SE: The Affordable PRS

It’s been 18 years since the first ‘offshore’ SE was introduced to the PRS range. Making guitars in Asia, however, hasn’t always been as straightforward as it might seem…

- Dave Burrluck

The Student Edition was originally a slab-body, no-maple zone because Paul Reed Smith believed those features would impact on the sales of USA models, yet the range’s latest is the closest so far to a ‘copy’ of PRS’s core models.

“It’s a fine-line process,” states Jack Higginbotham, PRS COO (and prime mover behind both the SE and S2 lines), diplomatically. “It started with the new headstock logo [originally seen on the 2017 SE models]. I wanted to say we’re the same company. We’re not a different company, so I wanted the Paul Reed Smith logo with the SE as a suffix. But, you have to be careful not to get too close.

“Yet the other side of that line is that if you make an excellent guitar that’s an inspirational instrument and allow a new guitar player, or a new-to-PRS guitar player, to experience what we’re about, then I believe they’ll be more inclined to become part of our family. I don’t think that’s worth a lot of risk, but it is worth a lot of effort. It’s about inspiring the player and I think you can do that without compromising the business.”

Historically, Paul has been very protective of many hallmarks of the PRS design. It took until 2005 before an SE with a flat maple top, faced with a figured maple veneer, was allowed. Slowly, a thicker maple top with a camber around the edges became the favoured style, but the SE Paul’s Guitar takes it closer to the core.