec pickups) in guitars and love them. I might be picky, but I'll give anything a shot. These don't cut it for me. The bridge doesn't hit the amp with enough authority, and the neck is too muddy. In the middle, I don't get enough clarity for chords.
It might sound like a long list of complaints for a guitar costing north of $1k, but when I think about it, all of the complaints (except the truss rod nut, which is just me being a huge baby, and it's still better than the heel adjust on my #1 Fender Mustang) are about electronics, which are really easy to address. For about $25 in supplies, I can fully rewire and shield the guitar, and for some more money, I can buy new pickups, and considering people often change pickups on guitars costing many times more, that's not too bad.
Besides, electronics are where I can show off my modding creativity. I have been sketching out a wiring diagram that combines the stock wiring configuration with a Tele 4-way switch (for connecting the pickups in series) and I have ordered some chrome Lace Big Block humbuckers (14k in bridge, 10k in neck) to make it all work. That will give me 8 easy to use tones and make it consistent with my other guitars that have similar wiring configurations. After all, that's why I love blade switches. They allow for so much more creativity than toggles. I might also get a white pearl pickguard, too. I think that would look really good.
Anyway, lengthy post, but hopefully you can see how excited I am to be the owner of a brand new PRS S2 Standard 24.
Last edited:
