Anyone have experience with a PRS S2?

GuitarGuyLP

GuitarGuyLP

Active member
I have decided to sell off all of my guitars except for my Les Paul (autographed by Trivium). I want to replace them with a PRS, and so far the S2 single cut has caught my eye, only problem there are no shops with any PRSs anywhere near where I live. I have owned a few PRSs in the past (SC245, Custom 22 Artist, CU22) All of them had the wide fat neck which I found a bit too big. I have heard that the S2 line has a slightly smaller neck, but not quite as small as the wide thin profile. Also since the bodies of the S2 line are a bit thinner a non weight relieved single cut design won't be a back breaker.

So before I bite the bullet, and order one sight un seen does anyone here own any PRS S2 guitars? Has anyone spent some time with them? Anyone know where to get a good deal on one in Canada?
 
I have an S2 Custom 24. I'm really happy with it, and it's become the main guitar I pick up and play. The neck feels great to me, not too thick/wide or thin. It came set up nicely as well. The weight balance is excellent. Tuners are great as well. Everything mechanically related about the guitar is great.

I only had two gripes about it. First, the tone pot turns very easily. It should have more friction for my taste. Volume pot is fine. And I wanted more saturation out of the pickups. That's a matter of taste though. I wanted pickups that can reach deep into metal territory when needed. The stock pickups are actually quite impressive for most ranges of styles though.

So I swapped the pickups and also swapped the pots/caps out. I wanted to replace the tone pot with something with more friction, so replaced them all for not much more cost. The guitar is phenomenal now! I kept the same wiring method overall, except used a .022 cap instead of the .033 PRS uses. That just makes it more in line with what would usually be used for humbuckers. I also put resistors on the new tone cap like PRS does. Those help balance the volume level between humbucking and coil tap settings. And I kept the treble bypass cap on the volume pot.

So the only real electrical difference between mine and stock is the pickups and the .022 tone cap. Otherwise it was just new pots to get a different friction feel on the knobs.

Out of the box it is excellent. You may want to swap out the pickups if you want to play metal often. But the stock pickups are actually very good. Great single coil and humbucking tones out of them for most uses. It seems the S2 doesn't get much love, but I'm very impressed with it!
 
Here's a recent thread I made about the S2 Custom 24 I just picked up: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=160150

I share many of the same views as guitarobert. I love the neck. Just the right thickness and the nut width is 1.656" ....right in line with what I like, not too wide at all. Also, as he said...the pickups are decent for most styles. For now, I'm alright with them. Just a really nice playing guitar for the money.
 
Thanks for the info. Once my guitars start selling I will be ordering the S2 Singlecut (I found a place with a good return policy). It has the same neck as the S2 Custom 24, but it has the #7 pickups instead of the HFS/Vintage bass. I have heard a lot of good things about the #7. Plus if I have to change the pups it is no big deal to me. I have never had a guitar that I was 100% happy with the pups, and I have a collection of pups sitting in my parts drawer. Plus I have found that I am liking slightly lower output pups lately, even with high gain. To me they seem to keep more articulation, and my amp has more than enough gain to make anything completely saturated.
 
I am interested in these too ,looks like Sweetwater has 4 or 5 new colours coming out to Deep blue ,Elephant grey ,Tri sunburst,

I love the super starts but I have to confess as you get a bit older my Ibanez custom with wizard neck is starting to fatigue my hand ,need something a little bit more comfortable and a lot of players seem to love PRS
 
Hey gtr31, I have been looking all over for these, best deal in Canada is Cosmo music, they are $100 cheaper than L&M. L&M will price match, and they have a really good return policy. If they don't have it in stock they will usually bring it in for you with no obligation, and you get 30 days to return it if you don't like it. I think that is the way I am going to go, but I just have to sell one of my other guitars first.
 
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