It's been about a week since I got the P22. Thanks everybody, so much for the kind words. To the one who was asking about my comings and goings, and the layout of my apartment and so forth... please let me keep my guitar for a little while longer - at least until the novelty wears off.
Things I'm really impressed with (other than the look, which I'm totally in awe of. OMG, the lushness of the purple and the quality of the flame is every bit as good as it looks in the pictures):
- it sounds really good with the volume rolled down. It doesn't get muddy and muted sounding. I can be playing with the volume turned down to 2 - 3, enjoying sweet clean sound, and then turn up to 9 - 10 and hear it bloom into a heavy distorted sound.
- the electronics are whisper quiet. On high gain settings, this guitar is clearly the quietest humbucker guitar I've owned / played.
- the whole guitar really resonates / vibrates with the strings. When I dig in and play with more force, I can feel the guitar vibrating in sympathy. It's a very pleasant feeling. Knocking on the guitar body makes a nice woody gong sound, as if the whole guitar is acting like a tuning fork.
- I have no idea what magic causes this, but when playing very hard the pitch doesn't seem to bloom up as much as other guitars in my experience. It's especially noticeable when tuning, where you hit a string and the note sounds immediately sharp and then slowly settles back to the desired pitch. That effect still happens with this guitar, of course, but noticeably less than I've come to expect.
- staying in tune. This guitar has rock solid tuning stability, even with a lot of tremolo use. The weather is changing drastically this month with Fall becoming Winter (in Toronto here). I've come home from work this week to a very cold apartment on Monday, turned the baseboards on and come home on Tuesday to a very warm apartment. Have not had to correct the tuning more than a couple cents. I'll be playing outdoors on Friday night, we'll see how well it holds tuning. I'm pretty confident.
- intonation. I've tweaked the intonation on the bridge saddles ever so slightly since taking possession, just to get teh uber sweetness out of it. It is really sweet sounding all across the fretboard and I am no where near the limits of travel on the saddle adjusters; plenty of room on both sides - if you know what I mean.... I'm not describing it well. Basically, I'm saying the bridge is situated perfectly. For strings, I have 10s on right now. Am totally confident I could go to 11s, 12s, 9s, or 8s and still be able to get it intonated perfectly.
- smaller details. The finish is immaculate. The gloss on the back of the neck does not get at all sticky. The way they get the abalone inside the MOP (I'm assuming the materials here) is pretty amazing. I don't believe there is much if any finish on top of the fretboard, yet is is very hard to detect any ridges or edges where the inlays are. Feels totally smooth. The tremolo block looks like it's made of solid brass - I don't know what this does for a guitar exactly, but it seems and looks really impressive.
Things I'm not jumping for joy over (these are just personal nits I'm picking):
- I haven't quite settled into the precise amount I have to bend the strings yet. This is just going to take getting used to, but I feel that (because of the tremolo, no doubt) I have to bend the strings more to go up, say, a whole step than I would with a guitar that has a stoptail. I'm enjoying the tremolo too much at the moment, or I might consider blocking the trem.
- I've grown accustomed to having separate volume and tone controls for each pickup. While I can't say that I'd like the look of having a couple more knobs on the guitar - I wouldn't like it aesthetically - I do miss being able to blend both pickups with different tone settings for each.
- I wish this guitar had the 408 pickup scheme. The 5-way blade switch on the P22 does offer plenty of diversity, but I like the concept of the 408 switching better. When I'd settled on buying a PRS, the decision came down to either a 408 or a P22. The piezo output is what made the difference for me. If I could have had a 408 Trem with a Piezo, I would have gone that way for sure. As things stand, I'm going to have to get a 408, too, at some point.
- I wish the Piezo side had a hex output, too. I have a GR-55 sitting in a box in my closet. After setting up the GR-55 and sticking a GK pickup on my Carvin a year or so ago, and playing with it for a week or so, the novelty of the GR-55 wore off in a big way. I've since uninstalled the GK pickup and can't be fussed to reinstall it. I only mention this because it seems to me that there are 6 discreet outputs from the P22 Piezo that could easily have been wired into a hex output in addition to the included Piezo dedicated out. I might be wrong about that. If I'm not wrong, and it would have been easy from a technical stand-point to provide a hex output, then I'm disappointed they didn't.
Rock on. Peace out.
