PRS custom 24 with maple neck or not

[surfswithalien]

Hello there. I'm looking to buy a PRS Custom 24. I have found one which is absolutely beautiful. Artists package with 58/15 pickups made in 2017.

However, this guitar has a maple neck and cocobolo fretboard. Fatback mahogany body with maple flame top. I have read some posts on the internet the maple neck PRS customs sound brighter and most think not as nice as the all mahogany.

I definitely want my PRS to be a classic sound. Do you think I should pass up on this absolute beauty and instead go with an all mahogany?

I want to hear opinions because for me this is a lot of money and I want to be happy with it for a very long time. Testing it in a shop is limited for me.

 

[bodia]

Hello there. I'm looking to buy a PRS Custom 24. I have found one which is absolutely beautiful. Artists package with 58/15 pickups made in 2017.

However, this guitar has a maple neck and cocobolo fretboard. Fatback mahogany body with maple flame top. I have read some posts on the internet the maple neck PRS customs sound brighter and most think not as nice as the all mahogany.

I definitely want my PRS to be a classic sound. Do you think I should pass up on this absolute beauty and instead go with an all mahogany?

I want to hear opinions because for me this is a lot of money and I want to be happy with it for a very long time. Testing it in a shop is limited for me.

I have a Wood Library Cu24 from 2014 with a maple neck and Ebony board. I love it. The maple neck may be my favorite thing about it. Brighter? I dunno. Maybe. I'd say snappier. But, it depends on what type of music you're playing. Add some healthy amounts of gain, and it isn't noticeable, IMO.

If the one you are looking at is a Fatback, I would think that would more than compensate for any brightness the maple neck would add.

 

[Tone-y]

I can't answer this directly, but I had a strat that I put a quartersawn mahogany neck on and it didn't make an awful lot of difference over the maple/rosewood board that was on there. I have a 'superstrat' type yamaha that has a maple neck/rosewood board combo, and I wouldn't say is a bright guitar - Think of all those Ibanez shred guitars with maple necks and rosewood boards. Or Van Halen's guitars with all maple necks.
I would have said that maple necks on 24 fret dual humbucker guitars is total legitimate. Of course this doesn't help whether it's suitable for you or not.

 

[goat-n-gitter]

Buy it!
I have a Custom 24 piezo with a mahogany neck, and thicker body, and I have a Custom 24 with maple neck and African blackwood board. Honestly, there isn't a huge difference in tone. If anything, the mahogany necked guitar may be a bit thinner sounding, particularly on clean tones. Both have 85/15 pickups. The maple neck (mine has the "unfinished" feel/look, which is actually a finish in itself) is an absolute treat, I wish all my PRS felt like it!

 

[Boogie]

A maple neck brings, like Bodia describes, “snappiness” or more immediacy to the attack. Depending on your preferred musical genre, that can be a plus. And a McCarty body thickness on a Custom is very cool, too.

With all of that said, I chose my first PRS much like you described...wanting the quintessential PRS experience. To me, that was the Custom 24. Regular. Stock. No upgrades or mods. And that’s what I bought. Then you will want something with a maple neck...and a thicker body...and different pickups...and...

Personally, I’d stick to your guns and get a regular CU24, first.

 

[veinbuster]

Boogie makes a good point.

I do have a maple neck with a cocobolo board and really like it. The guitar does have a somewhat different sound than the traditional hog/rosewood. I like it, but it is a bit different. A bit of a bottom end to top end shift.

 

[21Hemispheres12]

I have a custom 24 with a maple neck and rosewood fretboard with a swamp ash back. To my ear, chords seem to have very good note separation and the guitar cuts through the mix very well. I've never played a standard custom 24 but out of my 5 PRSi the custom 24 is my favorite so that says a lot to me.

 

[surfswithalien]

Thank you for all the replies! It’s really great feedback and I love reading everyone’s unique opinion.

 

[Huggy Love]

The difference between the two is minimal (unless you are a hardcore purist like me when it comes to tone) and anything can be EQ'd to the tone you want. I think the key statement is "I definitely want my PRS to be a classic sound", so if that's the goal I would hold out for a full mahogany.

 

[shinksma]

Hmm. Where is this listing? Maybe I can remove the temptation for you...

 

[RiverRat]

I have a 2006 artist with RW FB and just picked up a 1989 CE 24 with maple neck and FB.

The maple is brighter than the rosewood.

 

[bodia]

Hmm. Where is this listing? Maybe I can remove the temptation for you...

We should talk................

 

[László]

I have a 594 with a maple neck, and a 594 with a mahogany neck. Both are great.

The mahogany neck has a warmer top end and a little softer bottom end. The maple neck has a little crisper tone, and the bottom end is a bit snappier. The maple has a comparatively scooped midrange that’s more evident on the neck pickup than the bridge pickup, where the differences are less pronounced.

On the neck pickup, I might prefer the maple neck. On the bridge pickup, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other.

My maple neck 594 has a gloss finished neck to match the body of the guitar; I like the feel of a gloss neck more than a satin neck, but lots of folks feel differently about neck finishes.

The cocobolo fretboard is warm sounding, much like rosewood, perhaps a little more “caramel” in flavor than RW. I like the coco fretboards quite a bit.

 

[andy474x]

I can't comment on core Custom 24's specifically, but I've never played a guitar with a maple neck that didn't sound brighter/snappier to me. I would, and do, stick to mahogany. Maple is a nice sound, in certain cases, but I just like that more rounded sound.

 

[JJJ]

Maple necks are awesome

 

[HANGAR18]

The tone knobs on these newer guitars are extremely versatile. So it seems to me that you can have both. Brightness when you want it and softness when you roll back on the tone knob. I have newer PRSi with and without Maple necks. It's all good.

 

[merciful-evans]

I would always opt for a maple neck given a choice. This is for strength. I have cracked a mahogany headstock just by the guitar tumbling 2 ft out of its case. The repair was difficult. The innovative luthier managed to squeeze glue into the hairline crack from within the trussrod cavity.

Sound? This is one example:
When I was looking for a Gibson ES-339 I played several at Andertons for nearly an hour. They all had mahogany necks but one, and there was no discernible difference in tone or timbre between those and the maple neck one I ended up buying*. All the guitars were evaluated both unplugged and clean (I rarely use much gain).

*The small tonal differences from one guitar to another notwithstanding. The point is, the maple model was not 'different'.