PRS SE Santana Review

By: Dr. Matt Warnock

After finishing my time alone with the new models debuting at the Experience PRS 2010 event, I was getting ready to leave when I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned, I saw PRS Product Manager J. Hayes holding out a bright-red PRS SE-Santana, which he was just handed himself from the product team. I sat down and plugged it into a PRS “30” amp, and once I started to play I found myself caught up in the tone and playability of this little, red guitar.

Since most of my gigs fall into the jazz realm, I always feel a bit like a kid in a candy store when I get a chance to jam on a guitar with a whammy bar, something that would get me axed fairly quickly if I attempted it on a gig during “Autumn Leaves.” While I don’t have a ton of experience with the Whammy bar, I found I could get some very interesting sounds out of the Santana without much effort. Though I did get a bit frustrated that the strings would slip flat when I banged on the bar, mostly because the strings were minutes old, the tuning started to settle in a matter of minutes and by the end of my time with the axe they stayed in place no matter what I did with the bar.

I really liked the middle toggle position on this guitar. It gave a thin tone, but thin in a Chuck Berry sort of way, not in a bad way at all. As soon as I switched from the neck position to the middle I found myself digging in on “Johnny B. Goode,” “Maybelline” and other Berry classics as the sound was driving me in that direction. On the other end of the coin, the neck pickup is very warm, which one would expect from a guitar with Santana’s name on it. For the price that they’re asking, this guitar goes a long way in delivering a wide range of tonal options, something that players who slip between styles will no doubt enjoy.

Though I’m more of a McCarty guy, and was also drawn to the ME Quatro that I played earlier in the day, this guitar seemed to provide the most bang for its buck of all the new PRS guitars released during Experience PRS 2010. Not that the other guitars are overpriced, but when I found out how much they were asking for the SE Santana I did a double take, I figured a guitar of this quality would be 2 or 3 times that price.

If you’re looking to check out a versatile instrument that’s not going to break the bank, then mosey on over to your local PRS dealer and check out the SE Santana. There’s nothing like getting expensive tone from a guitar that didn’t bust your piggy bank to buy.

Click to Check Out GI’s Full Coverage of Experience PRS 2010

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