PRS and Fender reviews

[jgcable]

I just picked up a mint 1998 Fender Deluxe Strat in Trans Teal with the vintage noiseless pickups, locking tuners, maple slabboard neck etc...
Tone, balance, action, fit, finish are all a 10.
This is a perfect stratocaster and completely silent due to the vintage noiseless staggered poled pickups. If you were ever thinking about a traditional single coil strat for your arsenal but don't want the noise that comes along with single coils you should consider a Deluxe. The pickups blow away the Lace Sensors which are very generic and weak sounding to me.
I also just got a 2000 PRS Standard 22 in Platinum Metallic. It has the PRS trem, Dragon 2 pickups, abaloni moons, les paul tyupe toggle with a push/pull pot for 6 positions and the wide/fat neck. Very Les Paul sounding and feeling IMHO. PRS is really going directly after Gibson on this one. The pickups have a PAF Pro/489T type quality and of course the perfectly balanced tone, the weight, the fit and finish, the hardware and electronics, the action and set up on it are all outstanding. They should be considering the guitar was $2439.00 new. If you are considering one make sure you try out the wide/fat neck before you choose it. I have had both the wide/thin and the wide fat versions. The wide/fat is a big neck. Possibly the fattest widest 6 string neck I have ever played. It is so wide that there is 1/8" of fretboard extending out from both E strings. Anyway, IMHO, PRS really lives up to the hype. Their guitars are pricey but very nice.

[quiksilver]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

I see your PRS has the PRS trem. Does that stay in tune, and if so, how the heck does it work? It just looks like a regular vintage-style trem with a regular nut to me (I think it does have locking tuners). Don't the strings (particularly the G string) hang up in that nut and go out of tune when you use the trem?

[jgcable]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

I use it for tremelo and it returns to pitch perfectly. I would say that it performs very similar to a Wilkenson. Very reactive and very smooth. Heavy dive bombs do not return to perfect pitch but I didn't expect them to. It has knife edge fulcrums but they are hidden and recessed under the front part of the bridge. It has a very large solid brass block.

[pro-fusion]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

Originally posted by quiksilver:
I see your PRS has the PRS trem. Does that stay in tune, and if so, how the heck does it work? It just looks like a regular vintage-style trem with a regular nut to me (I think it does have locking tuners). Don't the strings (particularly the G string) hang up in that nut and go out of tune when you use the trem?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've had good experiences with the PRS trems. PRS guitars use locking tuners and a headstock designed to create a straight string-pull, so you don't get any friction over the nut, which is where many of the tuning problems happen on trem guitars. I never bothered to examine closely the trems on the PRS guitars that I had, but they seem much like Wilkinsons. Wouldn't work for Vai-type stuff, but they work fine for more subtle Holdsworth-type whammy use.

I wouldn't mind getting a CE-24 bolt-on again, but I'm so thoroughly "Jackson-ized", that I probably would have a hard time getting used to the PRS neck again.

[Top Jimmy B]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

I find the neck on my CE24 to be a nice compliment to my USA Jacksons. The CE24 has the wide/thin profile and is very playable...and it sounds amazing.

[Boxcar Willie 84]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

So Paul Reed Smiths have big necks? Even the cheap ones? I remember playing a PRS once and hating how it sounded and that gigantic heel...the Hamer I played before it was much nicer!

[Basswood]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

I have been tempted several times to drop the dough to buy a PRS. My wife even tried to encourage me a few months ago at the store. I finally decided on waiting and here I am still with my Jackson and.. a Fender Korean import Esquire GT Custom. Not bad for $299.00. I really wish I still had my old Les Paul Custom Lite though. I loved the PRS's, but I couldnt justify the price.

[shreddermon]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

JG, does the Strat have the LSR roller nut and two-point trem? If so, how well does that one stay in tune with heavy use?

I must admit, I've been attracted to the Deluxes lately. But my local guitar shops never have any in stock, so I haven't been able to try one out.

[jgcable]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

They are certainly pricey but not when you compare them to Gibson or custom shop Hamer. It is almost a status thing for me. I have been playing for so long and I am so visible as a teacher and shredder around my neck of the woods that I got tired of explaining to my students or at gigs why my super rare, super high end Dave Bunker PBC Ibanez USRG20TP or my ultra rare A9713 Kramer Strathead are not the same guitars that you can get for $299.00 at Daddy's Junky Music or for $299.00 at Musicyo. The PRS ends all those questions. I know... it sounds like a crap reason.
The Fender Strat is just a beautiful guitar all around and a must for any guitar players arsenal. There is nothing like a good Fender Strat and the Deluxe is a really good one.

[jgcable]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

Originally posted by shreddermon:
JG, does the Strat have the LSR roller nut and two-point trem? If so, how well does that one stay in tune with heavy use?

I must admit, I've been attracted to the Deluxes lately. But my local guitar shops never have any in stock, so I haven't been able to try one out.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is a 1998 which has the 2 point trem but not the LSR nut. It does have the locking tuners. I think that the LSR nut comes on the Ultra Deluxe that has the Lace Sensors and the factory hipshot tremsetter along with TBX and locking tuners. I had one and I didn't like it. The Lace Sensors sucked and the LSR nut looked lousy and didn't seem to do a darn thing. The Deluxe that I have stays in tune very well. I am very surprised actually. You can use it for heavy vibrato but total dive bombs will cause the G to return a little sharp or flat sometimes. One tap of the bar and it returns to perfect pitch. The real attractive features of my Deluxe are the ash body, trans teal finish and the maple 22 fret slabboard neck with the hand rolled edges and nice meaty medium jumbo frets. It has a total custom shop feel to it, the fit and finish are as good as I have ever seen on a USA Fender Strat and the vintage noiseless staggered pickups not only look totally stock but the sound exactly like vintage Fender USA pickups but with the added benefit of being DEAD QUIET. This guitar is completely silent. It is a pricey strat new (lists for $1549.00)but I have seen them on Ebay for around $850.00 used.

[shreddermon]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

[img]graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img] I must be thinking of later years' models, then. Not sure, but I thought there were recent Deluxe models with the two-point trem, LSR nut & vintage noiseless PUs. I believe the latter were replaced by the new samarium-cobolt (sp?) PUs this year.

Thanks anyway!

[toejam]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

Originally posted by jgcable:
They are certainly pricey but not when you compare them to Gibson or custom shop Hamer.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't know about Gibson, but a Custom Shop Hamer really isn't expensive compared to a production PRS. I got a quote on a custom Hamer Monaco with 24 frets, belly cut on back of body, added tone chamber, extra inlay at the 1st and 24th fret, and the price was reasonably low... around the same or even lower than a custom Jackson.

[jgcable]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

My Standard 22 is a set neck with the huge heel. It doesn't get in the way at all at the upper frets.

[Chuckracer]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

I've never noticed the large heel getting in the way on any of the later PRS's I've played, but I have no problem with a standard strat heel either as I am almost never up at the top of the neck. I'm actually most at home on 21 fret necks!
Yeah, I suck...

[hippietim]

Re: PRS and Fender reviews

So how do you like the PRS pickups?

I have a Santana III and those Santana III pickups sounded like ass - no meat whatsoever - thin, buzzy, cheap import-sounding pickups.

I had Dragon II's that I popped in a different guitar (a cheap Oscar Schmidt import in fact) and thought those sounded terrible too. The stock import "Designed by Washburn" pickups that were in it more much fuller and fatter than the Dragon II's. The Dragon II's in that import did sound about as good as my Santana III though.

I ended up putting the stock pickups back in the Oscar Schmidt and selling the Dragon II's and replacing the Santana III pickups with Duncan Phat Boys which kick ass.

I called around looking for a nice PRS a while back and I was talking to one of the PRS mega dealers about one and the first thing the guy says to me is that they'll swap pickups free of charge. Apparently a very large percentage of his customers swap the pickups immediately. It's wierd but I was sort of glad to hear that it wasn't just me disliking these things.