PRS SE vs the real thing?

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leblanc74 said:
I went for the SE Custom version due to the fact it was lighter as a solid body... However, I did some upgrades on mine (Tuners, PU)... still cost me 1000$ cheaper than an American made and for me it was lighter...


Very Happy with my decision...



After considering the fact that if I added another 1000$ I was able to get an American version...

So I just went today and exchanged my PRS SE along with my P/U and tuners for a PRS Standard 22... To tell you the truth, couldn't be happier... Not that the SE is bad, I was quite happy with it, just that I like to have the signature on the headstock and the Standard have a better touch to it; futhermore, it is lighter...
 
I´ve got several se's as well as usa models. The SE's work great. Pickups are a matter of preferance but for what its worth, the pups in the SE's are decent and well balanced. I've had to tweak the truss rods in a few of them but no big deal. Excellent bang for the buck all in all. Locking tuners would be nice if you're a string bender but that can be rectified. The baritone's alot of fun as well. :)
 
I had an SE, total junk! The guitar player in my band has a few USA PRS models, I say they're also total junk. He played my Jacksons recently, he's buying a Jackson Soloist tomorrow. The MIM strat I traded my SE for, although not Jackson quality, smokes the SE.
 
There is a certain integrity I feel with the US models that I feel with no other brand, but the SE's definitely hold their own. You get some minor expected things from time to time like tuning stability, but nothing that would make or break ya. I've used an SE Cu24 as a spare along side a US Cu24 and I would say the US had the edge in tuning stability, tone, and playability. But I also would expect those things considering the price difference. That does not mean however that the SE sucked when it came to those things. They are actually good. The US model is/was just stellar in all of those aspects.
 
The SE is a killer guitar. I've owned the Tremonti SE, Hollowbody SE, Santana SE, Singlecut SE Trem, and now I've got the simple Singlecut SE. I also own a USA Tremonti, and comparing them, you can definitely tell the difference. But for the money, you can't beat an SE. They dwarf Epi's and all the other 'cheaper' ones out there. If you decide to pump in a few extra bucks in new tuners and pickups, then you've got one hell of a budget guitar.

The SE i've got now has some upgraded pickups, tuners, and like most of the SE's before it, I am re-finishing the headstock because I hate the ugly "SE" on it.

Looking into selling my Breedlove acoustic to try the SE Angelus...
 
I have a Tremonti SE Custom for sale in the classifieds.
http://forum.grailtone.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=68193

I'm not sure why folks say these guitars are "freakishly light".
This one weights close to 10 lbs., which is one of the reasons I've decided to let it go.

The Tremonti SE Custom has a super thin neck profile.
MUCH thinner than the standard Tremonti SE models.
It's similar to a Jackson or Ibanez "Wizard" profile, IMO.

If anyone is interested in the guitar, I'm open to trades as well.
Just email me at [email protected]
Thanks.
 
This thread came back around it seems! The first time I posted in here I had a CE, but I do not have that guitar any longer. I've had an SE245 since they first came out back in 2011. I think it's a great guitar! I upgraded the pickups to the USA covered models. That made a HUGE difference. The stock pickups said 'Santana' on the back of them?? Anyway, it's definitely got the PRS tone, but it's so heavy! I've had the chance to compare it to a friend's US SC245 and the difference is definitely not enough to warrant the vast difference in price.
 
This seems to be my thread ;D

Mesa and PRS are match made in heaven for good reason. Both are made to provide way larger variety sounds than those so called classics. In amps the british M-thing and US F-thing make their tone stacks simple and quite foolproof. They have practically none variety to keep it in safe side all the time. This is how it is practically impossible to make one of those sound really bad. However they rarely sound - at least for my ears - anything better than ok. And when ok, it's usually one sound. Compared to those, Mesa gives all there is. You can do just about everything with a Mesa. Make it sound the worst there is, open a tonal heaven or everything between those. But Mesa does always more than one usable sound.

The same, as i see it, goes with guitars. PRS's give more. Best woods, best craftmanship and (this is just opinion) best looks. Every part innovative, 100% functional and they usually survive from small bombing. And yes. With PRS you can sound heavenly and crappy with same amp settings just switching mic selector from one spot to another. Like Mesa, there is so much available, that all doesn't fit in same setup.

People mentioned CE. I'm happy to have one of those myself. I think it's the most underestimated guitar in this planet. The thing does it all. From slow swing to death metal just by switching pickups and rolling volume a bit. Can't say that F and G are capable to that so easily.

About SE's, i have one old Santana SE. If i compare it to something, that would be them good ole workhorses like standard-class US made strat or LP. And if i compare the quality of work, SE's seem to be finished more carefully.

Had also 245 and Mikael Ã…kerfeld, but didn't like those. Too lespaulish for me.

Yes. The hardware is cheaper than in US PRS's and the quality of wood is not from the high end of tone wood. Still tone wood it is. And the bodies are not made from 20 pieces of recycled wood material like some F's teles. SE's seem to get better and better all the time. There is less options in pickups and not so much everything, but good instruments they are. However not comparable to US made PRS (if not to S2 series, which i have to admit, was not so good i expected). Easily compared to (and found better than) way too many "old classics".

But Mesa and PRS together (did i forget what i was babbling about?). Both brands may be difficult to use, if compared to their rivals. But hey. So is F/A18 Hornet fighter compared to club the cavemen used. And compared to my Mark V, a Plexi is from stoneage.

Wake up people. Check the time and date. When done, welcome to modern world ;D
 
I used to build guitars from scratch for a couple of years and I modified a lot of guitars for over 20 years. Both experience and research impressed a few things on me:

Multiple pieces of wood, when properly glued, clamped, and dried will act as a single piece of wood, but may be stronger depending on the grain directions.
On an electric guitar, everything from the bridge to the nut is the most important part of the guitar. The bridge is more important than the body material and the nut is more important than the neck material.
That said, the nut, bridge, and frets must be properly installed and flush, so the materials and craftsmanship need to be good enough to secure them (particularly the bridge, so avoid soft woods).
Assuming the neck and body are well cut and shaped, if you take a budget or intermediate guitar with a good fret job and replace the bridge, pickups, electronics, tuners, and nut with better quality parts where necessary, that guitar is almost always going to be just as good as a more expensive model.
One last thing: a well fitting, flush, and tight, bolt-on neck will work just as well as a glued in neck.

Our psychology makes us think that a more expensive guitar has to be inherently better, but a souped up, less expensive guitar is going to work great. The more expensive guitars will almost always have fancy finishes and ornaments, but that doesn't do anything for sound performance. If the guitar is handmade, the price will reflect that, but pieces cut on CNC machines will more consistently match specs at a reduced cost, without skimping on quality of work.

If a person wants to spend the money to own a work of handmade art, I think that's awesome and I wish I had money to do the same. For the people who can't afford it, look for the shapes that feel good, construction that is proper, wood that is good quality, and have fun. If you need to upgrade a few pieces of hardware to make the performance 100%, do so.
 
I agree 100%, that CNC-crafting machines can do better job than humans. They rarely make mistakes. And a guitar is possible to make of 2 x 4' wood and it works perfectly without body wings (is that wings in english? Not sure). However i do know that the material between the bridge and the nut is more important than most people know. Especially the material of neck is important. If the wood doesn't resonate with strings, it cuts sustain and dynamics.

It's also true, that money doesn't always give you better guitar. There is that thing called "street credibility", which makes people buy low class US made instruments and think they get better guitar than some korean or chinese built is. People sand off decals and put F or G logos on instead and they believe the audience looks at them in awe for those logos. But street credibility is not, what real musician needs. Sound doesn't get any better, when logo changes. Sometimes the difference between prices is just a logo.

It's hard to tell, where the sweetspot is, when thinking about how much is enough to get a decent guitar. Country where it is made, makes a huge difference. If someone believes that one can't find a brilliant carpenter from all billion and half people in China, he really need to re-think everything. I've heard of chinese custom shops, where you can get top custom shop grade guitar with 20% of the price of US made one. Sadly i don't know any for sure, so i can't really say which one of those hundred shops is the one to buy from.

You really need to know, which brand to buy. There are brands, that offer standard level crap as custom shop level special instruments. There is a huge scale fraud going on in this world. It's called marketing. Paint few white dots on a $500 black standard strat, and you get a $1000 artist series guitar (of course these prices didn't happen anywhere on this planet).

But if you go to price range of average custom shop instrument, the odds for getting a good guitar rise. You can get better guitar with money. Generally (if unknown cheaper custom shops are left out of this) you get better woods, better hard parts and higher grade of finishing (which doesn't count so much in paint job, but means everything in fitting parts together).

But if you pay $25000 for a PRS with an owl painted on it, you're not getting better guitar than the $5000 PRS is. You're paying for decoration. The guitar doesn't get any better if you carve knobs out of a huge diamond or attach some reral bling bling - a 5 kilos gold chain - hanging under it. And it doesnt sound any better with more expensive 10-top. However if it brings your mood up with it's looks, you may play a bit better. Worth the price difference -better? Not, if the there is some helluva decoration ;D

And this is where i can come back in the subject of this thread. In these 36 years i've played, i've seen few guitars. When i finally grew adult enough to get one PRS, i noticed that they beat their rivals in materials and craftmanship. And that goes in SE price range as well as with more pricey ones. That's why i keep babbling about them.
 
BigBadWolf, that's pretty wise and I'm glad to hear that you've found a brand of guitars that is consistently great for you.
 
The SEs are fantastic. I own a newer SE Custom 24 and an older SE Standard 22 and love them both. Surprisingly, the Standard sounds better. I think this is due to the lower output pickups (9-10k instead of 13-14k on the newer models) and the fact that it's a stoptail, and it seems everything resonates better. The Custom is much harsher and brittle sounding, although it still sounds very good.

The thing I like about the SEs is that they're great guitars as is, but with a few relatively cheap mods like tuners, nut, pickups and bridge, these rival most high end PRSs, Gibsons, etc. Quality control on these is phenomenal. I've never played an SE that played badly, but it seems most of the $5000 Gibsons I've played were trash, as well as many of the high end Fenders and other brands. These cheap PRSs are always on point from my experience.

Plus you can pick em up used for $300-500. That leaves a lot of room for pickups and other mods, and if you wanna do mods that involve drilling for switches or buttons, it hurts a lot less to drill into a cheap Korean guitar than a $3000 USA PRS.
 
I love my SEs. Adore them. Simply the best value in a guitar I've found. They get gigged every week right along side my core PRSi and Les Pauls. And while they look and play so well, let's not blur the lines between the SE, core, and private stock guitars, though. The difference in playability in the latter two is WAY off the scale better. The fret work is the best in the business...period. They spend a month - yes, 30 days - on just the neck of every core guitar. That translates into a very real difference.

Like I said, I gig my SE One and SE245 weekly and sincerely love playing them, but they won't be mistaken for a core PRS anytime soon, if you know what to look for.
 

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