PRS Special SE Semi-Hollow Demo Clean&Wet [jdAdamson.com]

Описание: JD explores the sounds and setting on his new PRS Special SE with middle narrow-field pickup and 2 splitable humbuckers. It's an amazing sounding guitar, and plays like a dream after being set-up by Sweetwater while installing the bone-nut option. Much more, and than music at jdAdamson.com, where everything's still free.

These are some observations. The Fender Stratocaster, or Strat' as it's called, has a characteristic sound distinct from dual-humbucker guitar pickup designs like the Gibson Les Paul and PRS and many others utilize that is usually attributed to its use of (3) Single Coil pickups (though some models have an HSS configuration, where the bridge pickup is a humbucker (selected in switch position 1) that can be split into a single coil (switch position 2). However, many humbucker pickups can be split into single coil configurations too - by, for example, pulling out on a volume or tone control knob, or throwing a toggle switch - but these split humbucker configurations have their own characteristics that do not sound like a Strat'. If the tonal difference was merely due to the pickups, a split humbucker would sound much like the Fender single coil pickup, but the guitars do not sound the same.

I just got the PRS SE Special Semi-hollow body guitar which has a dual splitable humbucker design with a "Special" 3rd central 'near-field' smaller humbucker configured to sound like a single coil pickup (but without hum). In the split-humbucker configuration (done via 2 toggle switches) the PRS SE Special Semi-hollow has a tone that sounds very much like my Strat's tone (a 2023 American "Ultra Luxe" model, with the S1 switch to separately add in the neck pickup to switch positions 1 and 2). I think this similarity is due not only to the combination of the single-coil pickup split and the central near-field pickup, but more importantly due to the semi-hollow body design of the PRS.

The essence of the tone of the semi-hollow body design comes from isolating the pickups (largely) from the vibrations induced in the guitar body by the vibrating strings during play. In normal solid body electric guitars, the strings attach to the top of the body, and the string vibrations induce vibrations in the body that in turn vibrate the attached pickups, altering the tonal waveform of the pure string vibration through the pickup's magnetic field. In other words, the strings vibrate through the pickup's magnetic field to produce the audio signal that gets amplified, and if the pickup moves due to the string vibrations being transmitted to the guitar top and body to which the pickups are attached, the net audio signal is different, since the magnetic field is vibrating when interacting with the string vibrations, than if the pickup remained still - where then only the string vibrations produce the audio signal.

Some semi-hollow body designs anchor the strings to the base of the guitar, and the semi-hollow body does not transmit these vibrations to the top or pickups (very much), giving this design its characteristic (some say "more pure") sound. (Interestingly, it is Not the acoustics of the semi-hollow body that color the electric guitar tone, which is a function of the pickups whose signals get amplified, not the internal guitar acoustics which are not amplified and cannot ordinarily be heard over the amplified sound.) Other semi-hollow body designs anchor the strings through the guitar to the back, which similarly isolates the pickups attached to the top from the induced string vibrations through the (semi-) hollow body (which is how the PRS is made).

The Strat's design has the electronics and pickups beneath a large cover on the guitar body top, and the strings thread through the guitar body and anchor to a mechanism attached to the back, just as in the PRS Special Semi-Hollow. Thus the Strat's design is very similar to a semi-hollow body design, largely isolating the pickups from the string vibrations. The tone of the PRS with the split-coils and middle near-field pickups is quite similar to that of the Strat', in my view due to the semi-hollow body design of the PRS, which also can emulate HSS and SSH pickup configurations, along with the traditional dual-humbucker H-H or S-S combinations.