Lauren Bateman introduces and demonstrates her new PRS SE Hollowbody 2 Piezo guitar, emphasizing its dual magnetic and piezo pickups that allow blended acoustic and electric tones. She explains the controls (magnetic master volume, magnetic tone, piezo volume), shows the two output jacks and the ability to run the magnetic and piezo outputs to separate amplifiers simultaneously, and reacts enthusiastically to these features as an acoustic-focused player.
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Hey, guitar enthusiasts. I am so excited to share my brand new guitar with you today. I have been wanting a hollow body guitar for a long time. So I'm mostly an acoustic guitar player. That's why you usually see me on my tailor. You'll see me on my crafter. I've mostly been an acoustic guitar player. I do have my Ibanez that I also love. But I've always really wanted a true hollow body electric. And strangely enough, Paul Reed Smith reached out to me. Thank you, Paul Reed Smith. And they said, you know, we were watching your videos, we really like your tailor. It's a beautiful guitar. But would you consider trying out a prs? And I said, well, absolutely. I said, but you know, in full transparency, as you know, my channel is mostly an acoustic guitar channel. So what would you recommend? So what they did is they recommended this guitar here, which is the se hollow body 2 piezo model. And the reason they suggested that is because of the piezo pickup, which can bring a little bit more of acoustic tonality to your playing. I didn't even know that you could do this. I didn't even know that this was was possible. And when I got this guitar, I plugged it in and I was playing it and then I realized there's actually two different output jacks. I'd never seen that on an electric guitar. I know this technology has probably been around for a while, but again, I'm not like an electric guit guitar nerd. I'm just an acoustic guitar person. I don't know all the tech stuff. So I wanted to share this with you because I think this is like. I'm like a kid in a candy shop. Because this is one of probably like the coolest things I've discovered recently with guitars and music since sliced bread. So if you've known about this for years, I'm sorry, I'm just finding it out now and I want to share it with you. But first, let's start off with the guitar. So the cool thing with this guitar is it has two different outputs, as I mentioned. And I'll lift here for you to see. So you can see I have one cable plugged into one output and then there is another output. Now, right now I'm plugged into the mix output. So the output that is closest to the strap button here is a fully magnetic output. That's for these two pickups here. The electric guitar, what you would consider the typical electric guitar pickups. All right. And if I turn that up, I'm going to leave the Piezo off. So there's three knobs here. Why don't we go through that since I'm talking about it? So this front knob here, this is the master volume for the magnetic output. So for if you're playing electric guitar, you want your electric guitar sound. This is the volume for that. On the bottom is the tone knob. All right. For that magnetic pickup. And then back here, the volume for the piezo pickup. So you have these two pickups here, your bridge and your neck pickup. In this bridge is this piezo element that supposedly picks up the vibration of the string, just like an acoustic guitar would, so that you can have more of an acoustic tonality. So this guitar actually has a battery input like you would see on an acoustic guitar that has an in, you know, an output to it. So you can have a battery in this. And. And that's important to know, because then you're not going to want to leave your guitar plugged in because it's going to draw on that battery pack. But if I just play through this electric pickup, I'm just going to turn the master volume forward, give you some volume here. All right. And I'm just playing. I'm on the. The neck pickup here.
Just nice, like, clean overall tone. I'm going to turn that down so that no volume coming out. And I'm going to turn up the piezo pickup now.
So it has a little bit more of an acoustic y feel to it.
All right. And this is the cool thing. You can have both if you want. All right. I'm going to turn both on now.
So you can kind of have this mix of acoustic and electric sound coming out of your guitar, which is super cool. I've never done that before. I was like, oh, my God. I didn't know you could do this. This is so cool. So again, so here it is. That's just the magnetic output. Gonna roll in some acoustic, and then I'm gonna roll out the electric.
Okay. It's cool. So you get. You kind of can get all these different tones and sounds out of the guitar, which I think is super cool. But that's not the only cool thing about this that I learned you can actually plug. Because there's two outputs, you can plug this into two separate amps. This is crazy. I've never done this before with a guitar. Let me show you. I'm going to take a pause. I'm going to plug in another input here, and I'll be right back. Here we go. So I'm going to lift up my guitar Boom. You see, there's two. There's two cables coming out of my guitar. Now. Why is this cool? Because when we play electric guitar, sometimes we might want to play with a little bit of distortion, right? So I'm going to roll back the piezo here. I'm just going to do all electric.
Okay. And I'm not even on like super, super high gain. This is more of like a metal.
Okay. So you kind of got a little bit more of that grunge, a little bit more of that gain that you like on an electric. But what you can do now is I can roll off the electric and I roll on my acoustic and I got my clean.
Isn't that so cool? I just think that's the coolest thing in the world and that's not it. But wait, but wait, there's more. Okay, there's. Wait, there's more. You can actually have both of them going at the same time. So I've got. I basically just got a Fender champion on the top here and then an offender acoustic sonic on the bottom. So I have an acoustic amp, an electric guitar amp, and I'm going to roll this back in now.
So now I've got both this acoustic and electric amp playing at the same time, which I think is so cool. I. Again, I'm mostly an acoustic guitar player. So this is like, this is mind blowing for me that you can have a guitar that actually rolls out to two different amps and can create two different sounds at the same time. Now I could. I could keep this, you know, electric tone clean.
But now I'm going to roll it back on to with the distortion.
And you can hear. I can turn that right off if I don't want it.
I'm going to roll it back in.
Just hear that. You can just roll that in and out, which I think is so cool. And it's great because, you know, the plus of this, the plus side is this. You can get that acoustic tonality out of an electric guitar, which, you know. Again, is it a full acoustic sound? I think that's. That's still up for debate, but it sounds really good and really close and I would definitely play that. And I could use that through an acoustic amp and be perfectly fine with it. With the electric, though, because these are electric guitar strings, obviously. I work with a lot of older beginners who love an acoustic sound, but the thing with the acoustic is, in general, it is harder to play. Okay. Because the. The strings are thicker on an electric guitar, the strings are a little bit thinner. So you know, playing bar chords is much easier on an acoustic or sorry, on an electric guitar versus acoustic and you require a little bit more hand strength to play an acoustic versus an electric. So I think it's just super cool that you can get both of those sounds from the same guitar. And, and I was doing some research on this and I. And this is technology that's been out there, you know, for a while I think in more of, of PRS's higher end models. So this is a slightly more affordable, affordable model. At the time of this video, I feel like this guitar retails for. I think it sells for like maybe 1500, $1600. Super, super cool guitar. Beautiful. I always think of, of Paul Reed Smith because their guitars are so beautiful and this is, it's. They really like works of art and it sounds great, but I just think it's a really great option particularly for people in my audience who want more of that acoustic sense sound but want the ease of playing an electric guitar. This is a great option. Like I said, this is the Se Hollow Body 2 piezo model you want. They do have a regular Se Hollow Body 2. You want to make sure it is the piezo model if you want that mix where you can do electric and acoustic and have those two distinct volume knobs for the acoustic tone versus the more electric tone. I hope you love this demo. And if you're looking for more tips on what to look for in a guitar, especially if you're a beginner, go check out this video right over there where I'm going to tell you what the most important feature is in a guitar that you are buying.
