I will second the PRS 509 recommendation. It’s like a super flexible Strat with some major humbucker foo. I was blown away by how well it’ll rock and then turn around and sound jazzy or country. It’s a true workhorse.
What is it about the 509 that grabs you over the 513? Playability, tone, or something else? Thanks.
I have a Kiesel w/ push/pull that I use constantly, so probability is very high. Thanks for the insight though.
Good stuff. I dont suppose there are any you can try close by?
I live in a pretty populous area so I might be able to try one.
Cool. Yeah I think maybe the 408 is the model I couldn't think of above that Paul said the 509 was basically a merger of the 513 with that.
Have you played the Nighthawk? I had the Epiphone version for about 5 minutes. Sounded cool, nice tone options, but too physically unbalanced to be comfortable, returned it. No idea if the Gibson has that issue.
No, I haven't played one. I recently started looking and then noticed that PRS had some with the same basic config.
That's one thing I've only seen on one PRS. The original Santana model was difficult to balance when sitting or standing, and I walked away from that model. Every other model I have sits and hangs beautifully.
That was the "decidenator" for me. I'm not one for all the settings that the 513 had. Years ago, when I was doing guitar repair, the owner of the shop built a guitar similar to the 513 and got lots of sounds from it, but I thought too many of them were not what I'd want to use.
I was talking to the factory folks, and the neck and bridge pickups can be damaged by raising the height too much if the wires are pinched against the side of the cavity. The neck pickup on mine seems to have lost output, so it's at PRS currently to have them look at it and figure out what's up. The bridge pickup on mine is definitely not weak sounding though, it'll scream, as did the neck prior to its "illness". So, if you bought yours used, or adjusted the height, there's a chance one of the wires got damaged. I'm really looking forward to getting it back because it definitely can rock out on all pickups.
I bought mine new but definitely tried to adjust pickup height. It didn’t sound broken but given this maybe it can’t be ruled out. It sounded weak compared to say the 85/15s that are my favourite standard size PRS pickups, the 408 bridge and the Bareknuckle Mules I have in my 594.
"Ruth"?
That's what mine was doing too. It worked, and the pickup split switch worked, but it didn't have the output it should have. What confirmed to me there was a problem was when I rolled down the tone control to 0, and the neck pickup's output dropped to nothing even though the volume was at 10, but the other pickups sounded as they should, darker but with a lot of output volume.
I don't seek the eye candy that their maple caps tend to have, but I do want the mahogany body and neck, maple cap, and rosewood fingerboard. That said, this one has grown on me…
Yeah neck dive, bad. At first I thought I could deal with it, but actually no, it was a pita I just didn't need. Too bad, fun guitar otherwise, if a bit of an import cheapie, but that's what it was, so no complaints in that score.
