review PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II 100 GUITARIST MARCH 2020 GIT456.rev_prs.
PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II review Thin Air A PRS guitar designed in the 90s finally gets the ‘offshore’ SE treatment, knocking a cool £3.5k off the price. It’s also the first Chinese-made PRS electric guitar Words Dave Burrluck Photography Neil Godwin MARCH 2020 GUITARIST GIT456.rev_prs.
review PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II £899 & £999 CONTACT What You Need To Know 1 A PRS Hollowbody we can afford! It’s been a long wait (22 years), but PRS is really attacking the massmarket price point with its SE guitars. We suspect these will be very popular.
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II review 1. One o tweak design upper Vintag treble you’ll Custo rear e 1 2 True to its name, the Hollowbody is free from a centre block, unlike an ES-335. Instead there’s a small block that sits under the bridge only and connects the top to the back and allows PRS to use its Stoptail bridge.
review PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra 3 3. The primary difference between the two SE Hollowbody guitars is the wood used for the top and back. The Standard uses a five-ply mahogany that you can see at the edges of the unbound f-holes 4. Both guitars use a very simple control setup of master volume and tone with a three-way toggle pickup selector. There are no coil-splits as we see on many PRS guitars 4 104 in China.
PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II review The Hollowbody II uses a five-ply figured maple top and back; the sides on both guitars are laminated mahogany 1st fret, 25mm at the 12th) and has a slightly rounder, bigger feel in lower positions and a bit more bulk in higher positions. The II, while obviously similar, just feels a bit more classic PRS, measuring 22mm at the 1st fret and 24.3mm at the 12th.
review PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II 5 5. The slightly more upmarket vibe of the SE Hollowbody II includes bound f-holes 6. Both SE Holllowbody guitars employ an ebony fingerboard – quite a rarity in PRS’s history, although commonplace in the archtop world It all means both guitars are almost blank canvases in terms of the sounds you can create. They are not designed to nail a specific vintage tone, but both veer more towards a hollow ES-330 than the more solidbody-sounding ES-335.
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra PRS SE HOLLOWBODY STANDARD & HOLLOWBODY II review 7 PRS SE HOLLOWBODY PRS SE STANDARD HOLLOWBODY II The laminate construction of these Hollowbodies is unique to the PRS canon and they certainly sound and – thanks to the upscaled size – feel different from the USA Hollowbodies. They actually augment your choice, rather than being just a down-spec’d lower-cost version. There’s a validity to the design, too, that might make you prefer the lower-ticket version.
