PRS Swamp Ash Special 2025 review: “this is the most versatile PRS guitar I’ve ever played”
$2,899/£3,149, prsguitars.com
In an era where the PRS Silver Sky is not just a credible instrument but one of the most popular electric guitars on the planet, it’s easy to forget that there was a time in the mid-90s where the very idea of a bolt-on PRS guitar was regarded by the guitar-buying public as something approaching heresy.
READ MORE: Heritage Custom Shop Core Collection H-555 review: “the best Heritage guitar I’ve ever played”
Because in 1996, the purists held fast to the notion that a PRS guitar was only allowed to have a fixed glued neck, and a 10 Top burst finish. So fast did the PRS faithful hold to that maxim that the first PRS I ever bought happened to be a beautiful guitar with a solid seafoam green that I got for a good price because the store in question was struggling to shift it, because people expected their PRS guitars to have dazzling transparent finishes.
It was into this environment that the original Swamp Ash Special arrived, and it’s safe to say that it didn’t eclipse the more Gibson-informed instruments that PRS had become synonymous with – but in many ways it was just ahead of its time. Here in 2025, PRS quite literally can’t make bolt-on guitars fast enough – time then, to take another look?
Image: Press
PRS Swamp Ash Special 2025 – what is it?
2025 marks 40 years since Paul Reed Smith first started making instruments, and as part of the various celebrations for this milestone, PRS is producing a series of anniversary guitars that pay homage to the company’s most important instruments – the 2025 Swamp Ash Special is one of the first crop.
Like the recipe set down in ’96, this new SAS has a swamp ash body and a bolt-on maple neck – for those who don’t know, swamp ash is a term for a variety of ash woods that were originally found in areas near the Mississippi river in the USA. It’s a heavier and denser wood than many guitar bodies are created from, but it also sounds very different if you push it to the max. It’s also a tonewood with a lot of pedigree – the vast majority of Fender’s early instruments (specifically those made between 1950 and 1956) were made with swamp ash bodies.
Ash is also a wood that is increasingly scarce – various factors including climate change and invasive pests have decimated swamp ash stocks, leading Fender to announce in 2020 that it would be stopping making production guitars using the wood. Thankfully, PRS hasn’t taken such a drastic decision and so swamp ash is still on the menu over in Stevensville.
Also like the 1996 version, this new SAS has a trio of pickups in the classic HSH layout, though in this case we have a pair of 58/15 LT humbuckers flanking a Narrowfield humbucker in the middle position instead of a traditional single-coil.
The Narrowfield is an interesting PRS innovation – first introduced back in 2010, the concept has been enjoying something of a renaissance with the brand since it was reintroduced in 2021. Like a regular humbucker, the Narrowfield has two coils, but in a much smaller footprint – the idea being that it gives you the tone of a single-coil pickup with the fullness and hum-cancelling properties of a humbucker.
In practice, the Narrowfield is its own thing, sounding somewhere between a P-90 and a mini-humbucker – it also plays well with other pickups, pedals and loud amps.
To take advantage of this, PRS has specced the 2025 SAS with a five-way blade pickup selector (a first for this model) and then augmented that with a pair of coil-tap switches on the full-size humbuckers. It all adds up to a massive 12 different pickup combinations.
Image: Press
PRS Swamp Ash Special 2025 – build quality and playability
There’s no escaping the price tag at the top of this review – when you’re talking about a guitar that’s going to cost you very nearly three grand, expectations are always going to be high. But at the same time, this isn’t a Custom Shop guitar, this is a Core line instrument that goes up against Gibson’s Standard line and the top end of Fender’s USA production range.
It’s a fact I have to remind myself of as I take the SAS for a spin – because if you’d have told me this was a Custom Shop-level guitar I wouldn’t have blinked twice, such is the level of fit and finishing on show here. It’s also reflected in the little upgrades to previous Swamp Ash Special guitars that I’ve played, most notably the new Phase III locking tuners (with very cool cream buttons) and the PRS Patented Tremolo. You can feel it as you run your hand over the immaculately applied nitro finish, which is high gloss on the wonderfully carved violin top, and satin on the neck, where playability is a dream. There’s a rosewood-board version available, but I’m checking out the maple-necked offering that PRS claims offers “an added touch of brightness”. The carve on the Pattern regular neck is chunky and reminiscent of a 50s ‘baseball bat’ (27/32″ at the nut, 59/64″ at the 12th) but it’s still very comfortable and not in any way tiring to play for extended periods.
Image: Press
PRS Swamp Ash Special 2025 – sounds
I was a big fan of the original PRS Swamp Ash guitar because it pushed the boundaries and offered a different sound and feel than your typical Paul Reed Smith guitar. Plugging in the 2025 version it certainly fulfils the brief on the sound front – in fact you could say that it doesn’t sound like a ‘traditional’ PRS guitar in many of the myriad pickup configurations.
You could argue that you don’t ‘need’ 12 pickup sounds in one guitar, and while it can be a little overwhelming at first, it doesn’t take long for you to get to grips with the way the mini toggles and five-way switch play together. Once you do, you really do get to see the benefit of it – if you are filling multiple roles in a band and taking two or three guitars to a gig, it’s not hard to see how you could just take the Swamp Ash Special and cover pretty much all your bases.
There are some very enjoyable strident, compelling clean tones to be found here, which deliver middle frequency chime with balanced bass and treble aplenty, but this is a guitar that is begging to be driven. The moment you add any sort of drive or dirt to the package the guitar is unleashed like a snarling dog – in a good way. This grittiness – especially when you bring in the Narrowfield middle pickup – is actually quite a unique and compelling tonality, especially as it seems to only get better the more you push it and add dirt to the package. You can grab your more traditional sounds here of course, but really the fun here is had when you let this thing get gritty and dirty.
Image: Press
PRS Swamp Ash Special 2025 – should I buy one?
The Swamp Ash Special was a controversial guitar in 1996, but here in 2025 it’s still a very unique entry into the PRS canon – it’s a chameleon in the way that it can cover pretty much any musical base with its switching options, but also has a tonality that sets it apart front he more ‘traditional’ instruments in Smith’s musical history.
In some ways, it’s a guitar that’s better suited to today’s less silo’d musical environment – it’s a guitar that you could legitimately take to any gig and cover pretty much all the bases with aplomb. It’s not exaggerating to say that this is the most versatile PRS guitar I’ve ever played. You can sit for hours playing the PRS Swamp Ash Special and keep finding usable sound combinations that work for different songs, and it’s never really a hassle or a stress to dial in a great sound – you could easily make it ‘your’ sound if you wanted to as well.
It must be said, it’s not the lightest guitar around, and that’s probably my only real issue – it’s something that’s pretty common with modern swamp ash instruments as stocks are getting harder to source however, and I certainly wouldn’t trade the sounds and fun on offer here for a lighter instrument.
Okay, it’s nearly three grand for a bolt–-on instrument, but you’re getting so much versatility and quality here for that money – it’s very much a ‘sell all your guitars and buy this one’ equation if you want it to be. It’s more than worth the price of admission.
PRS Swamp Ash Special 2025 – alternatives
We’re in rarefied air at this price point, so there are options aplenty on hand from a huge number of brands. In PRS’s own stable, the USA Silver Sky ($2,749) is a modern phenomenon if you want your bolt-on to hew more closely to the Fender recipe. Fender’s American Ultra II Stratocaster HSS ($2,249) offers a more versatile take on the classic Strat recipe with a bunch of player-centric features, while if your sound veers more to the Gibson side, the Les Paul Standard 60s ($2,799) is a fine option.
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