New guitar... Just joined the family

[ArnaudS1979]

Hey Guys, I am new here.

I just got myself a SE Custom 24 which is fantastic in the way it looks, the way it plays and the way it sounds. Once the honeymoon period is over it will be interesting to take stock and take an 'objective' look at how it compares with my other guitars.

I'll post a few picks once I have proven myself not to be a spammer

 

[ArnaudS1979]

 

[toothace]

That's niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice! Congrats!

 

[Screamingdaisy]

It's pretty crazy how good some SEs look.

 

[Big Mard]

i love the look of Spalted Maple beautiful guitar

 

[sergiodeblanc]

Lookin' good!

 

[andy474x]

So rad! Welcome!!!

 

[vchizzle]

Looks sweet, welcome!

 

[AP515]

Tone report!

 

[g.wizz]

Exquisite SE Congrats

 

[Alan Manning]

Excellent choice. Enjoy. They're great made guitars.

 

[Atomic]

Yeah man I like that one

 

[ArnaudS1979]

Thanks for the welcome and the appreciation of the new stable mate.

Initial tone report goes like this:
- There is something special happening when both pups are on and split. With a clean sound it had qualities of an acoustic guitar sound.
- I think the position of the neck pick up, pushed closer to the bridge by the 24th fret, will mean that I will get along well with the neck humbucker. So far, I have replaced neck humbuckers on both my LPs with P90. I just don't like the booming quality of neck humbuckers. On the custom 24, teh neck pick up feels a lot usable to me.
- While trying in the shop with a Marshall JVM, I couldn't really find a combination of pup and gain levels which couldn't be tweaked to be nice... so very promising.

More in depth tone report once I have spent more time with it and had a chance to compare it to my other guitars...

 

[Atomic]

A little tip on neck pickups from someone who never really liked the sound of ANY neck pickup in any guitar I've had... I never could find a useable tone until I started adjusting my amp on the neck pickup FIRST. when you initially plug in the guitar ignore the bridge and middle pickups entirely and adjust your tone for a sweet spot tone for whatever you're doing while keeping the guitar solely in the neck position.

When I do this I find the "boomy" sound and that "wooly" blanket over the amp sound goes away. The beauty of it is if your pickups are matched even remotely well your bridge tone will be spot on.

 

[shinksma]

Wow! I love my spalted maple SE ZM, but yours has that "tuxedo" binding or whatever it is called, and that really sets it off! Super nice!

And great initial tone report!

 

[sloanthebone]

Love that! Those are cool tops.

 

[László]

Beautiful guitar!

 

[dogrocketp]

I`m guessing you bought your drop dead gorgeous guitar out of the US. Enjoy.

 

[ArnaudS1979]

A little tip on neck pickups from someone who never really liked the sound of ANY neck pickup in any guitar I've had... I never could find a useable tone until I started adjusting my amp on the neck pickup FIRST. when you initially plug in the guitar ignore the bridge and middle pickups entirely and adjust your tone for a sweet spot tone for whatever you're doing while keeping the guitar solely in the neck position.

When I do this I find the "boomy" sound and that "wooly" blanket over the amp sound goes away. The beauty of it is if your pickups are matched even remotely well your bridge tone will be spot on.

Thanks for the tip. That's an interesting way to go about it. unfortunately, I won't be able to make best use of it in the near future as this PRS won't give me a problem in this regard and I have already shelved all neck HB I had... and quite happy with the result so far.

An interesting thing about setting up the amp I have come across recently. I have seen a way of setting up your amp that relies on finding the sweet spot for each control knob. The way the sweet spot was described was that if you turn the knob from 0 to top (be it 10 or 12), it is the level where the change to your tone is the most significant. I have tried it with my LC-15R and it does seem like each knob has this 'hurdle jumping' spot. Anyone here using this technique to set up their amp?

 

[ArnaudS1979]

I`m guessing you bought your drop dead gorgeous guitar out of the US. Enjoy.

What make you say that? Is there a difference between PRS for the US market and other markets? Or is it just because of the timing of my posts you say that I bought it in the UK.