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PRS Custom 24

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Electric Guitar

PRS Custom 24

PRS · Custom 24

Price: 18 EUR – 20.475 EUR

Price history 07.09.2026 19.09.2026
Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

Availability: 9/10 (Common)

PRS's founding flagship since 1985: a mahogany body with a carved figured maple top, 24 frets on a 25-inch scale that deliberately splits the difference between Fender and Gibson, and bird-shaped fretboard inlays that trace directly back to Paul Reed Smith's earliest custom-built guitars. The current pair of 85/15 humbuckers is the third distinct pickup era this exact model has gone through since 1988.

Where available? Go to the best price – 18 EUR About this instrument

About the PRS Custom 24

The Custom 24's defining engineering decision is the 25-inch scale length - neither Fender's 25.5 inches nor Gibson's 24.75, but a deliberate middle point Paul Reed Smith chose to combine some of the snap and clarity of a longer scale with some of the easier bending feel of a shorter one. Paired with 24 frets instead of the more common 22, it gives players two extra half-steps of range at the dusty end of the fingerboard that neither classic design offered.

Body construction follows a familiar formula - mahogany back, carved maple top - but the fretboard is where the guitar announces its identity most clearly: rosewood inlaid with PRS's signature bird shapes, a decoration that traces back to guitars Paul Reed Smith hand-built before the company existed. Electronics are built around a five-way rotary switch with coil-tap access rather than a simple blade selector, giving the humbucker-loaded Custom 24 a wider tonal spread - full humbucker warmth at one end, thinner single-coil-like textures at the other - without needing a second guitar.

The current pickups are PRS's own 85/15 humbuckers, in place since 2016. They're the third clearly documented pickup generation this model has carried: Standard Treble & Bass units from 1988 to 1990, then the HFS/Vintage Bass pairing that defined the Custom 24's sound for nearly two decades from 1991 to 2008, before the current 85/15s took over.

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Sound character of the PRS Custom 24

The 85/15 humbucker pair is generally described as clearer and more extended at both ends of the frequency range than the HFS/Vintage Bass set that defined the model through the 1990s and 2000s - more modern and defined, rather than aiming for vintage PAF haze. On the mahogany-and-maple body with a 25-inch scale, the overall voice sits genuinely between Fender snap and Gibson warmth rather than leaning hard toward either, with the moving tremolo bridge contributing real sustain despite not being a fixed stoptail design.

The five-way rotary switch's coil-tap access adds a distinctly different dimension: at the tapped settings the guitar moves toward a thinner, more single-coil-like texture without fully losing output, giving the Custom 24 a wider practical tonal window on one instrument than either a pure humbucker or pure single-coil guitar offers.

Full-bodied Crisp Midrange-forward Resonant

What owners of the PRS Custom 24 say

The recurring owner theme is versatility earned honestly rather than through gimmicks - the coil-tapped 85/15 pickups and 25-inch scale get described repeatedly as making the Custom 24 a credible one-guitar solution across genres, from clean and jangly to properly driven rock and metal tones, without any single character feeling like a compromise.

Weight comes up often enough in owner discussions to be a known consideration rather than a rare complaint: examples vary meaningfully from guitar to guitar, and while most owners land in a comfortable high-7-pound range, a small number report noticeably heavier or lighter instruments from otherwise identical specifications - a function of natural mahogany density variation that PRS doesn't control for on regular production models the way it might on premium Wood Library instruments.

Playability & handling of the PRS Custom 24

PRS itself frames the 25-inch scale as the guitar's central playability argument: enough string tension to keep note definition tight and articulate, without the extra pull of a full 25.5-inch Fender scale that can make bends feel stiffer. Whether the current example ships with a Pattern Regular or Pattern Thin neck varies by year and edition - both appear across current dealer listings - but both are updated descendants of PRS's older Wide Fat and Wide Thin carves respectively, with Pattern Thin measuring a touch fuller than the original Wide Thin it replaced (about 0.83 in. at the first fret rather than 0.81 in.).

The 24-fret rosewood board and 10-inch radius favour fast lead work up the neck, and the extra two frets over a 22-fret Gibson-style board genuinely extend the usable range rather than being a cosmetic difference. Weight is a real variable rather than a fixed spec: forum-reported examples range from an unusually light 6.8 lb Wood Library guitar up to around 9 lb, with most owners describing their Custom 24s as sitting in the high 7-pound range - normal wood-density variation in mahogany rather than anything model-specific.

Recommended accessories & strings for the PRS Custom 24

On the 25-inch scale, .010-.046 is the standard starting set, sitting at the midpoint between typical Fender and Gibson gauges the way the scale length itself does. Because the 85/15 pickups access both humbucker and coil-tapped single-coil-like tones through the five-way rotary switch, this guitar covers a genuinely wide range on a single clean-to-mildly-driven amp channel, reducing how much a player needs to lean on pedals just to access different pickup characters.

The PRS Gen III tremolo is a fully functional vibrato system, so a fresh set of strings and a proper setup (including correctly seated saddles and a balanced spring claw) matters more here than on a fixed-bridge guitar for staying in tune through heavy use. PRS's own locking tuners help on that front regardless of tremolo use.

Technical data for the PRS Custom 24

Type Solid-body electric guitar, double cutaway, glued-in (set) neck, vibrato bridge
Production PRS Guitars, launched 1985 (Stevensville, Maryland, USA)
Body Mahogany back with carved figured maple top
Neck Mahogany, glued in (set neck); Pattern Regular or Pattern Thin carve depending on year/edition
Fingerboard Rosewood, 10 in. radius, bird inlays
Frets / scale 24 frets; 25 in. scale (between Fender's 25.5 in. and Gibson's 24.75 in.)
Nut Approx. 1.6875 in. width
Pickups 2x PRS 85/15 humbuckers (neck + bridge), standard since 2016; earlier eras used Standard Treble & Bass (1988-1990) and HFS/Vintage Bass (1991-2008)
Controls Volume, tone, five-way rotary switch with coil-tap access; passive
Bridge PRS Gen III tremolo (patented vibrato system)
Tuners PRS locking tuners
Weight No official factory figure; documented examples range from approx. 6.8 lb (light Wood Library outlier) to about 9 lb, most owners reporting high-7-pound guitars
Origin note Design descends from custom instruments Paul Reed Smith hand-built in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including guitars for Peter Frampton (first bird inlays) and Carlos Santana (1980, also the origin of PRS's vibrato system)

Price history for the PRS Custom 24

Cheapest seen: 18 EUR  ·  Most expensive seen: 20.475 EUR

20.491 EUR18 EUR 07.09.2026 15.09.202616.09.202618.09.2026 19.09.2026
Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

The history of the PRS Custom 24

The Custom 24's story starts before PRS existed as a company. Paul Reed Smith began building guitars by hand in Annapolis, Maryland in the mid-1970s, working as a repairman and custom builder; his first guitar with the now-signature bird inlays was made for Peter Frampton. The connection that gave the young builder real credibility came in 1980, when he built a custom instrument for Carlos Santana - a development of the earlier "Golden Eagle" design that also marked the origin of what became PRS's vibrato system.

PRS Guitars was formally founded in 1985, and the Custom 24 was the guitar the company introduced the world to at that year's Winter NAMM show - effectively the production distillation of everything Smith had refined during a decade of one-off custom builds. Since then, the model has quietly gone through real spec evolution rather than staying frozen: pickups moved from the original Standard Treble & Bass units (1988-1990) to the HFS/Vintage Bass pairing that carried the model's sound through most of the 1990s and 2000s (1991-2008), and neck-carve naming shifted from the old Wide Fat/Wide Thin terminology to the current Pattern family, with Pattern Regular deliberately referencing PRS's very early necks from the company's original Virginia Avenue workshop.

About PRS as a manufacturer

PRS Guitars was founded by Paul Reed Smith in 1985 and remains headquartered in Stevensville, Maryland, built on the reputation Smith earned in the previous decade as a hand-building custom luthier rather than as an established manufacturer entering the market from outside. That origin as a one-guitar-at-a-time craftsman - visible directly in details like the bird inlays carried over from his earliest custom instruments - has stayed central to how the company frames itself even as it scaled into full factory production and later added the more affordable SE line built overseas.

What distinguishes PRS's philosophy from Fender's and Gibson's is that it never inherited a decades-old, fixed design to preserve - the Custom 24 was designed from a blank sheet in the 1980s specifically to sit between the two established American giants, borrowing scale-length and construction ideas from both while committing to neither. That positioning, more than any single spec, is what the brand has built its identity around for four decades.

Notable players & recordings featuring the PRS Custom 24

Equipboard documents a genuinely long and varied list of professionals using the Custom 24 specifically, including John Mayer, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Jim Root of Slipknot, Gary Moore, Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit, Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson of Linkin Park, and Gustavo Cerati of Soda Stereo - roughly 114 professional artists in total, spanning genres from pop to metal.

One important clarification: Carlos Santana, the artist most central to PRS's founding story, primarily plays his own Santana signature model - a descendant of the 1980 "Golden Eagle"-based custom guitar Paul Reed Smith built for him - rather than the standard Custom 24 itself. His importance to the brand is historical and foundational rather than as a direct Custom 24 endorser.

Related guides

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