CircuitSurfer
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2021
- Messages
- 9
Ok, maybe I'm just unlucky. Or maybe not. For what its worth, Vaughn Skow posted the following on his blog: A TECHS HONEST REVIEW OF A PRS SILVER SKY SE (I don't think I can post a link yet as this might be only my second post here).
My story:
I ordered a "brand new" Silver Sky SE from a Vancouver area shop through Reverb (enticed by a 15% Black Friday discount), sight unseen, literally, as the photos in the ad were stock photos and not of the actual guitar they sent me. I had high expectations given all the glowing reviews all over the interweb and the assurances I got from the staff who I had contacted before hand. I was told it had been in their shop for 2 months and was a "shop favorite". Suffice to say, I couldn't believe they had sent it to me in the condition it was in. The action was a mile high despite their being only a small amount of excess relief in the neck. The frets were covered in some kind of gungey crap requiring a vigorous fret polish and the strings were starting to develop corrosion. The neck profile seemed far too chunky based on the reviews I'd seen and I confirmed this later by comparing with a couple other SS SE's (one of which I now own, please read on). Each one of the tuners was very stiff to turn. It sounded fine, but ultimately I sent it back, I just couldn't live with the neck profile and the tuners were bugging me too. Something seemed really "off" about it, even the hang tags looked like they'd been through the war, with creases and tears in them.
Not long after I went to look at a second hand SS SE being sold locally. The neck profile was much better, but picking up where I left off with the first one, I discovered a problem where there was something weird with the 5 way switch. After going from position 2 to the bridge only position I had to give the switch a light tap back toward position 2 to get it settle in to connecting just the bridge pickup. Without doing that I got some version of bridge and middle together, but with a slightly different tone then position 2 proper. I wasn't terribly worried about that so I went ahead and bought it. When I got it home I discovered another problem. The high E string sounded muted and dull compared to the other strings. The B string also sounded less than ideal but better than the high E. The problem seemed worse on the bridge pickup and less noticeable on the middle pu and least so on the neck pu. I wondered if the strings might have something to do with it so I decided to change them (and I prefer 009's anyway). Lo and behold, when I took the strings off the nut fell clean off! There was a blob of glue stuck to the wood in the nut slot that never ended up adhering to the nut itself. What's more, I would have expected the glue to cover the entire but slot, but that wasn't the case. I got my tech to fix up the nut for me (I generally don't do nuts). Anyway, the new strings and the nut repair did nothing to fix the muted sounding string issue. I was convinced it could be corrected somehow as there is no problem with string balance when played acoustically. Tonight I went under the hood for the first time. The first thing I noticed was that one of the pieces of rubber tubing used on the pickup adjustment screws had come off and was wedged in the pickup selector switch. As it turned out, it had nothing to do with the weird behavior of the switch. As in Vaughn Skow's review, I also noticed the clip attached to the pick guard, but none of the wires were secured in it. Whatever, that was of no import, I wanted to get to the bottom of why the high E string (especially) was so muted sounding. I removed the bridge pickup and installed a Seymour Duncan single coil I had laying around. When I put everything back together and restrung I discovered that there is no issue at all with the string balance on the Duncan. So I can only assume that the issue is related to the SS SE pickups alone. The bobbins on the pickups appear to be fiber and my understanding is that it is not advisable to try to adjust the height of or replace the magnets in this type of pickup construction. At this point I'm wondering if I'm going to have shell out more dough and just replace the pickups. I'd love to hear any opinions on this, and on my experience with the SS SE model in general.
My story:
I ordered a "brand new" Silver Sky SE from a Vancouver area shop through Reverb (enticed by a 15% Black Friday discount), sight unseen, literally, as the photos in the ad were stock photos and not of the actual guitar they sent me. I had high expectations given all the glowing reviews all over the interweb and the assurances I got from the staff who I had contacted before hand. I was told it had been in their shop for 2 months and was a "shop favorite". Suffice to say, I couldn't believe they had sent it to me in the condition it was in. The action was a mile high despite their being only a small amount of excess relief in the neck. The frets were covered in some kind of gungey crap requiring a vigorous fret polish and the strings were starting to develop corrosion. The neck profile seemed far too chunky based on the reviews I'd seen and I confirmed this later by comparing with a couple other SS SE's (one of which I now own, please read on). Each one of the tuners was very stiff to turn. It sounded fine, but ultimately I sent it back, I just couldn't live with the neck profile and the tuners were bugging me too. Something seemed really "off" about it, even the hang tags looked like they'd been through the war, with creases and tears in them.
Not long after I went to look at a second hand SS SE being sold locally. The neck profile was much better, but picking up where I left off with the first one, I discovered a problem where there was something weird with the 5 way switch. After going from position 2 to the bridge only position I had to give the switch a light tap back toward position 2 to get it settle in to connecting just the bridge pickup. Without doing that I got some version of bridge and middle together, but with a slightly different tone then position 2 proper. I wasn't terribly worried about that so I went ahead and bought it. When I got it home I discovered another problem. The high E string sounded muted and dull compared to the other strings. The B string also sounded less than ideal but better than the high E. The problem seemed worse on the bridge pickup and less noticeable on the middle pu and least so on the neck pu. I wondered if the strings might have something to do with it so I decided to change them (and I prefer 009's anyway). Lo and behold, when I took the strings off the nut fell clean off! There was a blob of glue stuck to the wood in the nut slot that never ended up adhering to the nut itself. What's more, I would have expected the glue to cover the entire but slot, but that wasn't the case. I got my tech to fix up the nut for me (I generally don't do nuts). Anyway, the new strings and the nut repair did nothing to fix the muted sounding string issue. I was convinced it could be corrected somehow as there is no problem with string balance when played acoustically. Tonight I went under the hood for the first time. The first thing I noticed was that one of the pieces of rubber tubing used on the pickup adjustment screws had come off and was wedged in the pickup selector switch. As it turned out, it had nothing to do with the weird behavior of the switch. As in Vaughn Skow's review, I also noticed the clip attached to the pick guard, but none of the wires were secured in it. Whatever, that was of no import, I wanted to get to the bottom of why the high E string (especially) was so muted sounding. I removed the bridge pickup and installed a Seymour Duncan single coil I had laying around. When I put everything back together and restrung I discovered that there is no issue at all with the string balance on the Duncan. So I can only assume that the issue is related to the SS SE pickups alone. The bobbins on the pickups appear to be fiber and my understanding is that it is not advisable to try to adjust the height of or replace the magnets in this type of pickup construction. At this point I'm wondering if I'm going to have shell out more dough and just replace the pickups. I'd love to hear any opinions on this, and on my experience with the SS SE model in general.