tjon901 « My first good guitar. »
Published on 05/18/11 at 20:45The PS-900 is a guitar that fits me perfectly. It has a series of attributes that are not found on many guitars. The body features an archtop mahogany body with large beveled cutaways top and bottom. You need those cutaways to reach the 24 frets on the 24.75 scale maple neck. It is unusual for a Les Paul scaled neck to have 24 frets. It has dual humbuckers and a Les Paul style tune-o-matic bridge setup. It has master volume and master tone knobs that are recessed into the body with a 3 way toggle switch pickup selector. The pickup selector is nicely angled so it is very natural to switch pickups when you are playing with the guitar at an angle. It has an angled headstock so it doesnt have to use string trees which may cause tuning problems. On the back of the headstock are Grover tuners with an 18-1 ratio. The gold on the hardware will wear off in places that get touched like on all guitars. The gold on my volume knob has worn off as well as the gold on the tuning keys. After all these years my bridge is pretty tarnished but it does not effect playability. Nowadays people pay more for a guitar that looks like it has been played!
UTILIZATION
With the archtop body it is very comfortable to play. It fits under your arm perfectly. The beveled cutaways make reaching the highest frets easy which is important on a 24 fret neck and even more important when its 24.75 scale. The stock pickups were decent but I swapped mine for a set of Dimarzios a super hot X2N in the bridge and a Tone Zone on the neck for really fat leads. This is the pickup setup that Micheal Romeo from Symphony X uses. I covered the pickups in black EMG style covers for a clean look. I just wish it had an ebony fretboard and bigger frets.
SOUNDS
With the Dimarzio pickups the guitar screams. The mahogany body balances out the high end bite from the X2N and it makes the leads from the Tone Zone pickup even fatter. With the X2N in the bridge the guitar can get noisy when you are playing loudly and sometimes it picks up interference from outside electronics. The magnets in the X2N also are so powerful that it causes some string drag which can lower your sustain a bit.
OVERALL OPINION
Its amazing that you can get such a good guitar for so cheap now. They later on came out with a version that had an ebony fretboard but I have already connected with this one. They recently changed this model. It is now called the Hawker and has a indentation on the end of the guitar near the rear strap peg. I do not think the guitar looks as good now but it is basically the same guitar. If you want a set neck guitar that is more playable than a Les Paul you cant beat this deal.
UTILIZATION
With the archtop body it is very comfortable to play. It fits under your arm perfectly. The beveled cutaways make reaching the highest frets easy which is important on a 24 fret neck and even more important when its 24.75 scale. The stock pickups were decent but I swapped mine for a set of Dimarzios a super hot X2N in the bridge and a Tone Zone on the neck for really fat leads. This is the pickup setup that Micheal Romeo from Symphony X uses. I covered the pickups in black EMG style covers for a clean look. I just wish it had an ebony fretboard and bigger frets.
SOUNDS
With the Dimarzio pickups the guitar screams. The mahogany body balances out the high end bite from the X2N and it makes the leads from the Tone Zone pickup even fatter. With the X2N in the bridge the guitar can get noisy when you are playing loudly and sometimes it picks up interference from outside electronics. The magnets in the X2N also are so powerful that it causes some string drag which can lower your sustain a bit.
OVERALL OPINION
Its amazing that you can get such a good guitar for so cheap now. They later on came out with a version that had an ebony fretboard but I have already connected with this one. They recently changed this model. It is now called the Hawker and has a indentation on the end of the guitar near the rear strap peg. I do not think the guitar looks as good now but it is basically the same guitar. If you want a set neck guitar that is more playable than a Les Paul you cant beat this deal.