N(to me)GD - P245 SH in Trampas Green

A beautiful example of the breed, my boy, beautiful example of the breed.
Thank you!
that's a beautiful guitar for sure. nice pick up.
And thank you!

I played it for a while last night - at first just exploring all the sounds: it is nice having the push-pull split coil option when blending mag and piezo as a change of pace from the 5-way on my P24, for example.

But then I just got lost in the tonez, playing riffs and partial songs. And then I ripped on a Metallica-Thin Lizzy version of Whiskey In The Jar, which I had been practicing recently, so I had a rhythm track recorded in my looper played on the RL Vela. Wow, what a nice combo of tones!

Tangent: my band is a Celtic Fusion band, which can lean very Celtic/Irish like when appropriate, or can lean to a mix of singer-songwriter blended with rock'n'roll. Because of the Celtic/Irish side, we get asked to do the typical songs: Danny Boy, Black Velvet Band, Irish Rover, and so on, including occasionally Whiskey In The Jar. One of the others in the band (Jenn) knows the song, and we could all just play along, but she finds it weird singing about a woman betraying/helping her (especially if she sings about Jenny, not Molly), so I was tasked with learning the song so I could sing it and "lead the band". Naturally I made sure to listen to the Dubliners version to see what that was all about - that is the version that seems to be the baseline for many bands' arrangements - it is very folky-trad Irish. But I knew of the Thin Lizzy version for years, since I'd been in college, and the Metallica version from not too long ago was a nice heavy twist on the Thin Lizzy arrangement. So my version is mostly Metallica (and I sing about Molly, to avoid weirdness with bandmates!), a bit of TL, but different verses a la the Dubliners, and done in a different key from all. TL plays it in G, Metallica plays in F (G-style chords on a Std D tuned guitar), and the Dubliners play in D (capoed second fret, so chord shapes as if played in C). I play it in C, although it seems I have transposed the vocal melody to be closer to James Hetfield's F tuning. :shrug:

I can't wait to play my version of Whiskey In The Jar next time it gets requested, and see their faces melt! Bwa ha ha ha!
 
Oh yeah, one more thing: @bodia had swapped out the stock tuner buttons for a faux-bone set. They look awesome, especially with the binding down the neck - the little black fret-position dots match the black dots of the screws on the tuners!

When bodia had mentioned he had swapped the tuner buttons I was neutral on the idea (I do tend to keep everything stock, though there are exceptions like my spalted ZM), figuring if I really didn't like them I'd find a stock set to replace them. But once i saw them, I was like "boo-yeah!". Awesome choice, bodia!
 
Oh yeah, one more thing: @bodia had swapped out the stock tuner buttons for a faux-bone set. They look awesome, especially with the binding down the neck - the little black fret-position dots match the black dots of the screws on the tuners!

When bodia had mentioned he had swapped the tuner buttons I was neutral on the idea (I do tend to keep everything stock, though there are exceptions like my spalted ZM), figuring if I really didn't like them I'd find a stock set to replace them. But once i saw them, I was like "boo-yeah!". Awesome choice, bodia!

Thanks! Glad to hear that you're really diggin' it!
 
So..ran into my shipping-receiving guy just now. You may recall he had heard me play around with the guitar when it first arrived, guitar playing through my small gigging board with amp emulator into an acoustic amp.

He said something like: "That guitar sounded so different, like it was a classic rock guitar. It just sounded so...classic!"

I strongly suspect PRS has indeed managed to produce some very fine classic-sounding pickups in those 58/15s - because it sure wan't my playing, and I didn't exactly have a Marshall half-stack with me. I've never been much of a pick-up aficionado, generally just playing whatever comes in the guitar I buy, but I did want this P245 to hear these new pickups from PRS. I think I will be very interested in making sure they are in the next guitar I buy. (Hey, I'm not gonna try to fool myself, there will be a "next" guitar.)
 
And here are the promised/threatened shots in the sunshine (slightly diffuse, sun was playing hide and seek with clouds today, never quite coming out fully):

20170418_155252_1024_zpsrs4oie7i.jpg

20170418_155208_1024_zps3ve2sdwe.jpg
 
OK, so maybe you are all sick of me talking about my new toy/tool, but I'll type anyway: :p

I did a quick comparison of my P24 and the P245SH. I played a riff or portion of a song on one guitar into my looper, then did nothing for a similar amount of time while still "recording". Then played same thing (hopefully) in the blank space. I repeated this for a few different settings/styles: I did some dirty stuff and some clean. This let me hear the guitars while not actually playing.

Obviously the differences in the physical build of guitars are potentially going to make just as much of a difference as the pickups: stop tail vs tremolo; 24.5" scale vs 25"; 22 frets vs 24; semi-hollow vs solid. But even still there seemed to be something from the pickups that were different.

58/15 pups rock! Compared to the P24 with 57/08s, they seemed to have more clarity. The P24 has a bit darker sound compared to the P245SH.

One thing that was a really nice bonus was that the P245SH is lighter than the P24. Although the semi-hollow seems like an obvious factor, the P245SH seems thicker, so it could have been a bit of a wash.

Also, although not glaringly different, when I was conscious of it I could feel the difference in the neck width (Pattern vs Pattern Regular).

Oh, and the split coil or coil tap mode enabled when pulling on the tone knob is a really nice feature - the split coil 58/15 seems like a slightly clearer, more polite, mode, which makes for good clean sounds and dirty tonez with added clarity.

After doing my comparison I got lost in some jamming and goofing around. And that was icing on the cake - I love getting lost in the tonez and just rocking out or whatever (sometimes I go off into soundscape land, where there is no "beat", just washes of sound swirling, looping, and falling...).

Anyway, I like this guitar. I like all my other PRSi too! Speaking of which, I need to mess around with that SAS a bit more...
 
OK, so maybe you are all sick of me talking about my new toy/tool, but I'll type anyway: :p

I did a quick comparison of my P24 and the P245SH. I played a riff or portion of a song on one guitar into my looper, then did nothing for a similar amount of time while still "recording". Then played same thing (hopefully) in the blank space. I repeated this for a few different settings/styles: I did some dirty stuff and some clean. This let me hear the guitars while not actually playing.

Obviously the differences in the physical build of guitars are potentially going to make just as much of a difference as the pickups: stop tail vs tremolo; 24.5" scale vs 25"; 22 frets vs 24; semi-hollow vs solid. But even still there seemed to be something from the pickups that were different.

58/15 pups rock! Compared to the P24 with 57/08s, they seemed to have more clarity. The P24 has a bit darker sound compared to the P245SH.

One thing that was a really nice bonus was that the P245SH is lighter than the P24. Although the semi-hollow seems like an obvious factor, the P245SH seems thicker, so it could have been a bit of a wash.

Also, although not glaringly different, when I was conscious of it I could feel the difference in the neck width (Pattern vs Pattern Regular).

Oh, and the split coil or coil tap mode enabled when pulling on the tone knob is a really nice feature - the split coil 58/15 seems like a slightly clearer, more polite, mode, which makes for good clean sounds and dirty tonez with added clarity.

After doing my comparison I got lost in some jamming and goofing around. And that was icing on the cake - I love getting lost in the tonez and just rocking out or whatever (sometimes I go off into soundscape land, where there is no "beat", just washes of sound swirling, looping, and falling...).

Anyway, I like this guitar. I like all my other PRSi too! Speaking of which, I need to mess around with that SAS a bit more...

Not sick at all. A thorough evaluation!
 
Badass. Luckily @bodia can't control himself, which leaves nice guitars at a discount for the rest of the world!
 
Killer guitar! Any notable difference in the piezo sound between the P24 and P245?
Good question! I think there is, even though they should be the same system in both (the latest LR Baggs, IIRC). The P245SH seems little darker? And I find it sounds better using a different image on my Fishman Aura. But that might be just my ears not being properly calibrated, and hearing the "raw acoustic" sound while I play (the P245SH has a good unplugged sound due to the Semi-Hollow nature, of course). I need to run some experiments against a true acoustic guitar using my looper pedal perhaps, or just flat out record it onto a laptop, to suss out whether the P245SH is really that different from the P24 (and both are going to sound different from a true acoustic, even the plain acoustic piezo signal).

I doubt I'll have time this weekend, but perhaps during the week...
 
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