Paul Reed Smith P22 Piezo Review

Ive been waiting for the P22 for a long time. I have a 20th anniversary 24 but the thought of blending the bright attack of the piezo with the smooth sustain of the prs sound was irresistible.

Plugging the piezo into an acoustic brand acoustic amp sounded better than I hoped for! The brightness of it was different than any acoustic ive heard plugged in. Its tonally beautiful in its own way.

I was hoping that this guitar would satisfy my desire to get a Taylor acoustic but it really isnt an acoustic guitar replacement... its more of a super ultra deluxe tone machine. I did not know just how versatile this guitar would be tonally and Im still in the experimentation stage but to give an overview...

The p22 has 2 1/4 jack outputs.

1st) Piezo / Mix output. With this ouput used, you have the ability to use a 3 toggle switch to select between Piezo only, mix of both, humbucking pickups.

The knob closest to the bottom strap nut is a piezo / pickup mix knob. This gives you the flexibility to find a great mix between whichever pickup configuration you have selected via the 5 switch pickups and the piezo pickup.

I plugged this into my Tech21 trademark 60. My default configuration is designed to give a very smooth clean sound with boosted highs. Guitar volume at 70%, 1 away from neck pickup. (Treble slug coil and bass single coil)

With this configuration using the mix set so i could just hear the attack of the piezo barely... it was gorgeous.

Driven, in the lead channel of the amp, treble pickup selected, full volume on guitar with a slight piezo mix was _droooooool_ goodness. That attack does some really cool stuff to the attack.

Im hallucinating here... but for all you guys that drop tuning... Having a slight piezo thrown into the mix for your attack would be the tits!

All in all, the PRS without the piezo used sounds fricking great, of course. If youve ever heard a PRS dialed into an amp then you know what I mean... Its just beautiful.

It doesnt take much adjustment of settings to fit that piezo mix in there. You just have to hear it to know what I mean. I like it...

2nd) Piezo only.

I have, in my home studio, a ProjectMIX I/O interface and Focusrite pre-amps running logic studio. I have not tried the focusrite pre-amp with the p22 yet... Probably going to do it when i get home from work but going directly into the projectmix I/O was disappointing.

Piezo only AND mix direct into the front line input (input 1) was very disappointing. This was not the tone I fell in love with in guitar centers acoustic room on an acoustic amp. However, I feel like I can get back to that tone direct in... I just need a little more time with it. (Obviously the acoustic amp has some eq / compression / effects on it to bring out the bright sound)

I also have a Sonus i2b instrument/pitch to MIDI monophonic translator. I spent most of my time when i got the P22 home with the peizo pickup triggering MIDI and playing sax through Kontakt.

The piezo pickup is _FANTASTIC_ for triggering this device... Better than my nylon, better than my 20th anniversary PRS, better than my acoustic direct in.

Conclusions:

Im still working out the kinks getting that piezo tone to sound as bright as I heard it on an acoustic amp going direct in.

Mix piezo with standard pickups and youve got something really interesting and new.

Just my initial thoughts after dropping 3.5 big ones. Hope it helps.