Ask a room full of guitarists to name a famous PRS player, and you’ll get the same five answers within about thirty seconds: Carlos Santana, Mark Tremonti, John Mayer, Orianthi, David Grissom. Every one of those names is real, every one of those artists genuinely plays Paul Reed Smith guitars, and every one of them has been publicly tied to the brand for decades. There’s just one problem. Almost none of them built their reputation on the guitar that actually built PRS’s reputation — the Custom 24.
Santana has his own body shape entirely. Tremonti’s signature model descends from the McCarty, not the Custom 24. Mayer’s defining PRS moment happened on a hollowbody Private Stock instrument before he left for Fender altogether. Grissom’s story runs through a modified McCarty and eventually his own DGT. Only one of the five — Orianthi — has a documented, direct line back to a personalized Custom 24. It’s the guitar-world equivalent of naming five famous Corvette owners and discovering four of them actually drive a Camaro.
None of that makes the Custom 24 any less important. If anything, it makes the real story better: PRS’s flagship, the guitar that put the company on the map at its very first NAMM show in 1985, was built into a legend by a different cast entirely — jazz-fusion virtuosos, arena rock guitarists, and the architects of two of the biggest-selling rock albums of the 2000s. This is the guitar that didn’t need a single signature name to become iconic. It became iconic because thousands of working guitarists picked one up and never looked back.
1985: The Guitar That Started a Company
Before there was a PRS Guitars factory, there was just Paul Reed Smith, a luthier building instruments one at a time out of a workshop, trying to convince skeptical professional musicians that a guy nobody had heard of could build something worth their money. He had already made custom instruments for players like Al Di Meola, Ted Nugent, and Howard Leese of Heart, developing a reputation among a small circle of working musicians years before the company existed. Those early hand-built guitars — mahogany bodies, carved maple tops, distinctive bird inlays — were the direct ancestors of what came next.
In 1985, Smith brought a production version of that design to his first Winter NAMM show. It was simply called the PRS Custom at the time; the “24” wasn’t added to the name until the mid-1990s, when PRS introduced a 22-fret sibling and needed a way to tell the two apart. The Custom 24 became PRS’s flagship instrument almost immediately, and more than forty years later, it’s still the model most closely associated with the brand — the guitar Paul Reed Smith himself calls the one that “started it all.”
What made it different in 1985 wasn’t any single spec. It was the combination: a carved maple top like a Gibson, a bolt-free set neck, 24 frets instead of Gibson’s traditional 22, a scale length that split the difference between Fender and Gibson standards, and a locking vibrato system built for players who actually used a whammy bar. It looked like nothing else on the market, and it played like nothing else too — which is exactly why the touring musicians who found it early stuck with it for the rest of their careers.
PRS Custom 24 — Full Specifications
Anatomy of the Flagship: Why the Custom 24 Sounds Like Nothing Else
The Custom 24’s tone is a direct result of PRS refusing to simply copy either of the two guitars that dominated the market in 1985. The mahogany back gives it the warmth and sustain associated with Gibson-style solidbodies, while the carved maple top adds top-end snap and definition — the classic “maple cap on mahogany” recipe that’s produced great-sounding guitars for seventy years. But the 25″ scale length is a genuinely PRS decision: shorter than a Fender’s 25.5″, longer than a Gibson’s 24.75″, it aims for a middle ground with tighter string tension than a Les Paul but a rounder attack than a Strat.
The 24-fret neck was also a deliberate departure. Most Gibson-style guitars stopped at 22 frets, in part because Ted McCarty’s original Les Paul and SG designs simply didn’t need more. Smith’s decision to push to 24 gave players two extra frets of range — a genuinely useful upgrade for anyone playing lead lines that climbed past the traditional ceiling, and one reason fusion and shred players gravitated to the design early.
Electronically, the guitar has evolved more than its silhouette has. Early Custom 24s shipped with various PRS humbucker designs before the 85/15 pickups — voiced for 85% treble response and 15% bass response, hence the name — became the standard for years, prized for clarity without harshness. Recent Core models have shifted to PRS’s newer DMO pickups, chasing an even wider, more vocal tonal range. What’s stayed constant is the 5-way blade switch wired for coil-splitting, which turns a guitar that could easily have been a one-trick humbucker machine into something that can cover single-coil quack, half-out tones, and full humbucker push in the same song.
Famous Players: The Five Names Everyone Cites — And the One That Actually Checks Out
This is where the Custom 24 story gets genuinely interesting, because the spreadsheet answer and the accurate answer diverge sharply.
Carlos Santana is, without question, PRS’s most important artist relationship — Paul Reed Smith has said Santana’s early endorsement helped legitimize the entire company. But the guitar Santana plays isn’t a Custom 24. His signature Santana model has its own body shape closer to a Les Paul Special, a shorter 24.5″ scale length, and a design history that runs back to the pre-production instruments Smith was hand-building in the late 1970s — years before the Custom 24 existed as a production model. Santana’s PRS lineage is real. It’s just a parallel lineage, not the Custom 24’s.
Mark Tremonti has been one of PRS’s most visible rock ambassadors since the Creed era, but his story with the brand starts with a McCarty model that PRS sent him on tour, and his eventual signature guitar — the singlecut Mark Tremonti Signature — is explicitly built on the singlecut PRS Custom platform, not the double-cutaway Custom 24. It’s a cousin, not the guitar itself.
John Mayer’s most publicized PRS instrument was a Private Stock Super Eagle, a semi-hollow model built for him years before his very public switch to Fender’s Silver Sky. The Custom 24 barely enters his story at all.
David Grissom bought his first PRS in 1985 — the same year the Custom 24 debuted — and did spend time on an early 24-fret PRS Standard. But the guitar that defined his sound was a modified McCarty he played for over a decade, which eventually became the basis for his own DGT signature model in 2007. The Custom 24 was a starting point in his story, not the destination.
Which leaves Orianthi — the one name on the list with a genuine, well-documented Custom 24 connection. Her Private Stock signature model is literally built from a personalized Custom 24 that PRS’s Private Stock team made for her in 2017 as a backup instrument; it proved so popular with fans that PRS turned it into a limited-edition production model. Unlike the other four names, Orianthi’s PRS story runs straight through the Custom 24 platform, bird inlays, 24-fret neck, five-way switching and all — just dressed up with her own Lotus Vine inlay and a custom “Blooming Lotus Glow” finish. One out of five isn’t a great batting average for a spreadsheet, but it’s not nothing either.
The Guitarists Who Actually Made the Custom 24 Famous
If the household names mostly played other PRS models, who actually built the Custom 24’s reputation? A different — and in some ways more interesting — cast of characters.
Al Di Meola and Ted Nugent were among the guitar’s earliest adopters, both playing PRS instruments in the years right around the Custom 24’s 1985 launch. Di Meola in particular helped put PRS on the map, becoming one of the first artists to feature the guitar on a magazine cover — a huge deal for a brand that, at the time, had no track record at all. Between Di Meola’s fusion virtuosity and Nugent’s arena-rock excess, the Custom 24 was proving from day one that it could cover wildly different musical ground.
Alex Lifeson of Rush picked up PRS guitars in 1990 and stuck with them for decades, using them alongside his other instruments through some of Rush’s most technically demanding material — a strong vote of confidence from a guitarist not exactly known for settling on gear that couldn’t keep up with him.
Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth brought the Custom 24 into progressive death metal, using it alongside a Custom 22 to build the intricate, genre-blending sound that made Opeth one of extreme metal’s most respected acts. It’s a genuinely unusual pairing — a guitar originally voiced for fusion clarity, doing double duty as the backbone of some of the heaviest riffing in modern metal — and it says a lot about how far the Custom 24’s tonal range actually stretches.
Perhaps the biggest commercial showcase for the Custom 24 came from Linkin Park. Both Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson built the guitar walls of the band’s 2000 debut Hybrid Theory — one of the best-selling albums of the era — using Custom 24s, CE 24s, and CU 22s run through Mesa Boogie Rectifiers. Mike Einziger of Incubus was doing similar work in the same scene, helping define what a PRS through a high-gain rectifier amp could sound like in nu-metal’s biggest years. None of these guitarists have their names on a PRS signature model. All of them sold more Custom 24s through sheer visibility than most signature artists ever could.
And at the jazz-fusion end of the spectrum, John McLaughlin — a genre pioneer whose playing helped define what fusion guitar could sound like — has used Custom 24s for intricate, harmonically dense playing that pushes the guitar’s clarity and sustain to their limits, a direct continuation of the same fusion lineage that connected Paul Reed Smith to Al Di Meola in the first place.
Tone Recipes: Four Ways to Set Up a Custom 24
Fusion clarity (McLaughlin/Di Meola style): Bridge and neck pickup together (position 3), volume and tone near full, into a clean-to-moderately-driven tube amp. Push the coil-tap for extra articulation on fast single-note runs — the 85/15 or DMO pickups stay clear even with heavy compression.
Arena rock lead (Lifeson style): Bridge humbucker, tone rolled back slightly for warmth, moderate gain with a touch of delay. The 25″ scale and 24-fret neck make wide bends and high-register lead lines feel natural rather than cramped.
Nu-metal wall of sound (Linkin Park/Incubus style): Bridge humbucker straight into a high-gain rectifier-style amp, gain and presence pushed hard, minimal midrange scoop. Layer two guitars slightly detuned for the classic early-2000s density.
Progressive death metal (Åkerfeldt style): Split coil-tap for cleaner verse passages, full humbucker mode for palm-muted riffing, tight low end from the mahogany body holding up even at extended-range tunings the guitar wasn’t originally designed around.
PRS Custom 24 vs. the Alternatives
The Custom 24 occupies a genuinely unusual space in the market: it’s a set-neck, carved-top guitar competing partly against the Gibson Les Paul Standard on tone and construction, but with a scale length, fret count, and tremolo system that put it closer to the versatility of a Fender Stratocaster or a Fender Telecaster on playability. Compared to a Les Paul, the Custom 24 is lighter, has a flatter fretboard radius, and offers single-coil-adjacent tones through its coil-tap that a Les Paul simply can’t produce without pickup swaps. Compared to a Strat or Tele, it trades some of that snap and spank for thicker sustain and a fatter low end — a genuine middle ground rather than a compromise.
Within PRS’s own catalog, the closest comparison is the McCarty — the guitar that actually shaped Tremonti’s and Grissom’s sound. Where the Custom 24 leans bright and versatile with 24 frets and a thinner body, the McCarty is voiced warmer and more vintage, with 22 frets and a thicker body that trades a little top-end reach for extra low-mid punch. Players choosing between the two are really choosing between “modern all-rounder” and “vintage-voiced workhorse.”
Buying Guide: Which Custom 24 Is Right for You?
PRS builds the Custom 24 across three main tiers, and the differences go well beyond price:
SE Custom 24 (roughly $750–$900): Built overseas, but sharing the same body shape, scale length, and general electronics layout as the USA models. The SE 85/15 “S” pickups have improved significantly in recent years and are genuinely usable for gigging and recording, not just practice. This is the entry point most working musicians actually recommend to beginners and intermediate players who want the real PRS feel without the Core price tag.
S2 Custom 24 (roughly $1,800–$2,100): Built in Maryland alongside the Core line but with a simplified construction process and bolt-on-adjacent manufacturing shortcuts that keep costs down. It uses genuine USA-wound 85/15 pickups and delivers most of the flagship’s tonal character at a fraction of the price — the sweet spot for players who’ve outgrown an SE but aren’t ready for Core money.
Core Custom 24 (roughly $4,000–$4,700): The full USA-made flagship, with premium figured maple tops available up through the eye-catching “10 Top” grade, a wider choice of neck carves, and the current DMO or 85/15 pickup sets. This is also where PRS’s Wood Library program lives, offering exotic tonewood combinations for players chasing something genuinely one-of-a-kind.
On the used market, older Custom 24s from the 1990s and early 2000s — sometimes labeled simply “PRS Custom” before the naming split — can be excellent values, though buyers should confirm original hardware and finish condition carefully, since well-maintained vintage examples have appreciated over the past decade.
Practical Ownership Notes
The Gen III tremolo is genuinely one of the best-performing licensed vibrato systems on the market, but like any trem-equipped guitar, string changes should be done one string at a time to avoid throwing the bridge out of balance. The locking tuners make setup faster once you’re used to them. The coil-tap function is a real workhorse feature rather than a gimmick — spend time exploring positions 2 and 4 on the five-way switch, since many players buy a Custom 24 for the humbucker tones and never discover the single-coil voices hiding in the switching. At 7.5 to 7.7 lbs, it’s noticeably lighter than most Les Pauls, a genuine relief on long gigs. PRS’s stock 10-46 string gauge suits the 25″ scale well, though players chasing extra low-end punch for detuned styles often step up slightly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the PRS Custom 24 a good guitar for beginners?
The Core USA model is priced for intermediate to advanced players, but the SE Custom 24 delivers the same body shape, scale length, and general playing feel at a genuinely beginner-friendly price, making it a common recommendation for players who want to grow into a PRS sound.
What’s the difference between the Custom 24 and the Custom 22?
Beyond the fret count, the Custom 22 has a slightly different neck joint position and a marginally different tonal balance due to where the neck pickup sits relative to the shorter fretboard. Many players choose based on whether they need the extra two frets of range.
Why doesn’t Carlos Santana play a Custom 24 if he’s PRS’s most famous artist?
Santana’s relationship with Paul Reed Smith predates the Custom 24’s 1985 launch by several years, and his signature model developed along its own design path — a different body shape and shorter scale length — rather than being based on the Custom 24 platform.
Can the Custom 24 handle metal and high-gain styles?
Yes — Mikael Åkerfeldt’s use of the Custom 24 in Opeth, along with its widespread use in early-2000s nu-metal by bands like Linkin Park and Incubus, demonstrates the guitar’s range well beyond its fusion and blues-rock origins.
What pickups come stock on a current Custom 24?
Recent Core models use PRS’s DMO (“Dynamic, Musical, Open”) pickups, while many existing Custom 24s in circulation — and the SE and S2 lines — use the 85/15 design that defined the guitar’s tone for years.