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PRS’s new SE NF3 is a “whole new ball game” for the company
It bears striking similarity to the John Mayer Silver Sky, but features a trio of humbucker-style Narrowfield DD ‘S’ pickups in place of single coils.
Credit: PRS Guitars
PRS has launched the SE NF3, an Indonesian-made model which looks an awful lot like the brand’s classic John Mayer Silver Sky, but with some notable tweaks.
The most notable, of course, is a set of three humbucker-style Narrowfield DD ‘S’ pickups, in place of the trio of single coils found on the Silver Sky.
These pickups position themselves as sort of the midway point between humbuckers and single coils, delivering a single-coil-style tone but with no hum or excess noise. Controls include a master volume pot, two tone knobs, and a five-way selector switch.
Elsewhere, the guitar features a poplar body and a slab-sawn bolt-on maple neck with a Wide Thin profile. The guitar comes fitted with either a rosewood or maple fingerboard – which depends on the finish of the guitar – as well as 22 medium jumbo frets and PRS’s classic Bird inlays.
“We started the development of the NF3 “S” pickup with the NF 53, so it has been an ongoing project for a while,” says Jack Higginbotham, COO of PRS Guitars.
“What has amazed us all is the way we are furthering the art of “reverse engineering” our own concepts and achieving success in tone inside the SE Series.
“Beyond the pickups, this guitar harkens back almost 35 years to our original EG, which I was deeply involved in. The neck and the neck body assembly were born of the SE Silver Sky originally and refined with the SE CE and Swamp Ash Special. So, in a way, it is a brand new guitar that is built on ideas spanning decades and reaching to the very cutting edge of our current engineering and design philosophies.”
Adds bev Bev Fowler, PRS Director of Artist and Community Relations: “We recently took the PRS SE NF3 down to our Nashville Artist Showroom with the PRS DGT 15 amplifier – what a pairing! Artists were raving about the NF3’s versatility, and we watched as they down-tuned, played slide, and got great clean blues tone all out of the same guitar. It was an inspiring day for everyone.”
The PRS SE NF3 comes in four finishes – Ice Blue Metallic, Gun Metal Grey, Metallic Orange and Pearl White – and also comes fitted with a six-point tremolo bridge.
Price-wise, the guitar clocks in at a perfectly respectable $799. For more information, head to PRS Guitars.