I’ve been reading the various comments on this forum about SE quality control, and I just wanted to add my recent experience. I’ve been looking for a SE Paul’s Guitar, and have not been able to find any in stock locally, so I had to order online (which I would prefer not to do). I’ve had three so far, and each one had fairly serious issues and needed to be returned. Now, they seem to be out of stock everywhere. All three guitars were new in sealed factory boxes, and had the “Inspection” tag on them.
Guitar 1: Cosmetically and tonally fine. Good pickups. However, it had severe back bow and horrible string vibrations that truss rod and bridge adjustments did not fix. The nut looked chewed up. Bridge bushings were loose on one side, and raised up out of the guitar body, and the entire bridge was fairly severely tilting towards the neck. Could not be played like it was.
Guitar 2: Plays really good out of the box. Tonally, it’s bad. It sounds like its echoing off concrete. Pickups are also not very responsive, and show little tonal variation. Two strings will not hold tuning. Cosmetically, the front veneer does not match at all from one side to the other, completely different patterns, and looks visibly yellow instead of charcoal gray. It’s ugly, almost like they used to much yellowing adhesive or something on it. The fretboard stain is also extremely light, and missing stain in two different areas – one almost looks like a fingerprint. Also ugly. Buff scratches all over the back of the guitar in the clear coat.
Guitar 3: Interesting for the complete lack of QC. Tonally, its ok. Cosmetically, the coloration, veneer pattern, and fretboard stain are all fine. However, the clear coat finish is entirely scratched up. Scratches everywhere you look, over the entire guitar, including the headstock. It’s like they buffed it with a dirty cloth with particulates on it. You don’t need a microscope to see them either. This alone should have DQ this in QC. However, almost unbelievably, this guitar also has a sideways neck. They did not set the neck in straight. Bad string vibration. There is also a hole or large gash in the wood on the back – very visible – and filled with something and then stained over. To top it off, it’s strung with non-spec, non-PRS strings – with color coded balls (PRS does not make color-coded strings?). It’s supposed to be stung with PRS 10-46 Classic string. That’s what the PRS website says is spec to the Paul’s Guitar SE. I know this string well. It’s obviously not. Furthermore, whatever it is strung with is a thicker gauge, which I think is probably acoustic string.
It's hard for me to understand how many of these issues could get out of a factory quality control, but I certainly cannot understand how Maryland PRS QC could pass much of this – especially a crooked neck and being strung with non-standard, non-PRS string. It really makes me feel like they are not checking the guitars in MD anymore, or they just don’t care and are passing everything. I don’t expect a high-end guitar or finish at this price, but I do expect the guitars to be properly made to spec, play well, and not come entirely scratched up, missing stain, or with obviously mismatched front designs, loose bridge bushings, or crooked necks. Maybe I have too high expectations. I’m sure there are some perfectly fine SE guitars out there, and perhaps they had been made better or had better QC in the past – but all of this recent experience makes me really question the quality of these SE guitars. I’ve started to consider an S2, but they don’t make an S2 Paul’s Guitar – the closed is either a Custom 24-08 or McCarty – but supposedly the single-coil doesn’t sound as good from those pickups as the SE Paul’s, and I’m not a fan of tremolos (I would also prefer a 25” length rather than 24.5” on the McCarty).
