Some years ago I discovered that the strings I had been buying for 20 years were suddenly crap and making a lot of weird overtones. Affordable strings these days are made with junk wire and don't sound pleasing to me. On guitars with microphonic pickups the effect is exacerbated (as well as maple necks + maple fretboards). I spent over $400 on a string 'shootout' and found the good stuff and these problems were eliminated. A proper setup and new high quality strings might solve the problem easily.
SorrySo, uh, what'd you end up using?
Sorry
Pyramid Max Performance Pure Nickel (hex core)
Pyramid Nickel Classics (round core, I don't use these on guitars with locking tuners)
Mangan Pure Nickel (hex core)
Mapes -- you can get the stuff direct for a killer price (back in 'the day' a lot of US guitar strings were just rebranded Mapes strings or they wound Mapes wire)
Elixir Optiweb (I never cared for Elixir but these are really nice)
EB Cobalts (for my EBMM JP guitars)
True. Knowing the difference between price and actual value I wonder if they get some form of subsidy or price support unlike US firms where it's just unmitigated market exposure. The strings from Mapes are very affordable because they cut out the middleman but the rest of the stuff I tried (and I tried a lot of them) was terrible. The last big string purchase I made was all Mangan.Just to note - I use Pyramid strings and they are some of the cheapest strings Thomann offers in the EU. So cheap does not necessarily equate to bad.
Also, I recently saw some complaints on TGP about Pyramid strings and I thought, "Oh, no, here we go again with the lowering of quality in order to keep prices down." Have you noticed any change in their strings?
Yeah, that sounds pretty good.No, I did not notice any changes, but my strings last quite a long time. Had one set where one of the wound strings wouldn’t intonate after a couple of months of use, but that is normal with round core strings.
Sorry
Pyramid Max Performance Pure Nickel (hex core)
Pyramid Nickel Classics (round core, I don't use these on guitars with locking tuners)
Mangan Pure Nickel (hex core)
Mapes -- you can get the stuff direct for a killer price (back in 'the day' a lot of US guitar strings were just rebranded Mapes strings or they wound Mapes wire)
Elixir Optiweb (I never cared for Elixir but these are really nice)
EB Cobalts (for my EBMM JP guitars)
Hi everyone!
This is long overdue, but I finally got my PRS back from the luthier today. It took him a while to get to the root of it. To start with a somewhat unsatisfactory point: even though the problem is fixed, he couldn't be 100% sure what the exact issue was in the end. He tightened everything that can be tightened (tuners, bridge, etc.), replaced the springs that hold the pickups, and he put rubber tubing over the springs. Since the bridge and tuners appeared to be ok on inspection, it is most likely that the pickup springs were the culprit.
The most important part however, is that the problem is now indeed resolved. I get a proper recorded clean sound out of my PRS + Kemper now, without the annoying anti-harmonic metal jingle that has been bugging me for years. Yay!
Cheers, and sorry for the long wait.
Might have been the pickup springs. I seem to remember a couple of people having a similar issue, and it being fixed by putting some foam in the pick up cavities.
Hello everyone,
I'm new to this forum, and I hope some of you skilled PRS aficionados out there can help me out with a long-standing problem with my PRS.
Sometime around 2002 I bought a PRS Custom 24. I love playing it and I love looking at it, but it has also proved to be a terribly difficult guitar to record and mix. It has a very harsh, pronounced rattle between 3k and 4k that requires a lot of very specific notch filtering to get rid of. I play pretty clean, jangly stuff (think Johnny Marr, Nile Rodgers, etc.) and precisely with that type of sound the problem is most pronounced. Playing high-gain leads tends to be ok.
By comparison, my wife has a cheap Squier that I end up using mostly for recording clean chords, because it simply sounds a lot less harsh. I believe the PRS should be able to do better than a cheap Fender knockoff, so there must be something wrong.
Here's what I've tried and found out so far:
- I do most of my home recording through a Kemper. I have also used a Focusrite Scarlett interface to capture the sound without any amplification or modeling in between. The problem is definitely in the clean sound, not in the amping. In fact, I can hear it directly when I play in the room, without any electronics in between.
- The metallic ringing sound is not harmonically related to whatever notes I am playing. It sounds harsh and out of tune.
- I have installed a sponge in my tremolo spring cavity to dampen the springs. That appears to reduce the problem somewhat, but it does not eliminate it.
- The problem is most pronounced on the higher, unwound strings. My pickups are the stock HFS and Vintage Bass pair. At one point, I lowered them so far on the treble side I was at the end of the screw. It didn't help.
- I have heard this exact sound in other Custom 24's, but not in all of them. Since I'm new to the forum I can't post links yet, but there's a French guy on Youtube with the account name 'Voron Guitars' who has a video titled "PRS 57/08 vs Modern Eagle vs HFS/Vintage Bass pickups comparaison". He plays some chords through a clean amp using various pickups, starting at 1 minute into the video. Right there, there is a very prominent, harsh mid sound around 3-4khz. There is another video by Rob Chapman called "PRS Custom 24 Demo (Clean)" where the rattling harshness is not present at all. I wish I could get that tone, but I just can't.
I'm pretty much out of stuff to try. Does anyone have any new suggestions on how to find the source of this problem? Again, I cannot post links yet (I need three posts I believe), but once I do I can post a clip where I band-pass filter the problematic region, so you can hear it properly. Thanks in advance for any helpful comments!