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Fretboard Workshop – Oct. '15 Ex. 6

This $500 solidbody may look like a no-frills machine, but it’s a rock-solid player with features that elevate it above most guitars in its price category.

A flat-out bargain. Great vibrato system. Excellent fretwork. Fast playability.

Some midrange clutter in the output at wide-open volumes.

$499

PRS SE CE 24 Standard Satin
prsguitars.com

4.5
4.5
5
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PRS makes some of the best affordable electric guitars in the world. They also have a talent for making those instruments look expensive. They achieve this trick thanks to quality control standards and practices that better most companies at the accessible end of the price spectrum. But PRS also built their reputation on immaculately crafted and very exclusive guitars. And once that association is burned into the collective consciousness of the guitar playing public—and you figure out a way to cop high-end design cues in down-market versions—well, you can make an inexpensive guitar seem very expensive, indeed.

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Breaking Benjamin's Keith Wallen

Photo by Courtney Dellafiora

For this month’s question, Breaking Benjamin guitarist Keith Wallen chimes in with reader Benoit Champagne and PG staff on where they’d like to see themselves grow in their musical pursuits.

Question: What’s one area you’d like to improve on in your music?

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Steve Albini in the control room at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

Photo by Kevin Tiongson

Words of wisdom from the legendary engineer, proprietor of Chicago’s Electrical Audio, World Series of Poker champion, and, in the band Shellac, the compass for brutal guitar aesthetics.

“All day every day, we’re grinding it out,” says engineer Steve Albini of his team at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio he built and has run since 1997. “We’re constantly in session, constantly under fire.”

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