PRS SE CE 24 Electric Guitar - Vintage Sunburst Reviews

First I'll say that my Sweetwater rep Eric was instrumental (pun intended) to this purchase. He truly has great customer service skills including a follow-up to be sure I was happy with the purchase. Secondly... the PRS SE CE 24 arrived quickly and in perfect condition; perfectly setup, tuned and intonated, ready to play right out of the box. This experience has inspired me to get back into playing after a 16 year hiatus.

I swore off Strats always buying numerous ones throughout the years,always swapping out the pickups because I didn't like the sound and selling them off.Then I bought the PRS,I instantly loved it! Plays nice,very comfortable neck,a nice fat sound (after I swapped the pickups to Duncan's) well balanced.I would thank Opeth for introducing me to these awesome guitars.I will never go back to Strats,it's a dated guitar that needs ergonomic upgrades big time and Fender fans can be an insufferable bunch.

My sales engineer, Nick Reedy, brought these guitars to my attention. I have a few PRS core models, but had never tried an SE. With this sale going on through the end of the year, the prices are just too good to pass up. I wanted a 24-fret model, so my choice was between the Custom 24 and CE24. The primary difference is the former has the traditional PRS set neck, while the latter has a bolt-on neck. They share the same pickups, woods, and electronics (except a different style and location for the pickup switch). I made my choice solely by the top veneer. I found two absolutely gorgeous CE24s, one in turquoise, and one in vintage sunburst. I couldn't decide between the two, so I got both.

I continue to be impressed with the quality of guitars coming out of Indonesia and these are no exception. Fit and finish is exceptional. I miss the deeper carve of my core models, but that's probably not possible with the veneers. It still has a bit of depth compared to a flat top guitar, and I like that. The frets are great, as is overall playability. I've always liked the 85/15 pickups, and these sound great as well. I would say they don't sound quite as good as the 85/15s on my core guitar, but that may be psychological. Chances are in a blind test I couldn't tell the difference.

One of the guitars was completely flawless, but the second had quite a bit of what I presume was glue residue on the fretboard. I was afraid I might have to send it back, but I cleaned and oiled the fingerboard and it's now not noticeable unless you really look for it.

With this sale, these guitars are in the same price range as the Sire L7/S7 and Schecter Omen models. I own all of them, and they all have similarly impressive veneer tops and overall quality. It's a great time to be alive and a guitar player with so many great options in affordable guitars.

PROS:
Low price.
Lightweight and well balanced.
Frets are perfect with no sharp ends.
Great sounding pickups with coil split. All 6 tones are usable.
Killer looks.
Smooth and fast satin neck. Not too skinny or fat.
Nice PRS Gig Bag

CONS:
Only found one spot where it frets out on high E string when bending a whole step at the 10th fret. Should be easy fix. Everything else was flawless from the factory.

BOTTOM LINE: For an entry level PRS guitar this is just a killer value, especially with the 20% off sale going on with the SE line right now. Don't miss out. You get a whole lot of guitar for the money!

This is my third SE guitar, and it's astonishing. The fit/finish are beyond amazing for an instrument costing less than $...and I only paid $ because of the PRS promo for this model. It arrived perfectly set up, and once stabilized to the climate in my home, stays in tune quite well. Plays like butter. It looks great and makes me wonder why I shelled out $ for a core model Custom 24 (well, other than lust). My only demerit is for the tone pot, which to me doesn't taper smoothly - but that's a simple fix if it really bothers me. Seriously, get yourself one of these

My first purchase with Sweetwater. I'd been wanting a new guitar for some time and had heard a lot of good things about the PRS SE line and about Sweetwater's service. When these models went on sale, I thought it was a good time to give Sweetwater a try. I especially appreciate how Sweetwater lists the weight of the available guitars, since I prefer guitars on the heavier side (mine is close to nine lbs.), and mahogany-bodied guitars can vary tremendously in weight. Sweetwater's service was everything I'd heard, well beyond my expectations. I paid the extra for the pro setup, since this was my first guitar with a trem system. When the guitar was delivered, it was packaged very well, alleviating my concerns for shipping a guitar. The PRS itself is a phenomenal value for a top brand. The fit and finish are outstanding--love the satin maple neck--and the guitar is obviously gorgeous. The setup was exactly as I'd asked for. The guitar sounds incredible, positively drenched in thick overtones, my favorite feature of humbuckers. I will admit that the coil-split sound lacks sparkle, but I don't use it much anyway, so not a major drawback. The trem system is wonderful, with incredible tuning stability. Once the strings were broken in, I have literally not had to tune it! (I'm not a big dive bomber, so I can't speak to how it would perform set up for a more aggressive approach). There are some things that will take some getting used to--longer scale length, 24 frets and smaller than I'm used to. (I had considered a McCarty SE, but wasn't comfortable with the hefty neck shape.) Overall, two big thumbs up! I'm only docking the rating by a half point for the silliest of reasons: I hate those fretboard birds!

Good fit and finish, stays in tune, feels good in the hand, light weight, looks cool, sounds good. The SE CE 24 has a clear full range sound that I really like. In the past, I have gravitated toward HSS pickup layouts, mainly using the neck pickup, but with this guitar I find that the un-split neck humbucker really does it for me, it has a pleasing brightness, with mids and lows that are very present without muddying up the sound as many neck humbuckers do. This guitar is a winner, it's kept my regular Fender USA hot rodded Strat on the wall since I got it.

Ive been a fan of PRS guitars for decades now and have had a number of them, I came across this guitar recently and liked that it was a bolt on like the U.S made CE guitars, the SE line never had one till now. the sound the fit and finish are really nice for the money. No its not 2000 dollars nice but considering the price and the build quality its not too far off! ill save the money for some thing else as I am satisfied with this guitar all the way around!

I ended up returning this guitar. My main issue is that it sounds terrible. I assume that has a lot to do with the pickups. The rest of the guitar seems to be of reasonably good quality, especially for the price, however, the sound was unacceptable to me. The sound doesn't seem to resonate well when unplugged as well. It looks good and feels pretty good to play but, a guitar has little value if you can't stand the sound of it. I got pulled in by the sale price and thought I couldn't go wrong with a PRS. As always, I learned that things are inexpensive for a reason.