2001 PRS Core Standard 22
Showing colour under very bright light
This beauty is virtually mint (1 pinhead sized chip on the underside) and again weighs just under 9LBS. Wide fat neck carve that again feels like it was shaped for my hand alone, everything just feels "right"
The standard 22's mahogany body is stained a extremely dark purple thats almost black until the light hits it and has a perfect finish. The Mahogany neck is fantastic to hold, On the flip side are a set nickel-plated Phase I locking winged tuners, these look really weird to me but once I tried a string swap it was amazing simple to get the string up to pitch quickly while the unbound rosewood fretboard wears eleven beautiflu Abalone / MOP Moon inlays.
Some people don't like the dragon II pickups but I think they sound amazing, sweet to spanky clean, mean to scream...handles gain like nobody's business.. Twist up/down the tone/volume pots and the guitar can go from lead screamer to powerful rhythm in a second. I can get the guitar to go from dark and dirty to bright, smooth and silky depending on what I do with the vol/tone pots. The 5-way pickup selector gives some nice single-coil options, on top of the those excellent HBs, Lots of natural sustain on this beauty, which comes just as much from the quality of woods, design and finish, as from those tasty pickups.
How do I compare them
The McCarty sounds very vintage with its 58/15's, very similar to my 2014 Gibson Les Paul Traditional with 59 tributes in it.
The CE-24 doesn't sound quite as vintage with the HFS/VB pickups but it doesn't sound modern either, very similar to my 2012 Gibson Les Paul Classic Custom with 57 classics in it.
The Standard 22 I feel sounds mid way between the other two, not as vintage as the mcCarty, not as modern as the CE-24.
Settling in with her sisters on the sofa
