NGD and Unboxing: 50th Anniversary Abraxas SE Santana

Utkarsh

Ministry of guitar
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
587
Location
Singapore
Yes I promise this will be the last one for a while.

Picked this up after thinking I won't be able to get my hands on one, as my friend, the Indonesian dealer, had all of his domestic allocation sell out in less than an hour. But I could find one in Singapore luckily.

Quite interestingly, reading the other thread, the guitar has turned out to be relatively polarizing. I am on the positive end of that spectrum. The Santana was always a guitar that had intrigued me but never really appealed to me, so I had never forked out for a core. The small scale, 24 frets and lack of multiple controls were not to my liking, as well as I significantly preferred the regular PRS body shape ( I still do).

That said, I have been warming to 24 frets of late, and when this came out, I immediately loved the look of it. Black with a natural back has a certain elegance to it (there have a couple of core wood library guitars like that which I really liked the look of). And I liked the Abraxas sticker, though I usually detest decals on guitars.

First impressions. Very very impressive. The guitar does not look, feel or sound cheap at all. It reminds me of the significant strides PRS has been with its more affordable models. Compared to other made in Indonesia guitars I have owned (like a couple of Iron Label Ibanez's), this is a different league. I actually don't think its even fair to think of it as it is good for the money. It is good period!

Initial thoughts, unboxing as below and of course a full review coming up soon. The review to do list is stacking up, I have to say

 
Thanks so much for doing this review!!

I have an se santana single cut yeah the flaming gold one. But so far im resisting this model because its going to be so similar. But easier higher fret access …
 
Back
Top