awesome guitar 
by jason m. from wisconsin, May 2007
Music Background:  Been playing for over 20 yrs. Weekend warrior.

sweetwater rules! guitar arrived in a few days. played great right out of the box...had it now for a few months...now its broken in more and sounds fantastic...pick-ups are unreal! high notes sing...low notes rumble...worth twice as much easy! will get another PRS in the future...JAMM ON!

More info on PRS SE Custom 
by Rolly from Phoenix, AZ USA, October 2005

This is not actually a review... I was curious with regards to the thickness of the flame maple top (also to make sure that it's not photoflame) so I emailed PRS...
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Hi Shawn,

The SE Custom looks gorgeous... in fact I already preordered a Cherry Sunburst with tremolo from Sweetwater..

The description states that the flame maple top is a veneer (not photoflame, right?). Would anybody know just how thick the veneer is? 1/8 inch, 1/16 inch maybe, 1/32 inch? Just curious...

Thanks,

Rolly

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Hi Rolly,

I'm not sure of the actual veneer thickness, but what we do is take a slab of Maple, attach it to the top so the guitar gets that cool maple tone and then we apply a thin maple veneer to give the guitar a nice visually appearance. But it is definitely NOT photo-flame.

Shawn Nuthall
Customer Support
Paul Reed Smith Guitars
380 Log Canoe Circle
Stevensville, MD 21666
Phone: 410.643.9970
Fax: 410.643.9980
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Interesting... so with the PRS SE Custom, you actually get a mahogany/maple vibe, not just mahogany (what you'd get with the cheaper PRS SE Standard). Sweet...

I still don't have any idea how thick the maple top is and the veneer, but for the maple top to have an effect on the guitar's tone, it must be substantial, 1/4" at least, maybe 1/2"? The Gibson's Les Paul is said to have a 3/4" thick maple top.

By the way, the images and description of the complete PRS SE line is now available from www.prsguitars.com

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