It's Time For A PRS Thread

Yargnad said:
Ouch, can you tell us more. Not excactly sure what you're referring to, but I'm guessing you were less than impressed. I've always thought of him as a cool dude...is that not the case?
Click to expand...
Here is a thread on it - short story - he is a jerk

My Encounter with Paul Reed Smith & Brian Ewald

I went to a seminar / meet and greet tonight at the Music Zoo in Roslyn NY. I will start with pics and video. Then I have a story, which has me feeling; odd - bad - weird? Here are some pics The performance with Brian Ewald, who can really play! Paul and I Paul signed my family pic
www.thetonerooms.com
 
RVA said:
Here is a thread on it - short story - he is a jerk

My Encounter with Paul Reed Smith & Brian Ewald

I went to a seminar / meet and greet tonight at the Music Zoo in Roslyn NY. I will start with pics and video. Then I have a story, which has me feeling; odd - bad - weird? Here are some pics The performance with Brian Ewald, who can really play! Paul and I Paul signed my family pic
www.thetonerooms.com
Click to expand...


I have to admit though that would have no baring on me buying one of his guitars. He builds good guitars, and I am not one to look up to people, people disappoint . So I would buy one of his guitars if I tried one out and liked it, I would buy it..
 
Session 5 said:
I have to admit though that would have no baring on me buying one of his guitars. He builds good guitars, and I am not one to look up to people, people disappoint . So I would buy one of his guitars if I tried one out and liked it, I would buy it..
Click to expand...
Same here. Mine are not going anywhere, and I would certainly buy another...used!!
 
eclecticsynergy said:
Kinda surprised that a title search didn't turn up a whole bunch of them.

I'm a big fan of the PRS neck profiles; they feel great in my hand. Their ranges of tones & other features all combine to make them some of my favorite guitars. IMO the line definitely deserves its place alongside Gibson & Fender. And, while Fender & Gibson have been known to falter sometimes in terms of quality, PRS seems to have been able to maintain consistently high build quality. Even the import SE line, while not the equal of the core models, is pretty great at the price and eminently upgradeable.

So, here's my longtime #1, Midnight Angel. The first PRS I ever bought, and still a favorite more than thirty years later. Amazingly lively - the early production guitars were still using wood that Paul had hand-selected one piece at a time using his notorious rubber hammer. The guys at the supplier reportedly though he was half crazy, but the proof of the wood is in the finished products. I've never played a guitar from those first couple of years that wasn't stellar.

Coupla years ago I wrote a post to the thread "How did you first learn about PRS" on the PRS Forum, about the day this guitar found me - link is here.

I used to feel it was corny (or at best, vain and egotistical) for players to name their guitars. But after I encountered this guitar I changed my tune. She has so much personality that it became obvious that she deserved a name. Within a year or so, all my guitars had names to suit their character. I don't feel funny about it anymore, and as I often say, it helps me differentiate between them for models that I have a number of, like Les Pauls and Strats. And PRSs.

Midnight Angel - not fancy to look at, but man, does she sing!
View attachment 40803

coupla late 80s/early 90s action shots, back when she was still new
View attachment 40804

View attachment 40805
Click to expand...

I met Paul about 1976 in Virginia. He cut out my L6-S into a double cutaway, at my special request.
He charged like $350 to do it.
At that time he only carved guitars by hand one at a time in USA. There was no mass production.
He was making custom doublenecks for a band called: "Happy the Man." These were pretty cool guitars as I recall.
I also know that dude who conceived the machine made PRS guitars.
It wasn't Paul's idea to mass produce guitars.
This guy basically designed the machinery to do it, and talked Paul into it.
Anyway check out Happy the Man, who played Paul's hand carved guitars at the early time. The guitar player is Stanley Wittiker..only met him once I think.
You will see guitar players were really into the Mark Schultz pick scrape back then...it was really wild cutting edge radical.
Back then, Mark Schultz was the guitar player of the year.

These were pretty cool guitars.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: RVA
RVA said:
What pickups did you swap in? Did you dislike the DGT pups?
Click to expand...
Previous owner swapped them out for custom winds. I asked about the originals but he'd already sold 'em. These sound pretty darn good but they aren't four-wire so the coil splitting is disabled. I'd like to have pull-splits again so I'm thinking about moving them to another guitar.

DGT pickups do come up for sale occasionally, and I keep an eye out on Reverb. They're rare enough that they bring very high prices though.

I have a loose 59/09, a great vintage output bridge pickup which might work quite well in this axe. I could put brushed covers on it and on the neck pickup from a Dragon One set (I have two sets of those that I don't use - awesome at gain but the bridges don't clean up as sweetly as I like). That would make the guitar all PRS again, and restore the appearance, even if not fully original. Plus it would give me coil splitting again.

But here's the thing. Double cream is mighty unusual in a PRS and I've grown to like the look.

So I'm also considering Duncans - I have several of those in cream. Jazz neck should be great for this guitar, bright, great at gain and it splits well. I like a neck humbucker that's a little bit chimey when you roll it back - the Jazz does that nicely (EDIT - especially with a treble bleed like PRSs have). For bridge pickups in double cream I have two choices available. One is a JB, the other is a Custom. Both hotter than I really want in this case.

I could put an A3 mag into the Custom, said to be a good combo with reduced bass and far less output overall. The Custom takes mag swaps well, but I've never tried an A3 in one. I have a Custom 5 and an A2 CustomCustom, plus a Custom 8. Some feel the A3, weakest in the alnico family, doesn't do well in a robust wind and is best used in vintage winds like Gibson's Custombucker or Duncan's Amos Bonamassa humbuckers, both of which are low wind A3 PAFs. Others feel the Custom wind fills out the A3's thinner character nicely, albeit with lower output. The only way to judge for myself is to try it.

The other option would be to have the JB rewound in the Duncan custom shop. Their "78" model is a hot A2 PAF that looks to be in a similar ballpark to the Grissom bridge - crisp, vintage-plus output, and extremely responsive. I'm not a big fan of JBs (classic rock tone but again, cleanup issues) and had intended to sell it. But rewinding is an attractive option - you can't get double cream Duncans anymore and that'd be a way to keep it and put it to good use. Unfortunately the custom shop is closed for the duration so I'd have to wait.

I'm leaning toward the rewind anyway, though. I'd love to put that 59/09 into my Anniversary Custom; I really feel as if it belongs there.

For now, the ones in the DGT are adequate, though the neck is a tad wooly, even set fairly far from the strings.
 
Last edited:
Amp Mad Scientist said:
I met Paul about 1976 in Virginia. He cut out my L6-S into a double cutaway, at my special request.
He charged like $350 to do it.
At that time he only carved guitars by hand one at a time in USA. There was no mass production.
He was making custom doublenecks for a band called: "Happy the Man." These were pretty cool guitars as I recall.
I also know that dude who conceived the machine made PRS guitars.
It wasn't Paul's idea to mass produce guitars.
This guy basically designed the machinery to do it, and talked Paul into it.
Anyway check out Happy the Man, who played Paul's hand carved guitars at the early time. The guitar player is Stanley Wittiker..only met him once I think.
You will see guitar players were really into the Mark Schultz pick scrape back then...it was really wild cutting edge radical.
Back then, Mark Schultz was the guitar player of the year.

These were pretty cool guitars.
Click to expand...
I used to like Happy The Man back in the day - still have one of the records somewhere in my vinyl stacks I think.
 
I have only one PRS. It’s a PRS SE Chris Robertson signature. I just put strings on it, and shined it up a bit today...it was a beautiful day to do it outside. I finally took a crappy picture of it in natural light...
F1E3AC82-03F8-48DB-90F7-27A5E1DD6A98.jpeg
 
I purchased a Crate Vintage Club 20 from him...thinking of going down to fire it up and plug the PRS in to it.
 
I did something similar before I realized you did it too!

I'm a PRS nut...

So here's the story... I was minding my own business (uh huh, sure Dave) and the lead player in my band askes me if I want to go to NY to the first ever Dweezil Zappa band camp. This was back in 2010. Well duh! So four of us end up going! I can embellish and add to this story as we go on, but...
www.thetonerooms.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top