My PRS: keep, modify, sell..?

JamieWakeham

I'd been after a PRS for a while, and having tried a bunch I'd come up with the following wishlist, in order of importance:

sub £1000
wide thin neck
twin humbuckers
22 rather than 24 frets
a reasonably pretty top and birds
prefer hardtail to trem, although prepared to just lock a trem down
rotary control - I prefer the look, and a couple of the switching combinations
double cut rather than single

A 1999 CE22 came up near me for quite a bit less than £1000, and I jumped at it.  It missed my spec on a few counts: it's got a trem, solid colour, moons.  Most critically, though, the neck is wide fat.

I've kept it for more than a year, and in a lot of ways I really love it.  The pickups are brilliant, and I'm happy enough to live with the aesthetics.  But I am still not sure about the neck.  I had misgivings when I bought it but decided to give it a while and see if I could learn to love it... after all, I thought, it's only a mm or two different... and a little while ago I tried another PRS with wide thin and it's really hammered home to me that I want the thin profile.

So.  In my situation, would you 

a) sell this CE22 and try to get another one with the right neck, hopefully also with birds etc.  I appreciate that finding a rotary switched CE22 with wide thin is going to take some hunting. I could go SE and use the savings to upgrade pickups but I'd lose the rotary switch.
 
b) buy a new neck..?  Is that as straightforward with PRS as it is with Fender?

c) modify the existing neck.  I have a decent luthier nearby who's doing some other work for me, and I could ask him if he'd shave the neck to wide thin specs.  Would this be butchery of a nice old PRS, or a sensible thing to do to make a keeper guitar more suited to my needs?

d) something else?

ThePrettyDamned

Sell it to fund a wide thin.

PRS are not rare, exclusive guitars anymore - it's only a matter of time before one comes up. You may even get a straight trade. 

chris78

If you don't get on with the neck, that's a deal breaker on any guitar.
Get rid and get the guitar you want.

Jez6345789

You like what you have except the neck just get it shaved to your spec and what makes you happy. 

As great as CE guitars are and I love my old 89 there ability to increase in value is limited so I would not waste my time modding an SE most of those have wide fat necks. Nor would I wait for another to come along would just get it done.

my friend liked my CE neck so much he had a luthier re shape the neck to my CE as his new 10 top custom 24 had the PRS standard carve back in the day.

just get it done 

timmypix

If you love it, have the neck shaved. If you like it but could bear to part with it, shift it for one with a neck you like.

CountryDave

Sell it and put the money towards what you want.  I've been here myself with a couple of guitars and always managed to find what I want eventually.

Imagine the scenario, you get it back from your luthier and it isn't exactly what you want.  You can't put any wood back and you have also hit the resale value.

stonevibe

I wouldn't shave the neck as would affect the sound of the guitar and it might just kill the playability and certainly the value.

ICBM

If it was *just* the neck I would possibly consider having it shaved, but if there are several other things you would prefer to be different I'd find the right guitar. You can still find Custom 22s in the spec you want for around £1000, and if you modify the CE you will devalue it and make it more expensive to trade up if you find one you like.

TTony

Sell it.

The neck is an intrinsic part of the guitar and how it feels.  If you don't like the feel after a  year, then it's unlikely you ever will.  Or, even if you do eventually get to like it, you'll always think that you'd like a wide-thin more.

Shaving it is possible of course, but (a) it'd cost and (b) you'd then lose value in the guitar if ever you did want to sell it.  Double whammy.  Plus, there's no guarantee that you'll actually like the neck any better after it's been done.

If you can, it's always better to buy before you sell, that way you can afford to wait a bit longer for the right thing to show up, rather than having to buy something else that isn't quite what you're looking for, just to fill the guitar-shaped hole.

You can always add a rotary switch - there are enough people who don't like them and have swapped them out for a simple 3-way selector.

stickyfiddle

+1 to selling/trading.

Definitely worth advertising as a sale with potential trade-plus-[insert appropriate amount] for a different CE22 with wide-thin with flame and birds. 

Philly_Q

Sell it. 

No guitar neck should ever be shaved.  Unless there was a way of saving the bits and somehow using them to make another neck fatter.

guitargeek62

Sell it - you'll have much more luck finding a Custom or Standard 22 that meeds the rest of your preferences, even if you have to put a little bit more into it.

Don't worry too much about the rotary control either - it's easy enough to fit one afterwards.

mark123

sell sell sell

I always remember a interview with the guitarist out of it bites  band years ago ,who when asked the most important part of the guitar for him, he said the neck shape/ feel.....if you like the shape of the neck you can change the pickups/ tuners/ pots /bridge/ tailpiece even the body .
But if you dont like the feel of the neck you can change all these things but....you will still not like the feel of the neck ,if its new give it time but if you've had it 6 months and still don't like it ,in 6 years you still won't like it so...sell it .

iirc it bites played a squier strat which he upgraded pickups on etc because he loved the neck that much.

I've tried 3 times with a baja tele because i loved the sound but the neck was not for me , same with vintage lemon drops ,loved the sound and tried 4, 3 reliced and 1 non reliced but the neck was the dealbreaker.

John_P

Sell it.

I've had a fair few prs and don't get on with the wide fat, a guitar close matching your spec list easily enough without spending a great deal after you've sold it so why persevere with something that doesn't fit you.   

Curiously I always thought were very consistent but at one point i had 3 that all claimed to be a wide thin and felt slightly different - enough to make bring a micrometer home from work to check and indeed there was very slight difference in the thickness. The custom 24 that was my favourite  then  is still my number one guitar so it's worth trying before buying if you can. 

DeeTee

Sell. As so many others have said, the neck is all important. I can change almost everything on a guitar, but the wrong neck is unfixable for me, because the idea of having it reshaped fills me with dread! 

I gave up on Schecters for this reason. Something about the neck really put me off.

DeeTee

I guess the other issue is that if you have the neck reshaped and still don't like it, you're pretty much stuck with it unless you want to take a hit on the price.

It'll be hard to get someone to pay full whack for something that's been whittled at in general. PRS buyers are fairly well known for not liking a couple of dents at the best of times.

RaymondLin

DeeTee said:

I guess the other issue is that if you have the neck reshaped and still don't like it, you're pretty much stuck with it unless you want to take a hit on the price.

It'll be hard to get someone to pay full whack for something that's been whittled at in general. PRS buyers are fairly well known for not liking a couple of dents at the best of times.

Dents? 

No hang tags, no sale! Lol

JamieWakeham

Thanks, all.  I think I am now persuaded to sell the current one.  It's not a guitar that I have bonded deeply with and must keep at all costs - it's just a decent user grade CE.  And I got it at a decent price that I'm fairly sure I can shift it at without too much bother.  (Incidentally the chap who sold it to me is on here - if he reads this, absolutely no hard feelings - I knew I was taking a bit of a gamble on the wide fat when I bought it!)

I'm in the comfortable position of being able to buy the new one before the old one sells.  So I can put the old one up for sale or trade, and also hunt for a new one, and just see how things pan out.  I'm in no hurry.  My Keef-inspired partscaster is nearly finished so my 'new toy' requirements are fulfilled for now!

I think for me the only question left is what model(s) to look for.  A similar old CE22 with birds and flame is, I think, the only stock PRS that'll meet all of my wishlist, but I believe they're pretty unusual - most were made with wide fat?  I can't really justify the expense of going up to a Custom 22.

I wonder if an SE, with the blade switch changed to rotary and possibly a pickup upgrade, would always leave me feeling if it was a downgrade from the old CE22..?

CountryDave

I’d give the SE a go and ignore the decal. The SE quality is superb. I owned a 1989 US PRS Custom for over 25 years and thoroughly enjoyed it, but let it go when I realised I’d not been playing it much having changed tastes over the years. I’ve owned at least 5 ‘core’ PRS through the years (not all at the same time I might point out) They were all incredibly well built guitars, but my current SE is at least the equal in build quality. I’ve owned a couple of other SE models (Bernie Marsden, 245 and the current Zach Myers) and can honestly say the quality is superb. Yes, a couple had changed pickups, but many change the pickups in their USA guitars.

It may take some getting used to the idea, but country of origin is no longer a definitive indicator of quality. A CNC machine in the Far East is probably the same machine that sits in the USA or Mexico.

guitargeek62

JamieWakeham said:

I think for me the only question left is what model(s) to look for.  A similar old CE22 with birds and flame is, I think, the only stock PRS that'll meet all of my wishlist, but I believe they're pretty unusual - most were made with wide fat?  I can't really justify the expense of going up to a Custom 22.

I wonder if an SE, with the blade switch changed to rotary and possibly a pickup upgrade, would always leave me feeling if it was a downgrade from the old CE22..?

Don’t dismiss the US Standards - I know they don’t have flash tops, but they’re consistently great sounding and often within your budget.

CE’s with birds are a real rarity. They only introduced them in ~2007 briefly (iirc), and then again with the newer S2/cheaper version from ~2016. 

Also, although it may seem very alien, try a 24-fret model. They’re just as playable, and you’re more likely to find a wide-thin model that way. A lot of CE and CU24s would have come with a rotary switch too, and they’re much much much easier to find in your price range than equivalent 22-fret models.

Another outlier suggestion - the Mira Flametop. They have birds, stoptail, W/T neck, and flashy tops, albeit with 24-frets & a pickguard. 

Although I’ve had SEs before and really rate them, I don’t think you’ll get what you’re after from one. Instead I would look into the S2 models.

JamieWakeham

Ah - does this mean that a stock CE22 with birds and rotary simply doesn't exist?  That saves me wasting time hunting for one, so thank you!

I do quite prefer 22 frets, for the neck pickup tone.

Will have to spend some time looking over all the variants and see what ticks most boxes at once...