PRS CE 24 Semi Hollow

DrJazzTap

I thought I'd do a quick write up on this guitar. This is the amazing guitar I won in a raffle. At the moment the guitar is off having a set up , I'm going from 10s to 11s.

The tech told me the action was super high, bordering on slide territory. I go with 11s on everything because I'm cheap, and it saves me remembering what set goes on what etc. I can just buy in bulk and forget about it. Back to the guitar.

Fit and finish - really can't fault PRS on this. It does feel expensive, whether I would pay £2k outright for one is another thing. I think a second hand PRS is an absolute bargain. My PRS history is pretty sparse. I have lusted after them for as long as I can remember (some book called the history of electric guitars or something when i was 14-15).

I dismissed them for the longest time as being a coffee table thing, or overly ornate. I tried out a full fat custom 24 around 2012, that was it I had to have one.

I then bought a second hand DGT around 2013 i think (my gift to stop smoking). It was the most I'd ever paid for a guitar (£1000, plus a fender america special strat). The DGT suits me to the ground, it came with 11s and it has two volume pots to blend pickups.

So the CE24 felt instinctively different. The tremolo unit does feel cheaper (i think its a korean unit). Not offensively cheap, but you can tell that's the cost cutting aspect. The control knobs feel better than my 09 DGT.  The maple neck is lovely, and the pickups definitely have a hifi sound.

To my ears the DGT is like a refined Les Paul. The coil tapped sounds on the DGT sound fuller to me. That isn't to say the split sounds on the CE24 semi are thin or weak sounding, they just sound brighter overall.

Does the CE24 Semi sound like a 335?...........Well no. I had a gorgeous Tokai ES130 which I sold to get some cash in, and in honesty the 335 shape felt a bit delicate and large for me. Does the Semi nature of the CE24 come across?....Kind of.....it's early days yet. I find by backing down the tone to pretty much half way mellows the sound out without the guitar sounding wooly or flubby.

Can it do high gain brutal down tuned metal? I confess I can't either really, I have a rockerverb which is pretty high gain but dropped C isnt my thing. I haven't had chance to try the guitar and amp out at volume. I dont think the guitar will create as much hum and feedback as say a 335. The pickups are modern sounding so i would say possibly?

The CE24 Semi was almost fate to be honest, I was looking at one as I missed the 335 sounds. And I was finding myself using the split sounds of the DGT more in band practices. The CE24 sounds a lot brighter and I think it will suit that style of music more. I think if you are in a covers band and need to cover a lot of sounds, then a CE24 or S2 series is a serious choice. The split sounds aren't exactly strat sounding (it's not a strat) but if you have Freak Out in your set, the punter in the audience wont know the difference. And its got that rock solid PRS tuning stability.