As someone who isn't particularly into either Gibsons or PRSs, what's different about a PRS set neck that makes them harder to do?
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Good question.
The gibson style set neck is a tenon joint; the fretboard is wider than the joint itself, and the heel is also wider than the joint, so the joint is covered on all sides. So if you have a bit of a rough edge on the body's top because of chipout; who cares! The fretboard and heel cover it up!
The PRS set neck is more difficult; it's a neck just as tall as gibson's, but wider, and longer ("long neck tenon" lenght, but it's not really a tenon joint). That means that it's way easier to mess up the joint. You can accidentally mess up the body top, or the sides of the neck blank (make them tapered instead of plum and square, for example).
My neck joints are totally different than fender's or PRS. It's got the relative shallow depth of Fender but the length and width of PRS.
To throw some specs in the group.
Fender is 16mm deep 56mm wide 76mm long.
PRS is closer to 110 to 120mm long, 56mm (ish) wide, and 35 or so tall
Mine is 19mm tall, 120mm long, 57mm wide. I have 2x the volume and surface area of a Fender, which makes my bolt on necks way more stable. But that's indeed the issue with Fender's bolt on, and bolt on in general: to make the bolt on clean, neat, tight, is difficult. CNC's can do it now, but to do it with templates by hand, is hard. My neck template is 0.2mm oversized, so when I route the neck blank (without fretboard) I sand the side so it fits the neck pocket. Then I glue the fretboard (which has binding installed already). it's easier that way.
