PRS Just Leveled Up The S2 Guitars

today on the bench we're checking out the brand new 2024 Paul Reed Smith S2 satin 24 with its new upgrades that we have all been begging for and asking for for many years Paul Reed Smith has done it upgraded all of the electronics the number one complaint that you've seen in all the reviews I've done on this channel of all the S2s is some of you actually majority of you didn't really love the pickups and so they when they told me they were going to send me one of these as a loner to check it out on the channel and tell me that they were upgraded the electronics and the pickups my first thought was that they made a new pickup maybe in the USA but they actually went a step farther they've now put the real deal pickups this uh satin 24 has the 5815 LT pickups in it's standard now this model which is why I requested it has always been to me like the Workhorse PRS for the people who are just like I'm not into the ornate tops and all the the violin carves I just want something that's comfortable something that's super light cuz this is all mahogany this is a satin Nitro finish that's worked into the Grain and it looks beautiful this color is just it's amazing so what do we have we have a mahogany set neck on a mahogany body rosewood fretboard with 24 nickel silver Frets we have locking P re Smith tuning Keys another thing to point out is that the nut on the guitar is a proprietary P Smith nut this is basically like graph fite and Brass Blended together that has like a gold kind of brass flake in the nut material it's a 10-in radius fretboard which is standard on all the ps's and it looks like a new trust Rod cover that has the S2 logo etched in there we have two 5815 LT which is low turn pickups to give it more of a vintage sound these are the same pickups you would see in the most premium of PRS guitars in fact these pickups actually see themselves in Private Stock guitars so now someone can get this guitar and get their hands on essentially the real deal you have a volume and tone control with a five-way switch which will go over in the playing sample with all of the different settings which is really cool now the one thing they left alone was the tremolo and I'm actually happy they did for some of you out there that just need to have the S2s have everything the cores have I understand that but I've always been a fan of this tremolo uh in fact I like this tremolo as much if not better than the core and I've said that for years I like the steel Saddles uh and the steel clock over the brass I don't know what it is I just do so um so they didn't change that I know you're going to ask is well did they change the price they did they raised the price about 250 bucks per model it looks like what it went up but it would be crazy not to mention the fact that the 5815 LT pickups when they are sold new are about $500 and used they fetch anywhere between $350 to $500 and you can't buy them from ps's website so this is a huge upgrade for this guitar it's definitely a smart decision to level up this line of guitars so if you think about this now you're talking about a a made in USA Paul Reed Smith guitar with the legitimate pickups at basically what an American Standard Strat is but it makes it a little bit more expensive than the Les Paul moderns even though they still have USA pickups and only $1499 so of course we're going to get the geeky stuff so let's actually get into the geeky stuff right now we have a 25 in scale length on the guitar with bird inlays and let's see how they ship this thing to us they shipped this to us with 2 millimeters off the 12 fret double check that again actually no 1.75 so a little bit better than than they normally send but PA Smith is very consistent at 2 mm off the 12 fret let's check the relief on the neck so we'll push down the first fret and the last fret and let see and there's just a little bit of relief in the neck so that's pretty cool and let's go ahead and play it and see if there's any dead notes so we have 33 dead notes I'm just kidding there's no dead spots on the guitar so this guitar has no dead Frets in fact um I've very rarely to never seen a Paul Reed Smith with a dead fret that's one thing I can always say I trust with the ps's um we could do the Fret end test if you want in the bridge let's go ahead and do that what I want to do is the bridge first if you don't mind the saddle adjustment screws are all recessed into the the Saddles so that that feels great so no issues there so let's go ahead and do the Fret end test and on the treble side we have an absolutely perfect one and on the base side we have an absolutely perfect one Paul Reed Smith is really kind of known for their fret work uh you know whether people like the guitars or don't like the guitars doesn't really matter there is a consistency as anyone can tell you that's worked on thousands of guitars P guitars are you're you have a good bet you're going to get good fret work that's just something they kind of Pride themselves on there I would say them and Sir guitars and music man are the three biggies when I think like great Frets so this guitar is coming in at 6.8 lbs very light that's another thing you're going to see consistently with this model so if you like really light guitars this is the model I I really recommend some other things to mention which is going to be important is that because of the the satin finish and the way they did it there's no grain filler in this so you're going to feel all of the the the little grooves in the wood on the neck so if that's something you you like if you like kind of a raw finish in fact it's going to feel like an unfinished mahogany guitar just with a light sand on it so that's something you want to be aware of if you don't like that feeling then you definitely want to look at the other S2s that have the gloss finish but if you're one of the players out there that're like I don't like the gloss finish this will feel pretty much like a satin standard neck let's talk about that neck this is a pattern thin neck so it's a c shape and it's going to feel very reminiscent uh maybe a little thinner up top you know between the first and the fifth fret than a Fender c-shaped Strat um I don't think they feel exactly the same but this is a c-shaped carve it is rather thin let's go ahead and give you the measurements on that so the nut we have 42.5 mm or 1.67 6 and on the 12 fret we have 52.2 2 mm or 2.56 let's check out the thickness okay on the first fret we have 21.05 mm or 0.828 and on the 12 fret we have 22.83 mm or 0.899 so that is definitely a thinner neck um what I've noticed about Paul Reed Smith Guitars over the years when it comes to thicknesses on the pattern Thins and pattern regulars is because they put so much time in the hand finishing process what happens is if you have a overzealous uh sander and there's sand in the neck a little too much on those pattern thins they get a little too thin and on the pattern reg P pattern regulars if they get a little overzealous I think they're perfect so um so when people ask me do I like the pattern thin or the pattern regular or the you know uh yeah the pattern thin or the pattern regular right uh I always tell them it depends on the actual neck I have pattern regulars I love and I have pattern thins I love and vice versa so it depends on that so this one feels pretty good this one does feel a little on the thinner side but also probably because there's not a lot of finish on there and like I said somebody could have got a little aggressive with the sanding so Electronics that's something we definitely need to check out okay so let's look at those Electronics now the couple things we want to look at is the pickups so you can see here it says PRS USA in the base plate this is the 5815 LT base pickup which is what they call the neck pickup and this is the PS USA 5815 LT treble pickup and it says TCI tuned capacitance inductance which is their little trademark saying there we have the five-way blade switch which is a super switch right here looks great and more robust switch look at that and then we have treble bleed so you can see here they've added they have the treble bleed to there and then of course we have the capacitor here for the tone control you see how they're running it there very nice and of course they're using a super switch because of the pickup combinations so let's let's show you that now before we do that you can see that there's no shielding uh in the uh cavity at all but there is some shielding foil on the pick guard I like this little addition right here this little Cable Management that's really nice keeps it nice and clean and neat it looks like somebody really cared about what they were doing when it looks this good and put together really nice I really like that they're using the rubber tubing I prefer that over the Springs that's really cool it's nice to see something else to mention is that these are the low friction potentiometers so they're going to feel pretty loose where it's very easy to turn so when we say vintage output low output low turn pickups what do we mean the bridge pickup is sitting at 7.14k and the neck pickup is sitting at 6.98 K so a low amount of wines on here not a lot of wire on here gives you a very vintage tone for those of you that want the inductance let's check the bridge pickup we're at 3.99 and the neck pickup is at 3.83 yep 3.83 okay so now what I want to do is uh test the way it plays but a couple things I want to point out is we always do the handshake and of course we've done this style of guitar so many times on the channel nothing's really changed handshake is where you hold it by the neck to see how comfortable the the carves are and of course that block gets a little bit in your way but it still has pretty good access especially with this carve out right here balance it's uh balanced okay sitting here seems fine of course on a strap a little better but on the lap it's pretty good so before we do the sound samples I should point out that we're running a fender 65 Deluxe Reverb and I'll be using an overdrive pedal in a minute and so let's just start with some cleans now the first we're going to start with the bridge so this is your full humbucker Bridge pickup [Music] that is a sweet tone coming out of the British pickup on a clean Channel I mean it just sounds fantastic now when you go to position two here's something that's important is you stay the humbach stays engaged on the bridge and then activates a single coil neck so this is a coil split neck pickup so here you [Music] go [Music] this sounds really nice you get the chime uh of the bridge the fullness and the chime of the bridge and then you get that kind of sweet neck [Music] pickup okay middle position you're going to get two full humbuckers so this is just your two full humbucker [Music] mode [Music] pretty full actually uh sounds really good especially for like a rhythm gon [Music] to love that position four what you're going to have now is two coil split pickups so this is your two uh pickups but now just in single Quil [Music] mode okay and of course neck pickup is just the neck [Music] pickup trimo stays in tune perfectly uh sometimes I hear complaints in the comment sections about uh PRS guitars not thing in tune whether it's an SE an S2 or core and I always remind everybody I have a ton of videos on this talking about the design of this trimo system and about how it works really great but if you do not set it up correctly and if you take it to somebody who doesn't understand how it's designed slightly different you're going to have problems with it so let's go ahead and use some overdrive so I'm using a love od1 pedal it's basically a clone of a Zen drive and we'll start with the bridge [Music] pickup [Music] okay now let's go to the humbucker single Quail [Music] tone two humbuckers [Music] okay so now we're going to play the two single [Music] coils [Music] [Music] last let's go to the neck [Music] pickup [Music] [Applause] [Music] n okay so some final thoughts well the best thing about this guitar is that there is no premium version of it this is the premium in other words there isn't a core a model above this this is kind of like if you just want a Paul Reed Smith for the quality in other words you like the workmanship of their fretwork you like the way um it feels you like the uh the sound of their pickups this guitar gets you into all of that like I said the only thing you could say is they didn't put the the same Bridge as the core but like I said I actually like this bridge so there's no downside for me again you make that decision for yourself the big deal though I think that I have to point out is that they could have just made a new uh USA made pickup and called it something else right they could have called it the S2 version of something or they could have just took a basic pickup putting the uh 5815 LTS in here is basically a commitment to say hey look we're going to put the best pickups we sell uh you know the most premium of those pickups in our B model USA guitar now the other S2s as you go on the website and check out you'll see there are different versions of the guitars S2s that got different versions of pickups and we'll be talking about another pickup and another guitar soon but in this particular model I wanted to point out that hey this now is the if you just wanted the guitar for everything other than the F flashy looks uh they they've got you covered they I think they did it and like I said it's comfortable it plays great and uh super light I I have to say this is one of those I hate to see this go guitars I'm going to be bummed out so as always I want to thank you so much for your time till the next time know your gear

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 48,966

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Id: XIOysWJ7Ueg

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2024