Guitar Player reviews the PRS SE Custom 24 Semihollow Piezo

Based on the original PRS Custom 24 that was introduced in 1985, the SE Custom Semi-Hollow Piezo takes things to a new level by delivering enhanced resonance courtesy of its semi-hollow construction. It also offers extended sonic range via a sextet of L.R. Baggs-designed piezo saddles that are incorporated into the PRS Patented Tremolo bridge.

In other regards, the guitar closely follows the traditional form by featuring a mahogany body and a flame-maple-veneer top, which looks ravishing in high-gloss Charcoal Burst over its trademark Shallow Violin carve. The neck has PRS’s ultra comfy Wide Thin shape and is constructed of multi-ply maple with a 25-inch scale rosewood fingerboard riding atop that’s trimmed in white binding and extending all the way around the maple-faced headstock. The neck feels super comfortable and the 24 well-dressed frets, polished nut and excellent factory setup provides low action as well as tuneful intonation in all positions.

The superbly engineered tremolo is a big part of the playing experience as well. Adjusted to float, it feels silky smooth and returns to pitch reliably under spirited workouts on the stainless-steel push-in bar. The molded trem is the same unit fitted to USA models, and it has no sharp edges or protruding screws to poke your hand when resting it on the brass saddles—which increase sustain and add nice color contrast to the polished nickel. Strings load from the back through the inertia block and run over a smooth bone nut out to a set of chromed PRS tuning machines.

The guitar has a rich, sustaining acoustic sound, and you can easily appreciate the sense of airiness that the F-hole contributes by putting your ear near it. Played through amps that included a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a PRS DGT-15 and a Vox AC15—as well as a Fishman SA220 acoustic rig and various PA systems—the Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo proved massively enjoyable because of its wealth of sounds and how easily it goes in any direction you want.

The pickups are the popular PRS 85/15 “S” humbuckers, which are controlled by a three-way selector and master volume and tone pots—the latter activating a coil-tap when the knob is pulled, effectively providing slimmer, single-coil sounds to complement the girth of the uncovered pickups in full ’bucker mode. The 85/15s are very adept at delivering everything from crisp cleans to fat overdriven tones, and their modest output makes it easy to sweep between rhythm and lead by working the volume knob.

Everything is well balanced so switching between the throaty neck pickup to the stringy rear position to the harmonically rich dual-pickup pickups feels seamless—like you’re just playing with different shades of a great core tone. Whether you’re clean, moderately overdriven or fully gained-up through a distortion pedal or lead setting on a multi-channel amp, you can have a blast romping on the selector and not necessarily be thinking, “I have to be on this pickup for that sound.”

Pulling the tone control in any switch position unleashes the single-coil sheen, making the middle position sound super airy and detailed and eliciting more twanginess from the neck and bridge pickups. Fans of the Custom 24 have long appreciated how accommodating it is to players’ needs. The added flexibility of the piezo system takes things to a new level, as it can be used in conjunction with the magnetics to blend acoustic flavor into those sounds. It can also be used by itself to effectively turn the Custom 24 Semi-Hollow into an electro-acoustic guitar, which it does quite handily due to the Baggs’ clear, natural response and absence of harsh when hitting the strings aggressively. Note that the piezo system is active and requires a nine-volt battery that’s accessible from a spring-loaded hatch on the jack plate.

Having dual outputs give you the option of mixing the magnetic and piezo signals through a single amp or routing the magnetics to a combo or head and the piezo to an acoustic amp, PA system or recording interface. There are a lot of ways to enjoy the dual source experience and particularly in live situations it was great to be able to run the electric and acoustic signals through dedicated systems and have it all so easily controllable from the guitar.

The SE Custom Semi-Hollow Piezo is the answer for players who want one guitar that can cover just about anything. It’s a welcome addition to a model line that changed the world for guitarists decades ago and has been updated and improved ever since. There’s very little daylight nowadays between offshore-produced SE models and their Core siblings made in Stevensville, Maryland, so it comes as no surprise that the SE Custom 24 Semi-Hollow Piezo raises the performance bar for this icon of six-string artistry.

SPECIFICATIONS