PRS Paul Reed Smith Wood Library Custom 24-08 10-Top Guitar, Satin Autumn Sky, Quilt Top, Flame Maple Neck, Ebony Board, Swamp Ash Back

In late 2018, we headed over to the east coast to pay a little visit to our friends over at the Paul Reed Smith factory. While there we hand-selected the tops, backs, necks, fretboards, hardware, etc… basically every single detail of the guitar was precisely calculated for the perfect aesthetics, playability, and tone.

If you were a fan of the PRS 408 or if you ever felt like the Custom 24 needed even more versatility than it already had, then this guitar has your name all over it! PRS’s new Custom 24-08 is a hybrid of the flagship Custom 24 model with some of the pickup combinations offered in the 408 so that you can literally achieve any combination of humbucking and/or single-coil modes out of the 85/15 pickups in this beauty.

The quilt maple top is deep, vibrant, and that finish definitely makes it pop. We picked out this quilt top with nice, wide figuring that is mesmerizing. As if rolling into your gig with that artist package black paisley case isn’t going to get you the attention you want, you’ll be sure to turn heads as soon as you pull this guitar out of the case. Spin it around and check out the flame maple neck, stained to match the rest of the guitar! Before you even plug this in, there’s a lot to look at. We went with the black smoked hardware to give it a bit of a more edgy look compared to a typical PRS.

While they say looks can be deceiving… That’s not the case here. This guitar looks beautiful and has the playability and tone to back that up all day and all night. The combination of the maple neck, ebony fretboard, and swamp ash body is going to make this guitar sound a bit snappier and brighter than one with mahogany and rosewood, for example. The result is a guitar that will never sound muddy and can cut through any mix like a hot knife through room temperature butter. That bit of extra treble is really nice! We usually feel it’s easier to dial back brightness (with the tone knob) than it is to try to add more brightness into a dark sounding guitar. So, without being overly harsh or shrill in the top end, you can notice the difference in these tonewoods compared to a regular Custom 24-08. We think the upgrades in tonewoods here really cements this as the perfect, versatile, swiss army knife PRS guitar. The single-coil tones really sizzle, spank, and twang and the humbucker sounds really cut, growl, and punch.

This guitar features some Artist Package and some Private Stock specs while coming in below the cost of a normal Artist Package 24-08. The hand-selected quilt maple tops, swamp ash bodies, ebony fretboards and flame maple necks (stained to match the top) won’t be found on other CORE Custom 24-08s and help make this a truly special guitar.

We fly all the way across the country several times a year to do this so that we are personally going out there and choosing the very best of the wood selection that PRS has to offer. We pour a lot of passion into each design that we come up with together with the wonderful team over at Paul Reed Smith to come up with instruments that are not only unique and look beautiful, but also sound absolutely phenomenal.

Our in-house guitar tech will inspect, test, set up, and clean all of our instruments on site prior to shipping. All of our instruments are guaranteed to be fully functional upon arrival.

Music Store Live is one of PRS’s top independent dealers and is one of only a select few PRS Signature Dealers. If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, we are more than happy to help you custom order your next Paul Reed Smith instrument. Our PRS experts can help guide you in purchasing a new SE, S2, CORE, Artist Package, or even your very own Private Stock guitar or bass. Message us for details!