Review: PRS CE24

OK folks, it’s time for the most obvious statement of the year: relationships can be difficult. You meet that someone special, you convince yourself that you’ll be together for all time, and make all your friends vomit with levels of sticky-sweet schmaltz that would shame the end of a Robin Williams movie, and a short time later you want to pull their arms and legs off just to stop them breathing that way, dammit.

I think the problem is this – at the beginning of the relationship, you see everything through the eyes of someone who is deeply in love, and it alters your perception of reality. That slightly larger than average nose, the one that in six months will gouge into your consciousness like some kind of nasal piledriver of doom, is cute. That way she can’t pronounce her r’s is endearing, until six months later, at which point you want to fix her up to some kind of Stephen Hawking vocoder just to get her to pronounce the damn words properly. Grrr.

So basically it’s the little eccentricities that start off so appealing and end up so annoying. And so it is with the PRS CE24 I bought in late 2007.

The RRP on this axe is a hefty £1400 but yours truly managed to wangle one for £949, because of my superior charisma and charm (ok, because the shop I bought it from was about to go bust and it had a chip in the paintwork). This was a whole new level in price for me, so I had high expectations.

And boy were they met. The key points of this guitar are 100% on the money. The pickups are beyond belief. I’ve never got so much tonal versatility from a guitar. The bridge pickup screams like your girlfriend over something meaningless, like a picture of a mouse in a book or something. The neck pickup is as bluesy and melancholy as a girl moaning about how you don’t pay her enough attention, despite the fact that you have spent so much time with her that your friends hate you and your social life has gone down the plughole.

Not that I’m bitter or anything, you understand.

The neck is lightning fast and all 24 frets are easy to access (just like the toilet seat, so what’s the big deal with getting upset about leaving it up? What’s with that anyway?) As you would expect at this price, the tone and volume pots are as smooth as the skin she insists is pockmarked and ugly to justify eating ice cream to make herself feel better (just eat the damn ice-cream, I honestly don’t care any more). The hardware is excellent, and is likely to remain so for the time you have the guitar, so you don’t have to buy shiny things to keep it (her) happy.

Actually, here’s some more reasons why a PRS CE24 is better than a woman:

*It’s always curvy, no matter how old it is
*You can go back to playing your old guitar without it getting upset
*A PRS CE24 won’t object if your best mate brings his for a ‘jam session’
*It has a volume control.

Anyway, I digress. This guitar sounds awesome and plays like a dream. What more do you want?

Well, about halfway through the relationship, sorry, the article, is where the moaning starts. And it’s the little things that first seemed so good…

Take the tremolo arm. It’s based on a strat-type, but instead of a screw fitting, the bar simply slips into a rubber sleeve (har har). No twirling, no fiddling, no screwing (especially if you said the wrong thing, such as “what's wrong?”), just put it in and there it is (though she might complain about that). The only trouble is, it comes out as easily as it goes in (fnurr fnurr), and any serious wang action could leave you with your whammy bar coming off in your hand in the middle of a vital performance (ouch) There's a tiny little Allen bolt that supposedly tightens it, but I think PRS put it there just to keep you amused. It certainly doesn't do anything as far as I can tell. Maybe it's not the size, maybe I'm just not doing it right...

Even more eccentric is the pickup selector, which is a fairly standard 5-way setup, but using a rotary control (the same knob used for volume and tone). This looks pretty, but it’s almost impossible to tell what pickups are selected by looking at it, which can be infuriating. “5” is neck pickup only, whereas “8” is the two humbuckers coil-tapped and out of phase. Yeah, that's easy to figure out on stage.

Oooh, oooh, I thought of some more:

*If you don’t like the guitar’s tone, you can change it
*If the guitar is too highly-strung, you can adjust it with an Allen key

It’s not all doom and gloom about the eccentricities, though. The tuning heads incorporate some rather clever string clamps, giving you both easier string changing and better tuning stability than you usually get with a strat-type trem (though not as good as a Floyd Rose). I can’t believe that putting a little plastic doodad in the tuning heads costs a great deal, so I guess this is an example of PRS thinking just that little bit harder than other manufacturers. That’s why PRS have a user-list that’s a veritable who’s who of just about ever genre of music. And Chad Kroeger. (I bet Chad Kroeger gets loads of hot chicks, despite looking like an accident in a baboon factory. Maybe it’s because he plays a PRS. I’ll keep you updated on that one.).

*If a PRS CE24 screams, you’re doing it right, it’s not faking.

So what’s the verdict? Well, the very best relationships aren’t based on looks, or words, or petty squabbles. They’re based on mutual understanding, and how the other person makes you feel. In a truly great relationship, those, small, infuriating things don’t matter. For me, the CE24 was love at first play. I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care that the tremolo arm has a semi-detached relationship with the actual guitar, or that the pickup selector seems to have been designed by Salvador Dali. On an intellectual level, this guitar delivers everything. It’s a disservice to this guitar to say that it can ‘do’ a Les Paul as well as it can ‘do’ a Strat. This guitar has its own voice, that is both of those things, and yet neither. That puts it on the same level as those classic designs, and considering that it’s half the price of a Les Paul that’s quite frankly astonishing. PRS may have come late to the design party, but this design, and bear in mind this is at the lower end of its prices, stands up in its own right.

But there’s something beyond that. Something that fuses with your very soul, that makes love to your fingers and soothes your troubled mind (why did she stop talking to me for a whole weekend? What did I say? Why? Why?!?”) For me at least, the CE24 feels right. We were meant to be together. And, like the very best relationships, I am prepared to overlook the imperfections, the madness, the occasional bouts of insanity, for the beautiful thing this truly is.

p.s. A PRS CE24 won’t convince itself that you don’t want it anymore if you don’t play it for a day or two
p.p.s You only need to flick a switch to turn on a PRS CE24

Verdict 5/5

Truly, madly, deeply.