PRS Acoustic Electric Guitars

Reviews of Paul Reed Smith acoustic guitars usually begin with a reminder associated with business’s exalted condition as a leading builder of electric guitars. Started in 1985, PRS became recognized for fusing components of iconic Fender and Gibson guitar styles into a unique style, although company performedn’t begin creating acoustic guitars until 2009. The organization’s first acoustic models had been exquisite instruments that appeared more like the job of just one luthier than a guitar factory. They attracted the interest of guitarists like Tony McManus, Ricky Skaggs, and Martin Simpson, just who shortly became endorsers, nonetheless they in addition included price tags like those of luthier-built guitars. With the addition of acoustic models to its Korean-built SE line, which virtually knocks a digit from price of PRS’s other acoustic models, PRS acoustics are actually within reach on most guitarists. We got the mahogany and spruce SE Angelus traditional for analysis. (The SE Angelus Custom has rosewood as well as edges and ebony fingerboard and bridge, and proprietary PRS electronic devices tend to be optional on both variations.) If the noise and playability of our analysis guitar is any sign, it’s surely time to stop talking about PRS as an electric guitar maker.

Fit and Finish

With a headstock shape and bird inlays lent from its SE electric guitar line together with same cutaway grand show figure because the high-end Angelus and Tony McManus trademark design acoustics, the SE Angelus is an aesthetic hybrid of familiar PRS types. Its solid mahogany back features an appealing burned sienna coloring, and while the solid Sitka spruce top’s whole grain ended up being some wider than I’m accustomed witnessing on Sitka, it is not uncommon for a guitar inside price range. Some manufacturers usually scrimp regarding artistic information on their particular lower-end models, making them look more like prototypes than completed tools, but the SE Angelus has some really appealing elements that provide it the look of a much more pricey electric guitar, including the PRS trademark bird inlays regarding fingerboard, the white binding in the fingerboard and the body, the monochrome purfling, and timber rosette. Another significantly unanticipated perk only at that cost range is the completely paid seat, which provides exemplary intonation throughout the fingerboard. The fretwork is clean and smooth, additionally the finish is evenly used though slightly thick, but this doesn’t appear to have adversely impacted the noise by any means.

Feel and Sound

PRS describes the SE Angelus’s neck form as “wide, ” but this seems to relate to the level as opposed to the width, considering that the fan width is 111/16 ins and string spacing in the seat is 23/16 inches, maybe not usually what fingerstylists, at the least, would think of as a broad neck. The throat is only a little much deeper than electric guitarists, as an example, might be accustomed, but i came across the girth to be very comfortable in every jobs, although guitarists with tiny fingers might find it difficult to worry records from the bass string aided by the flash. The factory setup ended up being great together with activity had been buzz-free except at the large E string’s 15th fret, that could effortlessly be studied proper care of because of the normal type of setup tweak many brand-new devices need after a short breaking-in duration.

It can be type of a cop-out to talk about a guitar’s versatility. It very nearly sounds just as if you’re saying that the instrument does not have any particular distinguishing features. But it’s maybe not dissembling to state that the SE Angelus’s main sonic quality is its stability and evenness of tone. After playing Irish ballads in open-G tuning, closed-chord jazz standards, bluesy monotonic-bass fingerpicking in E, open-position cross-picked old-time tunes, and single-note jazz lines that took advantageous asset of the SE’s Venetian cutaway, the one thing i possibly could consider to relax and play on the SE Angelus that didn’t very work was old-fashioned bluegrass rhythm electric guitar, which sometimes require a tad bit more low-end emphasis compared to the SE wants to produce. I’m guessing the SE Angelus’s sonic symmetry is partly caused by PRS’s crossbreed X/fan-bracing pattern, including a scalloped X and four fans behind the connection, without standard tone pubs.

The benefit of a guitar with this specific types of tonal balance is the fact that it permits one to play whatever music is within the head, without being brought up short whenever some sonic anomaly for the tool needs one to restart your music imagination. Every guitar player, from professional to newbie, requires a musical companion that'll follow his or her every move, as well as the PRS SE Angelus seems made to do just that.

SPECS: 15 1/2-inch cutaway body. Solid Sitka spruce top. Solid mahogany straight back. Mahogany sides and throat. Rosewood fingerboard and connection. Bone fan and saddle. Hybrid scalloped-X and fan bracing. 25.25-inch scale. 1 11/16-inch nut width. 2 3/16-inch sequence spacing at saddle. All-natural gloss finish. Chrome tuners. D’Addario light-gauge strings. Produced in Southern Korea.