Looking at PRS SE Paul's Guitar

tdibratt

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Apr 25, 2022
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Hi folks, new here. Looking to get the SE version Paul's Guitar. Comes with vintage style tuners. Anyone have any issues with tuning? Is there locking options? I found some for direct SE replacement but not for vintage.. Also with respect to the wide fat neck. I have a Gretsch Streamliner. 42mm nut, 24 3/4 scale, 22 frets. The PRS Guitar is just shy of 43mm nut, 25 scale, 22 fret.. I can't get my hands on one locally and before I order, anyone have any thought on whether I will notice a big difference? The depth of the neck at the nut looks like maybe 1-2 mm thicker than my Gretsch as well.


Thanks
 
I recently got a SE HB2 Piezo, with the "wide fat" neck, which is definitely fatter (though not appreciably wider) than my Ibanez Artist. Took me about 15 minutes to get used to it and I find it very comfortable to play. I do have large hands though, and play a lot of acoustic. YMMV blah blah blah.

I've had zero tuning issues so far. Holds beautifully, especially for a hollowbody.
 
Gotoh makes drop in locking tuners. I put them on my SE Pauls. Not because I had tuning problems, just because I wanted locking tuners.
 
I also got the Gotoh locking tuners. The stock were fine; I just prefer locking. The neck feels thinner that my 594 McCarty and feels fine to me. It came with the action a little high so I had that lowered. It's a great guitar and a great value. You can get a real single coil sound out of it with those pickups.
 
Do you really need locking tuners with a fixed bridge?
Absolutely not. At all.

In terms of the tuners themselves, it’s how you use the bridge/trem that affects the tuning stability, so if you’re always doing dive bombs etc. and releasing the tension on the strings (around the tuner posts) it’s quite likely you’ll upset the winds on the posts and this leads to tuning instability. This is why you’ll usually see either locking tuners or, more commonly, a locking nut on guitars equipped with a floating trem like the Floyd Rose, because when the trem returns to its normal position and the strings are released back to full tension there’s a massively reduced (if not totally eliminated) risk of the string moving at the nut end.

So with locking tuners you don’t need the string to be wound around the post, potentially eliminating that risk, and lockers do speed up string changes too, so it’s a double win.

I’ve put locking tuners on my last two builds, both fixed bridges (Gotoh/Gotoh and Gotoh/Fender combos) simply because string changing is a little quicker, and I don’t even need them to be quicker! I just like the convenience.
 
I bought the Guyker locking tuners to replace the really poor stock tuners in my SE Paul's guitar. It's really something they should upgrade considering how good the rest of the guitar is.
That said, for $30, the Guykers are decent. Not the smoothest, but ok. The ferrules are a bit larger in diameter than the stock ones, so I left them on. I didn't feel like drilling out the holes just to get a matching black ring under the tuner shaft.
The only issue I've had is the keystone knobs on a few have play in them. A bit of super glue fixed the problem.
 
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