“A supremely versatile platform that blurs the line between solidbody and semi”: The PRS 40th Anniversary Special Semi-Hollow Limited Edition is $6,990, impossibly beautiful, and they’re only making 280 of them – but here’s why we want one

With new releases coming virtually every month, 2025 was a very busy celebratory year for PRS Guitars.

Alongside additions to the standard Core, Bolt-On, S2 and SE ranges, we’ve seen six specific 40th Anniversary Limited Editions of which we understand this latest Special Semi-Hollow is the seventh and final piece.

At the time of writing, it’s the ninth Semi-Hollow PRS offers (five of which are three-pickup Specials), alongside five full Hollowbody models. Clearly, there’s something in the air.

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The Core-level Special Semi-Hollow is the base platform for this limited edition electric guitar of just 280 pieces. The primary difference is the wood choice. The mahogany back and neck of that model are swapped for black limba, the darker streaked wood we also know as korina or white limba.

Colour aside, it’s the same tree species, and PRS has already featured it on the CE 24-08 Black Limba Limited Edition this year. There’s no change in the top wood, but this figured maple is what PRS calls ‘Artist grade’, and the striping is quite fine and remarkably even, the contrast in the grain accentuated by the Yellow Tiger colour of the top (Whale Blue is the other option).

The fingerboard and headstock facing remains rosewood, but here’s it’s Honduran, which is becoming quite a well-used back and sides wood for many higher-end acoustic makers.

Visually, it’s quite different from the darker, more evenly coloured Indian rosewood used on the standard Core model, with a lighter mid-brown colouration and a vivid darker figure – a stormy ‘sky’ for the ‘old-school’ outlined bird inlays.

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The McCarty III humbuckers are a 40th-year introduction (a long time coming but worth the wait), and the switching system and dual ‘coil tap’ switches provide 12 sounds.

But that’s underplaying what we have here: the volume and tone controls colour the voices we hear, and even ‘well-behaved Patent Applied For pickups’ doesn’t do the Alnico II ’buckers justice.

As with the standard model, the misnamed ‘coil tap’ switches engage PRS’s partial coil-splits, which primarily voice the slug coils of each humbucker with very little volume drop compared to the humbucking voice.

This model might be a relatively late addition in PRS’s 40 years, but it’s a supremely versatile platform that blurs the line between solidbody and semi.

• Find out more at PRS Guitars.
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