The PRS SE Custom 24: Still the One to Beat
Let’s get something straight right away: the PRS SE Custom 24 has been the gold standard of sub-$800 guitars for over a decade, and it hasn’t held that title by accident. This is the guitar that gets recommended on every forum thread, every YouTube buying guide, and every music store conversation when someone walks in with a reasonable budget and big expectations. The question is whether it actually deserves all that praise — or whether the reputation has outrun the reality. After spending serious time with this guitar, the answer is pretty clear: it earns every word of it.
First Impressions: The Unboxing That Doesn’t Disappoint
Pull a SE Custom 24 out of its box and the first thing you notice is how finished it looks. The maple top carve — a hallmark of the American-made Custom 24 that PRS somehow managed to bring down to this price point — gives the guitar a premium look that has no business being in this bracket. The figured maple veneer sits over a mahogany body, and while it’s not the thick, acoustically resonant carved top you’d find on a Core model, the visual payoff is real. The Faded Blue Smokeburst and Eriza Verde finishes in particular are stunning, the kind of thing that makes you want to hang the guitar on the wall and stare at it between practice sessions. For more, see our Electric Guitar Buying Guide. For more, see our How to Read Guitar Reviews. For more, see our Complete Guide to Electric Guitar Brands.
Flip it over and the mahogany back is clean and well-contoured. The binding on the body edges is tight with no lifting or gaps — something that can’t be said for every guitar at this price. Hardware is chrome throughout, and the PRS-designed SE tuners feel solid right out of the box, which matters more than people give credit for. Nobody wants to spend their first hour with a new guitar doing a full tuner swap.
The Neck: Where PRS Gets It Right
If there’s one thing PRS knows how to do across every price tier, it’s build a neck that feels immediately right. The SE Custom 24 uses a Wide Thin neck profile — 25-inch scale length, rosewood fretboard, 24 frets — and it’s a profile that suits a genuinely wide range of playing styles. It’s not a baseball bat, but it’s not a razor blade either. There’s enough meat behind the hand to feel substantial without fatiguing your fretting hand on long sessions.
The fret work is legitimately impressive for the price. Edges are dressed, ends are smooth, and there’s no sharp fret tang sticking out anywhere. That might sound like table stakes, but spend an afternoon playing guitars in this price range at your local shop and you’ll quickly realize how many manufacturers still ship guitars with cheese-grater fret ends in 2024. PRS consistently doesn’t, and it’s one of the reasons this guitar feels like it costs more than it does.
The 25-inch scale is worth flagging if you’re coming from a Fender. It’s shorter than the 25.5-inch Stratocaster scale but longer than the Gibson 24.75-inch scale, and it gives the guitar a slightly slinkier feel under the fingers without going full baritone-soft. String bends up at the 22nd and 24th frets feel natural, not rubbery. Players who love the upper register — think the kind of melodic lead work that Carlos Santana built a career on, or the searing sustain of David Grissom — will feel right at home here.
The Pickups: SE 85/15 “S” — Better Than You Expect
The SE Custom 24 ships with PRS’s own SE 85/15 “S” humbuckers, and this is where a lot of older reviews of this guitar start to age. For years, the knock on SE guitars was that the pickups were the weak link — functional but flat, fine for practice but swap-worthy the moment you got serious. The current 85/15 “S” pickups change that conversation significantly.
Named after Paul Reed Smith’s goal of achieving 85% treble and 15% bass response, these pickups are voiced to be clear and articulate rather than thick and muddy. In the neck position, there’s a warm, glassy quality that cleans up beautifully when you roll back the guitar’s volume knob. It’s not a PAF-style vintage humbucker — it’s brighter and more modern — but it rewards dynamic playing in a way that cheaper pickups simply don’t. Dig in hard and it pushes. Back off and it opens up.
The bridge pickup has enough bite to cut through a band mix without becoming harsh. Running it into a cranked Fender Blues Junior or the drive channel of a Vox AC15, you get real presence and definition on palm-muted chugging, and the high notes ring out with clarity when you’re soloing. Is it a Seymour Duncan JB or a Bare Knuckle Mule? No. But it doesn’t need to be, and the decision to swap them out immediately upon purchase is much less automatic than it used to be with older SE models.
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The push/pull tone control is a genuinely useful feature. Pull it up and you split both humbuckers to single-coil mode — suddenly you’ve got sparkly, Strat-adjacent sounds available without buying a different guitar. The single-coil tones thin out a little, as they always do with coil splits, but they’re usable in a real context. Running the split neck pickup into a clean amp with some reverb produces the kind of shimmery tone that works beautifully under fingerpicked chord voicings.
Playability and Setup Out of the Box
PRS guitars across all price tiers tend to arrive in better-than-average setup condition, and the SE Custom 24 is no exception. Action is typically comfortable without being so low it buzzes, intonation is close, and the nut slots are cut to an acceptable depth. That said, “acceptable” and “great” aren’t the same thing, and a proper setup from a qualified tech will absolutely improve the playing experience. Budget $40–$60 for a pro setup and you’ll have a guitar that plays like something considerably more expensive.
The PRS tremolo bridge is a two-point vibrato system that stays in tune respectably well for moderate use. You’re not going to pull Jeff Beck-style divebombs and expect it to snap back perfectly every time, but for subtle vibrato swells and slight pitch manipulation, it performs well above its pay grade. The knife edges on the pivot posts are reasonably sharp, and the springs in the back cavity are set up to keep the bridge flush against the body by default, which helps tuning stability considerably.
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Tonal Versatility: Who Is This Guitar Actually For?
One of the SE Custom 24’s most practical selling points is how many different styles it serves without requiring you to change guitars. This isn’t a one-trick instrument.
- Blues and classic rock: The neck pickup through any amp with a touch of drive is warm and expressive. Think the kind of singing sustain you hear on classic Santana records — this guitar was practically designed for that tone.
- Modern rock and hard rock: Bridge pickup with gain responds well. There’s enough output to push an amp into saturation without needing a boost pedal in front of it.
- Country and funk: Coil split the pickups and you’ve got enough twang and quack to pull off convincing single-coil tones, even if they won’t fool a Telecaster player up close.
- Clean and ambient playing: The neck pickup in split mode with reverb and delay is genuinely beautiful for atmospheric playing, chord melody guitar, or ambient textures.
- Studio work: The clarity and note-to-note definition make it a reliable studio guitar. You can hear individual notes in complex chord voicings without things turning to mud.
Players who cite the SE Custom 24 as an influence or tool in their arsenal include working musicians across a wide range of genres — it’s the kind of guitar that touring musicians use as a dependable backup to their American PRS or Gibson instruments, and often find themselves reaching for it as a primary.
Build Quality: How Does It Compare to More Expensive Guitars?
Here’s where honest expectations matter. The SE Custom 24 is made in South Korea and the build quality reflects a level of manufacturing precision that Korean factories have genuinely mastered over the past two decades. The fretwork, binding, and finish quality on current production models regularly exceed what you’d find on American guitars in the $1,000–$1,200 range from competitors who have been slower to invest in their QC processes.
What you don’t get compared to a Core PRS: the acoustic resonance of a properly carved solid mahogany body with a genuine figured maple top, the handwork on binding and inlay, the nitrocellulose or premium poly finish application, or the feel of genuinely premium hardware at every touchpoint. The SE tremolo is good; the Core tremolo is better. The SE tuners are solid; the locking tuners on higher-spec Core models are in another league.
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But here’s the honest truth: at the SE Custom 24’s price point, none of those differences matter in any practical playing sense. You can record an album with this guitar. You can play it on stage every night. You can use it to learn advanced techniques, develop your tone, and grow as a player for years without the instrument being the limiting factor. That’s the real measure of whether a guitar is worth its price.
What Could Be Better?
No honest review omits the complaints. Here’s what the SE Custom 24 doesn’t nail:
- The nut: It’s a synthetic bone nut that works but benefits noticeably from replacement with a quality bone or TUSQ nut. Open string tuning stability improves when you address this.
- The control knobs: They feel slightly plasticky. A minor cosmetic gripe, but noticeable when you’re used to metal speed knobs.
- Heavy guitar: Some mahogany-bodied guitars carry significant weight, and the SE Custom 24 is not the lightest instrument on the wall. Extended gig nights can fatigue your shoulder if you’re sensitive to weight.
- The gig bag: The included gigbag is exactly what you’d expect — thin, minimally padded, not trustworthy for anything other than carrying the guitar from your bedroom to your car. Budget for a real gig bag or case.
The Competition: How Does It Stack Up?
At this price point, the SE Custom 24 competes directly with the Epiphone Les Paul Standard 50s, the Squier Classic Vibe series at the lower end, the Yamaha Pacifica 612, and the Schecter Omen Extreme-6. Each of those guitars has genuine strengths. The Yamaha Pacifica in particular is an underrated competitor with excellent fretwork and a flexible HSS pickup configuration.
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What separates the SE Custom 24 from most of its competitors is the combination of build consistency, neck feel, and visual presentation that PRS delivers across the SE line. The carve top and the PRS headstock shape carry visual DNA from guitars that cost five times as much. It’s not a trivial thing — the guitar you feel proud to own and pull out at rehearsal is the guitar you practice on, and that matters more than spec sheets.
Final Verdict
The PRS SE Custom 24 is not a perfect guitar. No guitar at this price is. But it is consistently excellent in the ways that matter most to a working or developing guitarist: it plays comfortably, it sounds genuinely good through a quality amp, it stays in tune under real playing conditions, and it inspires you to pick it up. The SE 85/15 “S” pickups have closed the gap significantly on the pickup quality issue that used to be a legitimate criticism of SE instruments, and the coil-split feature adds real tonal range without gimmickry.
If you’re a beginner moving up from your first guitar, this is the upgrade that will serve you for years. If you’re an intermediate player who needs a reliable instrument for gigging and recording, this is it. If you’re an experienced player looking for a backup guitar that doesn’t embarrass you on stage — you already know the answer.
The SE Custom 24 doesn’t just beat its price tag. It laps it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the PRS SE Custom 24 worth the money?
Yes, the PRS SE Custom 24 consistently punches above its price point. The build quality, playability, and included SE 85/15 pickups rival guitars costing significantly more. For intermediate to advanced players wanting a versatile, well-made instrument without the Core series price tag, it’s one of the best values available.
What is the difference between the PRS SE Custom 24 and the PRS Core Custom 24?
The Core Custom 24 is made in the USA with higher-grade tonewoods, proprietary 85/15 pickups, and more refined hardware. The SE is manufactured overseas with cost-effective materials but shares the same body shape and layout. The Core costs roughly four to five times more, though the SE closes the gap surprisingly well.
Does the PRS SE Custom 24 need a pickup upgrade?
Not necessarily right away. The stock SE 85/15 S pickups are decent for the price, offering clear highs and solid output. However, many players eventually swap them for higher-end PRS 85/15 or third-party pickups to unlock more dynamics and depth, especially for high-gain or professional recording situations.
What genres is the PRS SE Custom 24 best suited for?
The SE Custom 24 is genuinely versatile. Its coil-splitting push-pull tone control lets it cover clean single-coil tones and full humbucker drive. It handles rock, blues, metal, and even lighter pop or jazz styles comfortably. It’s particularly well-regarded among rock and modern metal players seeking flexibility in one guitar.
How does the PRS SE Custom 24 feel to play compared to other guitars in its price range?
The SE Custom 24 has a notably comfortable wide-thin neck profile and smooth fretwork that feels premium for its class. Compared to similarly priced Epiphone or Schecter models, most players find the SE’s setup, fret finish, and overall playability noticeably better straight from the box with minimal setup required.