reviews

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
5

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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The octave fuzz section from the Atreides Weirding Module gets its own star turn in a buzzing bruiser that can be absurd and beautiful.

Unusually flexible and sustain-rich octave fuzz. Fat, rubbery synth-like sounds. White-hot fuzz. Versatile tone and fuzz and sub octave levels.

Can’t entirely remove fuzz or octave signal.

$169

Way Huge Stone Burner
jimdunlop.com

5
4.5
4.5
4.5

Way Huge’s Atreides Weirding Module is one of Jeorge Tripps’ great gifts to the world. It’s a gift that keeps giving, too. The Attack Vector phaser and envelope was its first offspring. But the newest, the Stone Burner Sub Atomic octave fuzz is a killer, maybe the coolest, and probably the most practical pedal from the Atreides family. It’s an unusually useful and forgiving octave fuzz that will generate up to two sub octaves, which feature more or less prominently depending on the sub level.

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An extroverted and beautiful version of BilT’s most affordable model showcases the guitar’s core strengths and the company’s knack for creative onboard electronics.

Ultra playable. Great pickups. Superb build quality. Cool style. Collaborative design options.

Expensive as tested.

$3,200 street as tested, $1,799 for base model.

5
4.5
5
3

The folks at BilT guitars and I share a lot of design influences and affinities, so I might be a little prejudiced. But I can’t think of many small builders who bring more fun to the non-major manufacturer market than BilT. They are reverent about quality and customer collaboration, but often irreverent about mixing, matching, and deviating from the forms, shapes, colors, and details that inspired their core models. Take a quick look at the company’s gallery and you’ll see mutant variations on Fender, Ampeg, and Rickenbacker themes, sparkle paint, Fender Antigua-style finishes mixed up with Gibson Trini Lopez details, and pickup combinations of every conceivable stripe.

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