Information about my PRS?

JLG

New Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2017
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6
Hey everybody!

I was wondering if anyone of you could give me further information about my PRS. It was bought in 2004 and I´ve never seen another PRS in that color and with a maple fretboard again since then. Is there anything special about this guitar or is it a regular CE24? (The color is a bit brighter in reality than it appears on the pictures.)

When I did my research correctly, the guitar was built in 2003, the serial on the back of where the neck is bolt to the body says "378495".

Here it is:

20170622_014342_zpswdx2lssn.jpg

20170622_014355_zpssmidrbth.jpg

20170622_014621_zpsbftfzcms.jpg

20170622_014407_zpsregfz1sd.jpg


Comments of all types are welcome!

Thank you very much,
JLG
 
I am by no means as much of an expert as many others here, but that is a late 80's (first run Classic Electric) CE. Looks to be a faded purple from the pictures. That line originally had the maple neck/fretboard. There are other PRS guitars with maple - the Swamp Ash Special, the SAS NF, the 305, NF3, Bret Mason....

That's a cool guitar!!
 
Thanks for the reply!

I´m not sure about the year, I figured that it also could be made in ´93. It´s not in a perfect condition as you can see, the fretboard has some areas where the finish comes off. But that has no effect on playing as far as I can tell.

I´ll try to take some more pictures tomorrow in daylight. You can have a better look at the color then.
 
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The serial number 378495 means:

"3" is for 1993
"7" is the designation for the CE model
it is the "8495"th CE model made.

Alder body, mahogany top, the neck however appears to be from an earlier model...the "Classes Electric" headstock logo was changed to a black headstock with a gold Paul Reed Smith signature in 1989, so...is this a hybrid of two guitars someone put together? some pics of the back of the headstock and the heck-late with the serial number might be helpful.

I agree that this guitar was probably purple initially ...looks like it's aged very well!
 
That could be a really faded Raspberry.

The old "Classic Electric" on the headstock does seem to conflict with the year indicated by the neck plate. I do suspect a neck swap, but it also just be a neck plate swap, I suppose...

I wonder if there is anything on the body (like in the pickup cavities) to indicate the year of production? The older models don't have MODCATs, but maybe some scribbling in there?
 
We've seen a couple similar CEs come through the forum. For some unknown reason there were some with the older style neck, even though it wasn't supposed to be an option anymore. So I'd say it's likely one of those rare beasts, but it is also possible someone did a neck swap.

Color looks like a very faded Purple to me, or maybe Raspberry. Great top for a CE too! I think toothace typoed, it's quilted maple, not mahogany.

More will be revealed if you pull the pickups. Neck and body should have dates, SN, and color written underneath.

Here's a similar thread from a while back: http://forums.prsguitars.com/threads/ce-24-please-help-identify-year.21519/
 
[QUOTE="garrett, post: 330713, member: 1710"

Color looks like a very faded Purple to me, or maybe Raspberry. Great top for a CE too! I think toothace typoed, it's quilted maple, not mahogany.

[/QUOTE]

Yes, I did misquote...my bad! Thanks for the correction.

Here;s the bridge pickup cavity from my '91CE
IMG_7780_zpsqzfijodm.jpg


and the neck pickup cavity
IMG_7777_zpskmjbfena.jpg
 
True 88's did not have a neck plate serial number. The number was at the top of the headstock. They changed to a serialized neck plate sometime in 89. So at least we know it wasn't an 88. Also, no maple top and 5 way switch until mid-89.

I don't think we can get any closer than 89 to 93 (with a neck swap) until we see what is in the cavities.

Fun search.
 
So...

First, thanks for all the replies and helpful comments. I know a lot more now than I did before.

Today I talked to the guy that I bought the guitar from in 2004. He said, that he brought the guitar from the US (I live in germany, that explains my weird english) in 1994. He got it from a PRS-Dealer as a demonstration model. So if the neck was swapped, it must have been in the first year after the guitar was made. That´s seems not very likely to me, but not impossible of course. Maybe they just had one of the older necks lying around and used it for my guitar.

Here are the pics of what´s under the pickups (congrats to the people who said the color is purple, it´s very funny to see what the color once looked like. There´s a rest of it under the pickup frames.). What do the other letters stand for?
20170622_223545_zps3batrda5.jpg

20170622_224028_zpsqg6wj7lr.jpg


The reason for me to start the research about my guitar was, that I was thinking about selling it. I don´t play it very much anymore and I don´t want it to be lying around unused. If I sell it or not depends on the price I can get for it, of course.
 
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Well then, it appears you have a neck from 1986 attached to a body from 1993. "Prototype" or "after market hybrid", use whatever terminology suits you best!
 
I'm pretty sure the WT stands for wide/thin neck profile, and RF is probably rosewood fingerboard, which further supports the non-original neck theory
 
My theory is, that the guitar stood in a store window for a longer time. Maybe that´s why the color faded so much. The neck didn´t like the sunshine after a while, so it had to be swapped.

Anyway, thanks to all of you for helping me out!
 
I'm still confident it's one of the '93 models that inexplicably had the older style neck from the factory.

You can see on the Pearl White one that it originally had "RF", but was changed to "MF".

 
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