CST-24T Emerald Flame : Wow!

I wanted a PRS style guitar, and had seen this in green and thought it looked pretty good. And for £230, it seemed like a good buy - You tubers were giving the CST-24T rave reviews, so I thought I'd try it.

It took a while to get here, as they seem to be quite popular. I think I waited about 7 or 8 weeks for mine.

It arrived, and after a quick setup, a stretch of the strings, reduce the action and check the intonation, it was ready to go. And boy, did it go.

The Roswell pickups are brilliant, although I find the bridge pickup has a little too much treble for my ear, but easily fixed by rolling off the tone knob.

It has all the tones you need for a humbucking guitar, and will easily coil-split if you want them to.

Downsides? There aren't many, especially for the cost; but for my 2p's worth, here are a couple of things I might do with mine:

Change out the tuners. They're pretty good, but the ratio is something like 14:1, which for me means it's sometimes tricky to get the tuning done quickly. May swap them for a set of 18:1 locking tuners.

Change the knobs from the chrome silver ones to black cylindrical ones. I think the silver ones are a bit too much "in your face".

These are just my preference, but you could leave it as stock, and have no downsides at all.

Finally, I have a PRS SE Custom 24, and I compared the two. The difference? About £600. The CST24 stands up very well against the PRS. The PRS, in my opinion is better, but is it £600 better? No, I don't think so.

Combine the CST24 with a Harley Benton Tube15 and you've got a small gig-ready setup that'll give you almost everything you need for under £500. Throw in a couple of pedals, and you're good to go.

If you've read this far, just go buy one. It's a proper guitar for proper guitarists.