The latest additions to PRS’s offshore-produced SE line include two guitars that date back to the 1980s – the Custom 24 and the CE24, introduced, respectively, in ’85 and ’88 – along with a reissue of an outlier model called the Swamp Ash Special, which was originally produced at PRS’s Stevensville, Maryland, factory between 1996 and 2002.
I tested these guitars through a Fender Deluxe Reverb and a ’48 Dual Professional, along with a row of UAFX pedals that included the Lion ’68 Super Lead, 1176 Studio Compressor, and Orion Tape Delay.
SE CE24
Featuring a mahogany body and a maple top with a shallow violin carve, the SE CE24 is a sharp-looking guitar with its striking Blood Orange quilted maple veneer. The exposed edge shows off the thickness of the maple cap beneath while giving the effect of a binding layer between the top and the tightly grained mahogany back.
Weighing in at 7 ½ pounds, my review guitar felt light and nimble, and it delivered a bright, resonant acoustic sound with good sustain. It also excelled in the playability department, courtesy of the comfy, satin-finished Wide Thin neck and a rosewood fingerboard carrying 24 well-attended medium-jumbo frets. Their smooth tips facilitate an easy ride to the upper reaches of the fingerboard, where the scarfed neck joint and sculpted lower cutaway provide easy access to the top frets.
The PRS-designed low-mass tuners help the CE24 stay in tune, and this carries over to how reliably the silky PRS Patented Tremolo holds pitch when bending strings with the push-in stainless-steel bar (which is adjustable for tension via a small setscrew). The molded, polished unit feels smooth to the touch, and the six adjustable saddles are free of protruding screws to jab your hand when resting it on the bridge.
The uncovered 85/15 S humbuckers (a 1985-style pickup that was redesigned in 2015) are optimized to deliver extended low and high frequencies without compromising output. They’re clear and well-defined, delivering crisp, snappy cleans, and plenty of girth for killer distortion tones.
The volume control keeps the highs intact when you turn down, and the tone circuit maintains good definition when you roll the knob down for a jazzy neck-pickup sound or a darker bridge-pickup lead tone.
Pulling the tone knob up provides a single-coil sound in all positions of the toggle switch (along with a slight reduction in output), offering useful options when you want crispier sounds. It’s particularly useful in the dual-pickup position, where the inside coils deliver a phasey sound that’s reminiscent of a Strat’s dual-pickup modes.
SE CE24 – Specifications
CONTACT PRS Guitars
PRICE $699 street, gig bag included
NUT Synthetic, 1 11/16” wide
NECK Maple bolt-on, Wide Thin profile
FRETBOARD Rosewood, 25” scale, 10” radius, Bird inlays
FRETS 24 nickel
TUNERS PRS designed 18:1
BODY Mahogany with shallow violin carve maple top
BRIDGE PRS Patented Tremolo
PICKUPS PRS 85/15 S humbuckers
CONTROLS Master volume, master tone with push/pull coil-tap, 3-way toggle pickup switch
EXTRAS Available in Blood Orange, Black Cherry, Turquoise and Vintage Sunburst
FACTORY STRINGS PRS Classic .009–.042
WEIGHT 7.50 lbs (as tested)
BUILT Indonesia
KUDOS A great-sounding guitar with killer tones and an excellent trem. Sweet price
CONCERNS None
SE Custom 24 Quilt
The SE CE24 is a toneful and great-playing guitar that offers a lot of bang for the buck. However, if you have an extra $300 in your wallet, you might consider the top-line SE Custom 24 Quilt, which shares with the CE24 a mahogany body and maple top with a shallow violin carve, but features a glued-in, gloss-finished maple neck and a 24-fret rosewood fingerboard trimmed in white binding that extends around the headstock.
The Black Gold Sunburst finish on the quilted maple top of my review guitar looks amazing, and the peghead is also faced with a matching maple veneer as opposed to plain satin black on the CE24.
The same fretwork quality is in evidence here, with the 24 medium-jumbos revealing even crowns, a nice polish, and smoothly trimmed tips. As with all of these guitars, the synthetic nut is carefully notched and free of sharp corners, and the factory setup yields solid intonation as you travel up the neck to where the rounded heel and sculpted cutaway give full access to high positions.
The Custom 24 proved a stable guitar that stayed in tune well. Here too, the PRS Patented Tremolo has excellent return-to-pitch capability and is so musical in how it responds to vibrato inflections. Even when not bending strings, this piece of hardware is a tonal enhancer that adds noticeable resonance and dimension even when playing unplugged.
The tones delivered by the 85/15 S uncovered humbuckers are excellent, and the complement of volume and tone controls (the latter with a push-pull coil-tap function) and the three-way blade switch facilitate dialing in sounds ranging from crystal clear to massively overdriven, which makes the Custom 24 Quilt great for rock, blues, and anything else where the enhanced warmth, compression, and sustain of this design can be preferable to the snappier and immediate response of the bolt-neck CE24.
It’s not a “Les Paul versus Telecaster” comparison, yet there’s something about the rich, soulful tones of the Custom 24 that will forever attract players to it. It is the definitive PRS that took the world by storm in the 1980s thanks to Paul Reed Smith’s genius for spinning Gibson and Fender elements into a totally modern performance tool for players.
SE Custom 24 Quilt – Specifications
CONTACT PRS Guitars
PRICE $999 street, gig bag included
NUT Synthetic, 1 11/16” wide
NECK Maple set, Wide Thin profile
FRETBOARD Ebony, 25” scale, 10” radius, Bird inlays and binding
FRETS 24 nickel
TUNERS PRS designed 18:1
BODY Mahogany with shallow violin carve maple top
BRIDGE PRS Patented Tremolo
PICKUPS PRS 85/15 S humbuckers
CONTROLS Master volume, master tone with push/pull coil-tap, 3-way blade pickup switch
EXTRAS Available in quilted Black Gold Sunburst, Quilted Turquoise and Quilted Violet
FACTORY STRINGS PRS Classic .009–.042
WEIGHT 7.74 lbs (as tested)
BUILT Indonesia
KUDOS A classic set-neck model with killer tones, upscale appointments and an excellent trem
CONCERNS None
SE Swamp Ash Special
Making a comeback for 2024, and available only in the SE series, the Swamp Ash Special features (as the name implies) a swamp-ash body with a shallow violin carve on the top, and a bolt-on Wide Thin–profile maple neck topped with a maple fingerboard carrying 22 nicely worked medium-jumbo frets and abalone Bird inlays. The guitar supplied for this review has a sweet-looking Iri Blue finish that shows off the abundant graining in the wood.
Swamp ash is generally considered lightweight, but at nine pounds, our Special was the heaviest of the bunch. This didn’t seem to affect its acoustic sound, however, which was airy, open, and sustaining. The maple fingerboard tightens up the response a bit, and the bowling-ball-smooth maple sure feels nice under the fingers when bending strings. True to form, the Special offers excellent playability and superb high-fret access due to the scarfed heel and generous cutaways.
One of the main attributes of this guitar is greater sonic range, and to that end,
the pickups consist of a pair of 85/15 S humbuckers and an AS-01 single-coil, a design that uses Alnico magnets and steel poles for clarity and added punch compared to standard single-coils. With a control complement of volume, push-pull tone and a three-way toggle, the system offers the following combinations:
1. Bridge humbucker. Tone pot up adds middle single-coil;
2. Bridge and neck humbuckers. Tone pot up is bridge humbucker, middle single-coil and neck pickup coil-tapped;
3. Neck humbucker. Tone pot up is middle single-coil and neck pickup coil-tapped.
Having the middle pickup available with the humbuckers greatly expands the Special’s sonic palette. Not only are the full humbuckers available for lead and rhythm duties, but you now have the options of pairing them with coil-tapped and genuine single-coil sounds (the latter always sounds cooler than cutting a coil on a humbucker).
The only thing not available is the AS-01 pickup by itself, but that’s not a big deal as the hum/single combinations offer a lot of hip sounds imbued with funky, Strat-like character, but have that humbucker muscle behind them.
Now, you’re free to rapid-fire between sounds on the fly without worrying about losing presence and punch, all while enjoying these different textures that sound so cool played cleanly or with gobs of grind, using all that this guitar offers to craft tones that’ll help lift whatever you point it at.
This sort of flexibility is what PRS guitars excel at, and whether you’re into rock, country, funk, jazz or blues, you’ll likely find the Swamp Ash Special an inspiring guitar that’s well deserving of a place in the SE lineup.
SE Swamp Ash Special – Specifications
CONTACT PRS Guitars
PRICE $849 street, gig bag included
NUT Synthetic, 1 11/16” wide
NECK Maple bolt-on, Wide Thin profile
FRETBOARD Maple, 25” scale, 10” radius, Bird inlays
FRETS 22 nickel
TUNERS PRS designed 18:1
BODY Swamp ash with shallow violin carve
BRIDGE PRS Patented Tremolo
PICKUPS PRS 85/15 S humbuckers (neck and bridge) AS-01 single-coil (middle)
CONTROLS Master volume, master tone with push/pull for coil-tap and AS-01 activation, three-way toggle pickup switch
EXTRAS Available in Charcoal, Iris Blue and Vintage Sunburst
FACTORY STRINGS PRS Classic .009–.042
WEIGHT 9.0 lbs (as tested)
BUILT Indonesia
KUDOS A timely reissue of a unique ’90s-era model that offers excellent playability and a wide range of tones
CONCERNS This one is just a little on the heavy side
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