PRS SE DGT Gold Top

Na 5 maanden wachten eindelijk mijn exemplaar ontvangen. Hij ziet er zeer mooi uit en is qua SE lijn denk ik zo'n beetje het beste dat PRS heeft te bieden. Ik vind de vollere hals fijner aanvoelen dan de pattern neck, die veel platter is. De jumbo frets zijn even wennen, maar geven wel goede sustain en zorgen dat bends makkelijk gaan. De sound is erg goed en alle standen incl coil tap zijn zeer bruikbaar. Met de volume knop kun je ook nog veel verschil maken, zonder dat het dof wordt of dynamiek verliest.
Qua afstelling is het niet zo goed als de meeste Koreaanse SE gitaren die ik heb gehad; nut is niet voor alle snaren goed ingevijld bijvoorbeeld en de fretranden hadden net iets mooier afgewerkt kunnen worden (je voelt ze een klein beetje). En de mijne heeft 1 te hoge fret (de 2e fret), dat zijn we van PRS niet gewend. Gewicht is lekker licht (3,5kg), waardoor de gitaar heel resonant is.
Na goede setup is deze gitaar dus te gek.

I wanted a guitar that does the LP thing but with better playability and comfort (for me at least because I don't like the single cut body and the raised bridge position of typical LPs). The DGT SE comes very close and I am overall very satisfied.

The fit & finish is impressive, no flaws whatsoever and the hardware is of good quality (nothing crazy but more than acceptable). It came set up perfectly, I've never seen such a good set up on a brand new guitar. The nut is cut correctly, the frets are level and so is the bridge which is set as floating and is very stable. The pickups are very warm but clear. Playability wise it's very comfortable, the strings (10 - 46) have a slinky feel and bends are easy. The frets look like medium jumbo to me, with good crowning and are well polished. Depending on your right hand position the top volume pot might get in the way but it's nowhere near as bad as a Strat. I don't like the knobs they are kind of slippery.

Now the negative: the soldering job was atrocious! The grounding points on the back of the pots were just big solder blobs one of which came off the pot when I pushed it with the tip of a screwdriver. The tone capacitor hadn't been soldered on one end so the tone pot didn't work. One of the resistors that pull the first coil of the humbucker to ground when pulling the tone pot was also not soldered properly so the split function of the neck pickup was intermittent. I had to resolder everything, honestly this is the worst I've seen. If I didn't know how to fix it I would certainly return the guitar. It's baffling how they are able to build such a nice instrument and do the most horrible job on the electrics and how this even passed inspection!

4 out of 5 stars because I fixed it myself and the rest of the guitar is really good. Otherwise I would give a much lower rating just because it was practically useless out of the box.