PRS raided its tonewood reserves to spec up a limited edition run of its super-versatile CE 24-08 electric guitars with swamp ash and black limba builds, introducing the “08” pickup switching system to the CE model for the very first time.
After all, when you use a piece of black limba to build a high-end electric guitar you want to show it off, and so it we’ve got the CE 24-08 Black Limba emerging from the PRS Stevensville, Maryland with a natural finish.
Similarly, the CE 24-08 Black Limba Swamp Ash models all have that tactile open-grain finish on the body.
“Every once in a while, we choose woods from our stock to create special instruments, and these guitars are great examples of just that,” says Paul Reed Smith, PRS Guitars founder and managing general partner. “The CE has been with us since the very early days of PRS. I love celebrating this model with new woods and by adding the ‘08’ switching system to it for the first time. These are real players’ guitars.”
If the tonewoods are the big talking point here, just don’t let it be at the expense of the CE 24-08’s pickup switching system, which many players will find a game-changing proposition on the the guitars.
As the name suggests, it offers players a total of eight pickup configurations, which is a lot of tonal ground to cover even before you touch the volume and tone controls.
Both of these guitars are equipped with PRS’s superlative 85/15 electric guitar pickups, humbuckers voiced with “full-spectrum clarity” but with the “08” switching you can get genuine single-coil tones from them – and not the sort of half-way compromise of your typical coil-split.
The hardware is top-tier. You’ve got PRS’s Patented tremolo unit and Low-Mass locking tuners. These guitars will stay in tune.
These limited edition CE 24-08s have 24 frets (the clue is in the name) and a 25” scale length. The CE is an old-school model and so “Old-school” bird inlays come home to roost on its 10” radius rosewood fingerboard.
The necks are maple, have a Pattern Thin profile, and are bolted to the body, offering a snappy attack and response that might have you spending more time on that single-coil mode than you bargained for.
And speaking of bargains, well, they are not cheap per se but at £1,999 street these limited edition CE 24-08s offer a lot of guitar for the money, and the ship in a premium gig bag.
For more details, head over to PRS Guitars.
