PRS SE Custom 24-08

first play
17
APRIL 2021 GUITARIST
PRS SE CUSTOM 24 & 24-08
3. The 85/15 ‘S’ pickups
aim to replicate the USA
pickups, but these are
made in Indonesia. It’s
one area of the recent
SE designs that is
continually tweaked
4. The 24-08 features
that ‘tuning’ resistor
on the volume control,
plus those two DPDT
mini-switches
5. Tidy wiring inside the
SE Custom 24’s cavity
USA-made S2 and bolt-on PRSes, including
the Silver Sky, use a scarf-jointed headstock
and a heel stack. The bodies here are a
very light coloured mahogany and both
are three-piece. The overall body depth is
a shade over 46mm, very slightly deeper
than our 44mm-thick CE 24, which actually
looks thinner at the rim because of its more
graduated top carve.
You can’t expect the same hardware here
that you’ll see on those USA Core models
and, although the tuners, strap buttons and
football jack plate do look a bit generic, the
PRS-designed vibrato is the same that’s used
on PRS’s S2-level guitars, not to mention our
£2k-plus CE 24. This well tried-and-tested
design sits parallel to the guitar’s top (with
its push-in, tension-adjustable arm and
characteristic ‘keyhole’ saddles) and is cast,
or ‘moulded’ as PRS prefers, as opposed
to the machined stock of the Core level
vibratos. Both top plate and block are steel;
the Core-level vibrato is brass.
So, yes, while different, these SEs
certainly uphold the PRS detail statement.
There is not a hair out of place and even
comparing the figure of these veneered
maple tops to the solid figured maple of our
reference CE, well, they’re certainly not
wildly different.
UNDER THE HOOD
How the SE circuits measure up
Both the vibrato and rear control cavity covers sit on top of the
surface and aren’t recessed flush like the USA Core models.
Don’t feel too short changed, though; it’s the same with our
CE 24 and the S2 models. The Custom’s cavity is shielded with
conductive paint, the underside of the cover with conductive
foil. It certainly looks ship-shape (we’ve seen far less tidy
soldering on Core models).
The Custom’s circuit uses a 180 picofarad treble bleed and
a 223J code (0.022 microfarads) tone capacitor on 500kohm
pots, with the volume stamped RF. The tone pot has a pull switch
that simultaneously dumps the screw coils to ground. On most
PRSes that use this switching there are two small resistors that
allow some of the dumped coil to remain in circuit, creating a
slightly full ‘single-coil’ split. They’re not used here.
The 24-08 uses Alpha 500kohm Korean-made pots with
the same 180 picofarads treble bleed cap and a 333J code
(0.033 microfards) tone cap. The way the coil-splits are achieved
is different, too: via each of those mini-toggle switches when
the single-coil mode is selected, the screw coil isn’t just dumped
to ground, it’s completely removed from the circuit. Another
difference, and part of the TCI concept, is that the circuit is
tuned via a parallel resistor across the volume pot, which – if
our calculations are correct – means the pickups are seeing a
310kohms pot. This, in theory, will subtly reduce the high-end
compared with a 500k pot.
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VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
GIT470.rev_prs.indd 17 18/02/2021 08:55