Though better known for their glued-in neck models, aPRS bolt-on has actually been around since 1988 when the company introduced their Classic Electric –originally aFenderinspired, alder body/maple neck version of the pricier Custom and Standard. Despite its lower cost, the market didn’t really get the Classic Electric, and, renamed ‘CE’, it slowly became more like the Custom, including a change to amahogany body around 1995. After dropping in and out of production it returned to the USA line in 2016.
In 1996, PRS introduced the Swamp Ash Special, named after its lightweight ash body. It lasted, in various formats, until 2011-12. This year it’s back in the Indonesian-made SE line –and is joined, for the rst time, by an SE version of the CE 24.
Of course, the oh-so Fenderlike Silver Sky has taken PRS’s bolt-on o ering to dizzying heights in the USA Core and SE lines, but the SE Swamp Ash Special (SAS) is quite a di erent proposition: de nitely a PRS, not a Fender with the wrong headstock. The SE SAS sticks more closely to established PRS style, with a 25-inch scale length, the patented version of their classic vibrato and 85/15 ‘S’ humbucking pickups –Indonesian-made versions of the USA pickups. The HSH format is unique to the SE line.
Although weightier than we’d hoped for, the SAS is a superb £ 979 playing platform with its shallow ‘C’ wide-thin pro le neck, with satin back and perfectly installed and polished medium gauge frets on the 10-inch cambered ngerboard. There’s a certain duality to its sounds. In its standard drive mode, the two humbuckers are selected by a Gibson-style three-way toggle: bridge, both, and neck. Pull back the tone control and you get bridge/single-coil, all pickups together, and neck/single-coil. Like that original SAS, this model captures a hot-rod vibe like amodded Strat. The tone is Fender-like, but with humbucking clout giving a strong strident voice at the bridge and a deeper hot-PAF-like voicing at the neck. There’s plenty of indie jangle to be had thanks to PRS’s treble bleed capacitor which helps retain clarity as you lower the volume.
CAP TURES A HOT-ROD V IBE L IKE A MODDED STRAT