This PRS Semi-Hollow Does It All
The PRS Special Semi-Hollow is an irresistible package for the tone-savvy guitarist who demands the ultimate in playability and sonic versatility. It all starts with a resonant chambered mahogany body and a carved maple top graced with a single F-hole. The Special Semi-Hollow is fitted with a trio of high-performance PRS pickups and flexible switching that provides instant control over a formidable tone arsenal — giving you a total of 12 pickup combinations that will cover any genre, from classic rock to edgy fusion. And of course, being a PRS, the playability is flawless. If you’re looking for one guitar that does it all, Sweetwater’s guitar gurus suggest giving the PRS Special Semi-Hollow a serious audition.
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A sonic arsenal under your command
The PRS Special Semi-Hollow is all about tonal dexterity, thanks to its complement of proprietary PRS pickups and versatile switching scheme. Stationed at the bridge and neck are 58/15 LTs, which produce a rich, organic vintage tone. This is the warm and clear sonic elixir that propelled the original 58/15 pickups to the top of many guitarists’ favorite PAF-style humbucker lists. The 58/15 LT is based on that successful design, but it’s wound with fewer wire turns for even more clarity and nuance. Cranked through a good tube amp, the 58/15 LT can produce raging overdrive with fat, snarling tone that nevertheless maintains crystalline note separation within chords.
PRS’s Narrowfield, deployed in the middle position of the Special Semi-Hollow, is a remarkable pickup that delivers the best characteristics of a humbucker, a P-90, a traditional single-coil, and a mini humbucker. Technically, the Narrowfield’s dual coils classify it as a humbucking design, while its svelte form factor is reminiscent of a mini humbucker (with which, perhaps not surprisingly, it shares certain tonal characteristics). Mini humbuckers have long been prized for their ability to maintain clarity in overdrive conditions while bucking the hum.
The Special Semi-Hollow is equipped with two mini-toggle switches that split the pickup coils for sparkly single-coil tones, while a 5-way pickup selector switch serves up spanky reverse-polarity tones in positions 2 and 4. The immense flexibility of the Special Semi-Hollow’s unique pickup and switching arrangement gives you an instrument that can serve up any electric guitar sound you could ever need for a live gig or a special studio session.
Pattern profile neck for optimized playability
The PRS Special Semi-Hollow is spec’d with PRS’s Pattern profile neck. A hallmark of PRS quality, neck shapes are, of course, critical to your playing experience. Perfected after years of prototyping, the Pattern neck is an updated Wide Fat PRS neck style based on neck shapes Paul Reed Smith designed in the 1970s and 1980s for Carlos Santana, Peter Frampton, and Howard Leese of Heart. Fast and comfortable, the Pattern profile always feels just right. In reality, most electric guitarists employ a combination of thumb-over and thumb-behind fretting-hand positions in their playing, and the Pattern profile lets you switch seamlessly between the two.
PRS Special Semi-Hollow Features:
- Chambered mahogany body; flame maple
- Mahogany neck, Pattern profile
- 22-fret rosewood fingerboard with Bird inlays
- Neck pickup: 58/15 LT
- Middle pickup: Narrowfield
- Bridge pickup: 58/15 LT
- 5-way blade pickup selector
- Master volume and Tone controls
- 2 mini-toggle coil-split switches
- PRS Gen III Tremolo vibrato bridge
- Designed and crafted by PRS luthiers in Maryland, USA
