We guitarists can get pretty low. (Should I tell the story about the time I played a pizza parlor in Willimantic, Connecticut?) But starting in the ’90s, blooming re-interest in the baritone guitar made that an emotionally healthier proposition. By the time we were rolling into the oughts, it seemed like everybody—from Korn to Dave Matthews—had baris in their hands.
Baritones produce heavy, dark, dreamy, twangy tones and have done so since the late 1950s when Duane Eddy grabbed a Dano example and cut “Rebel Walk”—with the Beach Boys (“Dance, Dance, Dance”), spaghetti western soundtrack genius Ennio Morricone, and Glenn Campbell (“Wichita Lineman”) on his tail. The current baritone guitar renaissance sparked in the late 1980s, when metal outfits like Cannibal Corpse and Carcass, and alt-rockers like Soundgarden and Deftones, began using them to add growl, depth, and mystery to their arsenals of tone.
Baris Conquer the World
Today, baritone guitars are no longer novel. Open the door to almost any bar, arena, or studio and there’s a good chance you’ll see one being brandished—especially by club bands covering modern metal hit-makers, from Metallica to Staind. And that’s where PRS entered the game. Although the Maryland-based guitar maker had built custom one-offs for several artists before, in 2008 it began production of the Mike Mushok SE Baritone, a signature model bearing the name of Staind’s lead guitarist. It had a solid mahogany slab body and humbuckers. When that guitar’s run ended in 2014, PRS wanted to continue with baritones, of course, and the result is the humbucker-rigged SE 277 and its cousin, the semihollow SE 277, which comes with soapbar single-coils. Both guitars have a 27.7” neck scale length, providing the instrument with its designation.
PRS chose the 27.7” scale for the popular B-to-B baritone tuning (B-E–A–D–F#–B), leaving C-based tuning and other lower tunings to instruments with longer scales. B-to-B and the 27.7” scale is welcoming to guitarists who have little experience with baritones, since the string size—the SE 277 came gauged .014–.068—and tension isn’t radically different, and it’s easy to do the math with the usual chord shapes and positions.
Ratings
Pros:
Versatile low-output humbuckers. Easy to play. Comfortable weight. High-quality build.
Cons:
Pricier than some baritones.
Tones:
Playability:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$749
Paul Reed Smith SE 277 Baritone
prsguitars.com
Lover, and a Biter
While the Mushok model was a rock machine, the SE 277 can do that and more in all three of its pickup settings. Running through a Fender DeVille, a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier with an Eminence 50-watt speaker cab, and a custom-built Sandora 18-watter with an Eminence 50, the test model—a tobacco sunburst-finished solidbody—was superbly versatile and cut crisply through sonic mayhem with its bridge pickup.
This do-it-all bari adapted to effects, from radical modulation to demonic overdrive, like a hero, but stayed warm and smooth when plugged straight into the clean-set amps. New-generation, lower-output PRS Tone Furnace humbuckers, which are especially nurturing to mids, made the SE 277 more versatile than the company’s earlier production-model baritone. Players outside of the heavy rock realm took to requesting those guitars with a coil tap, with a default setting wired to single-coil. A tone pot had to be pulled up to activate humbucking mode. But the SE 277 is a humbucking six-string for all seasons, and its standard three-way selector switch and single tone pot unleash a bevy of sounds.
The Usual, Please
The build of any instrument from Paul Reed Smith hits a high bar for quality and playability, and the SE 277 falls right in line. Its 22 frets are smooth and comfortable for fast runs and bending, and beautifully tapered to the edges of the neck, which PRS describes as “wide fat,” but has a classic, smooth-tapered late ’60s Gibson feel with a bit more broadness to the fretboard at it approaches the guitar’s maple-top-and-mahogany-back body. The SE 277 wears comfortably around the human neck—not too heavy, at less than 7 pounds—and the guitar’s maple neck with rosewood top balances well, avoiding the downward tilt of some baritones. PRS’s usual bird inlays decorated the test model’s fretboard, and the tuners were sturdy and easy to turn. The guitar arrived nearly in tune in a gig bag tucked inside a cardboard shipping box, and stayed that way even when I insisted on playing in open-D and E derived tunings. (Slide baritone, anyone?)
The Verdict
Try as I might, I couldn’t find a dang thing wrong or even slightly unsatisfying with the PRS SE 277. It’s comfortable, fun, and easy to play; has a wide range of versatile, simple-to-control tones; and proved a gleeful partner in sonic mayhem as well as a suave traditionalist. And hey, it’s really nice looking, too. The SE 277 is more expensive than some common baritone model guitars at a $749 street price, but there’s a lot of quality, versatility and charm—sonic and otherwise—attached to that sticker.
Watch the Review Demo:
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediater Lesson Overview: • Learn different ways to arrange scales. • Combine various sequences to create more intersting lines. • Solidify your technique by practicing unusual groupings of notes. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
Neutrik’s Timbre plug, made for toggling between capacitors.
Let’s begin with some typical additional capacitance values that certain lengths of cable (or capacitors) can bring to your system:
• 10’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 3 meters) -> 1 nF
• 15’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 4.5 meters) -> 1.5 nF
• 20’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 6 meters) -> 2.2 nF
• 30’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 9 meters) -> 3.3 nF
• Ritchie Blackmore-style, ultra-long vintage coiled cable -> 4.7 nF
I listed standard values here, so you should have no problem getting caps to match them in any local electronics store or online; the type of cap doesn’t really matter and will mostly be dominated by size, but I’ll share more about this in a minute.
Let’s quickly summarize the first installment of this column from last month’s issue: From a technical point of view, added capacitance shifts down the resonance frequency of the pickups, so they sound fatter, especially when using overdrive. This is exactly the reason why a lot of distortion and fuzz boxes with a vintage voicing use an additional cap at the input section; the resulting overdriven tone is fat and warm.
This month’s mod, which involves adding a capacitor to your signal, works best with vintage-flavored single-coil pickups (approximately 2.4 H inductance) or a typical old-school PAF-style pickup (approximately 3.8 H inductance). Modern high-output pickups are often sporting inductances of 6 H to 8 H, and don’t sound very good with this mod—when adding more cable capacitance to such pickups, the result is a dull and wooly tone without any clearness and definition. If you want to make your single-coil guitar sound more Les Paul-ish, you should try a 4.7n capacitor. It will shift the resonance frequency of your single-coil pickups down to the typical PAF ballpark, making for a very cool and usable old-fashioned guitar tone. It might feel a little muffled when playing clean, but ultra fat and punchy when using overdrive! In general, values higher than 4.7n are not recommended.
We have two options for where to install our cap.
On the Guitar Cable
This is the easiest location to add additional capacitance to your system, with several mod options:
1. The lightest mod ever isn’t a mod at all—it’s to simply buy a vintage guitar cable and plug it in whenever you need it! I don’t know of any company that offers modern guitar cables with intentionally high capacitance.
2. The Neutrik company offers a special angled plug, called the Timbre Plug, that you can solder to any guitar cable of your choice. The plug has a 4-way rotary knob on top to toggle between different capacitors. In addition to a bypass setting, the plug offers capacitances of 1nF, 2.2nF, and 3.3nF, letting you simulate different cable lengths on the fly.
3. You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable. You simply open one of the plugs to solder the cap between the hot and ground—that’s it. Small, 2.5 mm contact spacing ceramic caps are easy to put into a standard plug and are your weapon of choice here. It’s essential to only add the additional cap to one of the two plugs, but it doesn’t matter if you plug this side into your guitar, an effect, or your amp. This method allows you to build yourself some cables that simulate their older, longer relatives.
You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable.
Photo courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
Inside the Guitar
You can also add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument. If you’re looking for added capacitance with all your guitars, you’d be better off choosing one of the techniques mentioned above.
1. The easiest way is to solder your additional capacitor directly to your volume pot; this way it has a fixed value that can’t be changed and is always engaged. This operation is very simple to do, and you can use regular-sized caps for this.
You can add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
2. If you want to make the cap switchable, such that you can run it either bypassed or engaged, you can install a SPST mini toggle switch or use half of a push-pull or push-push pot, which usually sport a DPDT switch underneath.
This drawing shows how to make your additional cap switchable.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
3. If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, your weapon of choice is a rotary switch, setting up a kind of Gibson Varitone wiring without the inductor. Because we are switching capacitances, it is essential to run an additional 10 meg resistor in parallel to each of the caps, and to use a make-before-break, not a break-before-make, rotary switch to prevent loud popping noises when using the switch while your guitar is plugged into an amp. Leave the first lug of the rotary switch open for the bypass position without an additional cap.
If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, use a rotary switch.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
4. If you want to make this mod even more flexible, you can add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system. The pot should have the same resistance as your volume pot, and should be wired to your volume pot. This way, for example, you can add a 3.3nF or 4.7nF cap to the extra pot, and dial in as much cable capacitance as you like.
You can also add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
On the Pedalboard
The idea of putting a rotary switch or cable-simulator-pot solution into an external unit to create a kind of extra-capacitance stompbox to use with all of your instruments is just around the corner, and yes, it’s possible! However, I don’t recommend this, because it’s physically located after the volume pot in the guitar, which means less volume (no unity gain) and less high end. But don’t worry: If you are looking for a pedalboard solution to simulate different cable lengths (which, as we defined earlier, means to shift the resonance frequency of the pickups), there are some active solutions on the market offering such a feature, usually in combination with a boost or buffer functionality. To name just a few, you should look into the Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster, Stellartone Micro Pedal, or the i2e Audio AG1.0 The PURR. Along with some other brands, these pedals will do the trick, and they’re not difficult to build if you are looking for a DIY solution.
So far, I’ve received several emails from readers asking for some more DIY guitar tools, so next month, we will look into some sustainable and environmentally friendly DIY guitar helpers—all of which you can build yourself easily by upcycling things you already have at home. Stay tuned!
Until then... keep on modding!
