GEAR REVIEW
PRS SWAMP ASH SPECIAL UPDATED FOR 2025 | Eric Dahl
KEY FEATURES
• Swamp Ash wood body
• Maple neck
• Rosewood or Maple fretboard available
• Double cutaway body
• Satin Nitrocellulose Lacquer finish
• Hollow birds in flight inlays on fingerboard
• Bolt-on neck
• 22 frets
• 25” scale length
• 1.656” nut width
• PRS Gen 3 patented tremolo
• PRS 58 / 15 pickups and a Narrowfield Humbucker
• 2 x Mini-switch coil taps
• 5-way blade pickup selector
• PRS Phase III locking tuners
• Wing button tuners
• Nickel plated hardware
For the 40 th Anniversary of Paul Reed Smith guitars the company has decided to update a mainstay … the Swamp Ash Special. For review Worship Musician received the PRS Swamp Ash model in Black Doghair Smokeburst finish with a rosewood fretboard. Some of the biggest changes to the Swamp Ash guitar are the addition of a 5-way pickup selector and two-mini toggle switches allowing you to coil tap the neck and bridge pickups. This delivers a total of 12 different pickup combination choices in one instrument. Essentially you can go from a Hum / NF / Hum pickup configuration to triple single coil on the fly. The pickups in this PRS are 58 / 15 LT Bass humbucker in the neck, Narrowfield hum canceling humbucker( sounds like a single with no noise) in the middle, and a
58 / 15 LT treble humbucker in the bridge.
Other factors contributing to a unique sound with the Swamp Ash Special is the use of Swamp Ash wood for the body and top and the bolt-on neck, the first PRS bolt on was launched in 1996. The details set this guitar apart like the Phase III locking tuners that are also opened geared on the back of the headstock. The maple bolt-on neck has a satin finish that feels fast and the rosewood fretboard with birds inlayed is classic PRS.
Plugged into an amplifier it is surprising how many different tonalities you can coax out of this guitar. To my ear the Swamp Ash Special is brighter than most of the PRS guitars I have played or owned over the years, but not in a bad way. The sound of the guitar really cuts thru the mix while not hitting the painful high-end frequencies that make dogs howl. Switching between the pickups in coil-spilt single coil or humbucker mode made a huge difference and the Narrowfield is warm and full just by itself. For a Praise Team musician, the PRS Swamp
64 April 2025 Subscribe for Free...