There were other considerations involved however. The guy I traded with was the original owner of the SG and recently expressed an interest in either outright buying it back or trading something else for it back. He's a friend, so I wanted to do it as a favor.
The truth is that I hardly ever played the Gibson SG. I've recorded with it once and gigged with it only once. Several things bothered me about it, namely, it had a pretty significant neck dive, the ends of the frets were sharp, and the tone was very dark (very odd considering that the pickups are Burstbucker 1 and 2, which I consider bright humbuckers). I could have filed the fret ends, and put 1 meg pots in the thing, but I never got around to it. Honestly, I think I resented having to do something like that on a USA Gibson.
So when the offer of the PRS SE ONE was put on the table I was intrigued and went ahead with the swap. My friend has his guitar back, I've got something new to play with, and I'm not going to miss the Gibson SG. When I have an SG hankering my Harley Benton S-600 VI (SG Custom) more than scratches that itch.
The PRS SE ONE has an serial number beginning with "H", which indicates that it's from the first year this model was made, which was 2007. Some people seem to think this was the best production year. I have no idea if this is true, but it's reasonable to assume that PRS would want to impress coming out of the gate with a new model.
It had what I believe were 12s on it and it was set up for slide in open tuning. It was literally unplayable by me. On went a set of 9s.
After adjusting the bridge and truss rod I quickly came to the conclusion that the nut slots were too high. Out came the files, and in ten minutes I had that corrected.
The single volume knob didn't turn to my liking, so I swapped it with the kind you'd see on a Gibson LP Junior. Much better feel to my fingers.
The pickup measured over 9 K resistance and sounded really good. Very strong and clear, but raunchy at the same time, but maybe just a tad too bright. I read online about guys putting different pots value pots in, or using combination volume/tone pot, and even adding a separate tone pot altogether. But I had recently got some rough cast A2 magnets from [mention]mozz[/mention] and suspected that they might roll of the highs just enough and give the pup a nice midrange hump. Now I have no scientifically verifiable way to know that the magnets that were already in there were A5, though they were definitely ALNiCo, they were shorter than the A2s, they sounded like A5s (pronounced highs, moderately tight lows, kinda scooped), and from my observation it seems like most import guitars, if they have ALNiCo bar magnets, are specified as A5. So I assumed they were A5.
The rough cast A2 magnets made a tremendous difference for the better. The clarity, output, and raunch were still there, but all the harshness was gone. This is a bad ass little guitar. Kinda reminds me of the simplicity of the Kramer Baretta.
So does anybody else here have a PRS SE ONE? What do you think of it? Any modifications?
A nice PRS soft case was included.
