This New PRS is Surprisingly Fun! (S2 Vela Satin 2024)

let's see what PRS is up to welcome back trog nights to your daily dose guitar information the trogly guitar show so I got an email from ps's marketing team wanting to know if I want to check out one of their new guitars so I said yeah sure so full disclosure they gave me this guitar I can do whatever I want with it in exchange for making a video about it I think that's what this tape is about marketing department but straight out of the box looks like we're getting one of the standard PRS gig bag Styles very similar to what we saw unlike the silver sky guitars but I was really interested in checking this thing out they call it the Vel model now from my understanding this is by no means a new body shape for PRS they've been doing it for at least a decade but I had personally never seen one so seeing this kind of smaller pickup here and then the full-sized humbucker there with this really cool kind of dog hair like finish body it's a nice satin black it spoke to me the most out of their new offerings especially because it doesn't have a triem system on it it really just reminds me of like a Telecaster that's kind of been Stratocaster fied you've got the Comfort cuts on the top and nice raw mahogany I mean First Impressions this thing is incredibly light like almost too light but I bet it would be pretty comfortable to play on stage we've got the cool matching headstock to this one but you've got that cool pul Reed Smith logo all nice and shiny and gold but this is part of their S2 lineup and that's what they've revamped here there's a whole bunch of different ones in this new drop you can see them here on the screen but my four picks were the Vel the semih hollow Vel the blue burst Mardi 594 and the black burst custom 248 the S2 lineup is like their semi whatat more affordable americanmade version of their guitars and the big announcement this time is they've now swapped over this series all to the USA pickups now I'm not really a big PRS guy so I don't know if that means as much to me as it does to other core audience fans but hey higher end pickups it seems to be a growing Trend in the more budget friendly model guitars something I noticed about the older versions of this guitar is not all of them had the birds so I saw a few people were excited that the birds returned to this model a couple years back they did a cool multicolored grain fill version of a guitar kind of like this the semih hollow version of this guitar is $1,799 and this one's 50 bucks cheaper at $17.49 so to put things into perspective as to what we've also seen on the show it's kind of like a Les Paul Studio as far as their price range goes so I will personally use that to help judge this guitar to see which one might be your better choice you obviously your body shap AP are very different but there really is something about this I mean I know marketing guitar I get it for free can you really trust this guy but as soon as I took it out of the gig bag I I feel bonded to this instrument like I'm going to like it so I have High Hopes but you know we still have to tear it apart take a look at all of its individual parts and specs and then get to that playing sample but besides our gig bag do we have any case candy couple of hang tags and stickers such as this one telling you it's part of the S2 series kind of doubles as a prepack checklist oh and it is important to keep in mind this is a true Nitro finish now since this one's a satin you're not necessarily going to get the Finish checking but the gloss models you might but we have a guitar care guide a please register this for warranty card sticker another marketing pamphlet and our trust Rod tool in Allen [Music] wrenches yeah it's got that whole resonant thing where the body and neck vibrate it's funny how you can tell that just picking up a Guitar even before you strum it but let's go ahead and take a deeper look all right let's go ahead and talk about this first thing I noticed the pck guard kind of wears prematurely I noticed I had gotten like a fingerprint smudge on it so I took my shirt to clean it up but it does this weird hazing thing and then if you take guitar polish you can tell it just never exactly goes back to how it looked Factory even just a little polishing cloth does the same thing for the sake of it looking even again for my b-roll shots I just decided to Haze over the entire pick guard is it a big deal no just thought I'd let you know but as far as the finish it is a black satin there's no pore fill it's basically just a stain that they put over top and it's very evenly done however I was curious how quickly it would buff up into a gloss so I did a little hidden test right here this is what it's going to look like after you've played it for a little bit in your high traffic areas like on the neck and especially right here this buffed up pretty easily so if you like that more semi gloss look that might be an option for you to just polish it up when you get it underneath the pick guard here's what you're working with it appears you could fit two different humbuckers in here if you had the right pick guard for it and you wanted to modify it but it does feature a long neck Tenon you can see the bare mahogany right here cuz I removed the sticker then we have some additional Coates down here in the bridge pickup cavity fantastic routes I don't see any splinters even the staining job is super even when they didn't have to care about the cavities necessarily now let's talk about our pickups so the neck one is called the narrow field and the bridge pickup is the ds01 and what I found kind of cool here is they do have a little bit of cable management however the cables didn't actually go inside of it as far as our wiring we have a regular pot with a couple of capacitors looks like maybe the treble bleed mod so I'll keep your eyes as you roll your volume down and then we have a push pull pot before we get to an L bracket pickup switch I like the fact that the output jacks on the side however very loose for a brand new guitar I'll have to fix that real quick so let's see what that does the bridge normally reads 7K ohms and when you do that it appears it's tapping some of the coils cuz it's not exactly half but our neck reads 7.81 does that also affect that no it does not so that's Bridge pickup only and I guess in a roundabout way as well as your middle position then this should be a master volume and this should be a tone I thought this was cool your volume has a a gold shaft whereas the push pull pot has a silver one not sure if that's intentional or just how it kind of worked out but it looks cool they pay tribute to that with your tuners as well the main post of your tuner is also like brass color but now let's check out that bridge so it secures using four screws right here you can tell some rubbing is going on because it's naturally buff the Finish but look at that you have this little route right here with a grounding wire because from the front the ball end of the string goes there so it looks like a string through guitar but it's not they just have that in there so the strings can rest below and I like that that's why I personally chose this one out of all the ones that were offered to me because I just don't really need a trim system and I thought this looked nice basic straight to the point should be fun but you have this cool double brass saddle thing going on they call it their plate style bridge and here's what it looks like on the back the humbucker actually has a nickel cover so it kind of adds to the whole D Vibe of this same thing's true with our Bridge this lighting really helps show just how contoured the body is on this thing I mean that's a really deep carve now once you get up here it's flat it's not like a completely rounded over John petruci model at the thickest it's about 1.6 in but gets as thin as 1 in in certain areas and I don't personally see any seam lines anywhere it doesn't mean that they didn't do a great job matching it but I even looked at the end grain but that is a solid mahogany body no weight relief same thing on your neck and and then a rosewood fretboard now our bird inlays appear to be an acrylic material of some sort but this fretboard looks really nice now I conditioned it now the color is slightly darker but I didn't see any like tooling marks or anything like that and it feels nice to play so far got your white side marker inlays you're rocking 22 Frets 25 in scale with a 10-in fretboard radius with a nut width of 1.66 in creasing top 2.04 and they call this the pattern regular neck profile 84 at the first fret and9 2 by the 12 i' say it's a nice slim ergonomic c-shape however I would love to see a big baseball bat version of this model because that's what I think when I think a stripped down satin black finish it's a raw rocker like an old junior or something check this out we have locking tuners stock from the factory so that's another thing I like about this whole Bridge system is say it's not time to change your strings yet like right now but you want to condition your fret board or polish your Frets up you just slacking them then you can just pop your strings off and then put them back on when you're done very handy and again our cool matching headstock with reflective PRS logo here's what your dual action trust rod looks like on these and the trust Rod cover is actually a metal material the S2 disappears at certain angles it's a pretty cool design and looks like this on the back moving on to the backside we don't have too much to talk about here cuz everything is top loaded on this that helps them save some production costs so manyways it kind of reminds me of the DC l tributes except this has a lot more carving and other stuff going on we do have a nice Comfort cut here on the back and a metal output Jack Plate with the PRS style strap buttons at the bottom and one here at the top of the horn now as part of the S2 series they use a scarfed neck as they say they're telling me there's a scarf joint on here but my goodness even with an open pore finish I don't see it I know the silver skies are usually like a u shape right there but that one looks really even to me the only one I can barely see because I'm really looking for it is it looks like right here they definitely at least glue the heel on but they did a really fine job matching this particular one you can kind of see a slight difference in the grain like it's super tight right here and a little bit more spaced out so it might be like right in this area but that's not noticeable at all here's a look at the backs side of these tuners they just read PRS and our serial number dating it to 2024 but man I thought this was light but I I would have never guessed 6 lb 5.3 Oz it's bordering too light but at the same time this just feels like a great guitar to play on stage so far so let's go ahead plug it in and hear how it sounds first off I don't gig but if I did this thing it's just weightless it feels like you don't even have a guitar at all that is surprisingly comfortable it's not neck heavy either it's perfectly balanced I think most importantly the unplugged tone but let's go ahead and see if it sounds [Music] good [Music] that narrow field has a nice sound to it let's try that middle [Applause] [Music] position very bright and chimy kind of like a [Music] telly now our [Music] Bridge it's a very bright sounding [Music] guitar [Music] he w [Music] hey [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Applause] [Music] down [Music] [Music] now that I've experienced the Vel what are my final thoughts here Pros really lightweight very comfortable super resonant guitar the satin finish makes it really easy and Slick to play however it will gloss up over time some negatives I personally didn't end up liking the Vel body shape that much because where it rests on me personally is not where I prefer to pick and if you want to get kind of closer to the bridge I find my arm hitting this contoured Edge just a little bit hard so maybe they could soften this a bit the pick guard definitely shows wear quite quickly and then some questionable things the guitar oddly smells like potatoes but I'm sure that would wear off after some time but this is one of those guitars where you might see it online and have some photos and be like not for me but you would see it in like a Guitar Center you'd pick it up and be like wow this thing is just great it really is so light I cannot overemphasize that it's just fantastic it weighs nothing and it's super resonant and a selling feature for people is the fact that they're still made in the USA in Maryland so many buyers can take pride in that as compared to some other offerings on the market however for me personally this wasn't the pickup set that I was thinking the guitar would have it's very bright single coil like however that neck position's Bonk sound it's fantastic you'll find a lot of use out of this narrow field if you want slightly darker tones but it was very articulate and clear so just know that going into it or we looked at the cavities you can modify it for regular humbuckers or whatever you want but I hope this review helps you make an informed decision whether one of these is right for you or not and we'll catch you tomorrow on the next episode take care if you enjoyed tonight's episode consider subscribing I post videos like this every day and you might even enjoy this next one

Channel: The Trogly's Guitar Show

Views: 82,289

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Id: djqjxcnWMwM

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2024