Depending on what era of Jeff Beck’s unique guitar playing one prefers, he’s typically imagined with either a Gibson Les Paul or a Fender Stratocaster in his talented hands. Or perhaps his love-it-or-hate-it Les Tele-Gib hybrid springs to mind?

Certainly not a PRS.

However, Paul Reed Smith has now claimed that, in his final years, Beck was glued to one of his electric guitars. And he's desperate to get it back.

In the Yardbirds, Beck played a sunburst Les Paul that, since his passing, has been loaned out to Lenny Kravitz’s foil, Craig Ross, and Marcus King. Later, his Blow by Blow era — which saw him butting heads with Beatles producer George Martin — was underpinned by his Oxblood Les Paul.

But, after once claiming that the Gibson axe “means business,” he pivoted to the “endless color” of the Fender Stratocaster, an instrument he was deeply associated with until his death.

Smith’s claim, then, that PRS had pulled him over to the dark side comes as quite the surprise.

So what’s going on?

“People don’t know this, but Jeff Beck had a PRS at home, and he loved it,” he says in the new issue of Guitar World. “He told me I’d never see him with it, but he used it to record.”

Unfortunately, Smith remains tight-lipped about what model of PRS it was. Educated guesses include an early prototype of John McLaughlin's signature, a Private Stock McCarty, or even a semi-hollow model, but those could all be way off the mark.

The important thing for Smith is tracking the guitar down.

“We’ve been trying to get it back,” the luthier and businessman explains. “It wasn’t part of the auction this year, but I know he loved that guitar.”

That auction saw big hitters like the Yardburst Les Paul that went for $496,484, and the OxBlood model became the world’s most expensive LP and smashed a series of auction records. But the PRS never made it so far.

So did it leave his possession before his death, or is it somewhere in the Beck family vault still?

In March, Manfred Mann's Earth Band guitarist Mick Rogers claimed he owns Beck's last-ever recording, but added that it is unlikely to ever be released. Going off Smith's words, Beck may have tracked the song with his PRS. But, of course, this is pure speculation.

It’s a fascinating mystery either way. Let’s hope the truth soon reveals itself.

In related news, Buddy Guy has been reflecting on how Jeff Beck and the British blues guitarists of the 1960s gave his career a shot in the arm, and Ronnie Wood has revealed why he switched from rhythm guitar to bass in the Jeff Beck Group.

Mark Tremonti has revealed how Paul Reed Smith gave him the “Dumble itch”, and has reflected on his favorite memories of Eddie Van Halen, having been given the rare opportunity to write and record in the hallowed halls of 5150 Studios.

The Creed and Alter Bridge guitarist has long since been one of PRS Guitars' poster boys, and his connection with the luthier helped kickstart his Dumble obsession. Today, although he daren’t take one of his prestigious Dumble amps on the road with him, he's revealed how their spirit lives on in his Creed live rig, having worked with PRS on a Dumble-inspired signature head, the MT 100. But there was a point that Howard “Alexander” Dumble’s tube amps were solely the stuff of legend.

“Paul [Reed Smith] was the first person who let me play a Dumble amplifier,” he says, in conversation with American Musical Supply. “We were at a PRS event. He had all of his endorsees there; there were probably 10 of us, and he had all these amps on stage.

“He's like, ‘All right, guys, everybody get up. We're going to sound check.’ So, I ran up on stage and I saw a Dumble that I plugged right into,” Tremonti continues. “I had to hear it.

“I absolutely loved it,” he goes on. “So, from that day on, I was obsessed with getting that tone because Paul ended up giving that amp to a friend of his, and so I could never get it again. It was a 50-watt version.

“Since then, I've bought another Dumble from Paul that I think is the best Dumble I've ever heard.” However, he feels that some of the amps that PRS is currently building have a chance of usurping that cherished tube amp.

“Paul's dabbling more and more and more into amplifiers, and he's getting very, very sophisticated at it,” Tremonti reveals.

The firm had been in business for nearly a quarter of a century when, in 2009, it launched its first amps after Smith met boutique amp designer Doug Sewell at the Dallas Guitar Show. The Sonzera 20 & 50 combo amps were the first to hit the shelves, and plenty have followed since.

“Some of the stuff that he's turning out now is blowing my mind,” the guitarist adds. “Some haven't been released, but when they do come out, people are going to be slack-jawed. It's really great stuff.”

Tremonti, Myles Kennedy, and the rest of Alter Bridge are fresh out of the studio, having finished recording their eighth album. Key writing sessions and drum recording happened in Eddie Van Halen’s custom-built 5150 Studios, where previously, only Van Halen and Wolfgang Van Halen’s band, Mammoth, have tracked.

“That's one of the biggest honors you could ever ask for,” he beams. “We were the first band outside of somebody with the last name Van Halen to be able to do that in that studio. We only tracked drums there, I tracked guitars at home in Orlando, but we got to put the arrangements together [at 5150].”

The band spent a month in the studio. Every Van Halen record from “1984” was committed to tape in those four walls, and Tremonti often found himself daydreaming.

“Being able to just walk around and see the memorabilia and where it all happened, see the tiny little vocal booth where Roth did his vocals… Obviously they don't have the Frankenstein [Strat] and stuff lying around, but you'll see little things like the 5150 necklace from the cover.

“It's just amazing to be in that room, that space where all that magic happened, and hearing the stories about it. It’s a crazy honor.”

He’s also come away from those sessions with a little memento, courtesy of his longtime friend, Wolfgagn Van Halen.

“One of the amps I have on stage now [the 50-watt EVH 5153] was [from 5150 Studios]. I said I loved it, and Wolfie gave it to me.”

Tremonti has previously recalled how, when Creed supported Van Halen in the late ‘90s, Eddie had battled through a crowd of fans to give him a guitar, and has also spoken about the pressure of playing shows with the virtuoso watching on.

“He came to an Alter Bridge show in LA when Wolfgang was filling in on drums,” he tells Loudwire. “You'll play a show and see him there, smiling, looking down. It was hard to shake the nerves, but it felt good for him to be there.

“We went to see them [Van Halen] practice at 5150 Studios, and they were playing the new album [2012's 'A Different Kind of Truth']. They finished a song and I was like, ‘Wolfie, that was a killer song, I loved when you did all the chordy stuff,’ and Eddie was like, ‘Were...were my parts good?’ You're Eddie Van Halen, your parts are always good! But he was always pushing to be the best he could be.”

Speaking to Guitar Player earlier this year, the guitarist has also revealed his strange-but-effective tip for writing unique solos, and it’s easier to pull off than you might think.

Guitarists love their vintage guitars, ascribing mystical and even magical powers to their aged tonewoods, hardware and finish.

Paul Reed Smith says it's all rubbish.

Speaking to American Musical Supply, the celebrated luthier distances himself from the "old is always better" adage. "Nobody thinks that a new vet can get outmaneuvered by an old vet," he said. "But everybody thinks an old guitar can outmaneuver a new guitar. I just don't buy it.”

Smith says he's not alone in his thinking. He points to numerous guitarists, like Widespread Panic's Jimmy Herring, who have espoused the merits of new guitars.

“Jimmy Herring was the first person to say to me ‘My PRS's will do things my vintage guitars won't do,'" Smith says. "I thought that was a beautiful comment.”

The allure of vintage guitars has only grown over the past 40 years, as the market for them has imbued even modest models from the 1960s with an aura of mystique.

No less a player than David Gilmour has weighed in the subject. Speaking about the guitars featured on his latest solo album, Luck and Strange — a record he calls his best LP since Dark Side of the Moon — the former Pink Floyd guitarist said vintage guitars always sound better than modern builds, noting, “All these pieces of wood gradually become in harmony with each other over years of playing.”

Smith isn't buying it. For that matter, he's not particular about tonewood, noting “the species is less relevant than the qualities of the wood," and has ridiculed snobbery of where certain woods are sourced from. He's said Guatemalan fence posts can make for quality guitars just as much as Honduran mahogany

To that end, PRS has been happy to experiment with left-field wood choices like Urban Ironbark, and wood alternatives for fretboards, like Richlite and Ebonol.

Expanding on those beliefs, Smith now says that where a guitar is made shouldn’t be a primary concern for guitar and bass players.

“I’ve always believed that it’s not about the country that an instrument is made in. It’s always been about the skill level of the guitar makers,” he says in a new Premier Guitar column.

“When we first started traveling to overseas guitar manufacturing facilities, we found that almost all their training over the decades had been to go fast, while our teaching about how to make instruments was about how to go well.

“Once they knew how to go well, the guitars they produce are of the same caliber as what we make here. So, as a definitive statement, the country a guitar is made in does not matter much. The skill and care of the instrument makers does matter.”

Outlining an example to back up his argument, he says that when Carlos Santana had asked for a more affordable version of his signature guitar, his solution was to manufacture it abroad.

“When we brought him the prototype, he was impressed, and his comment was, ‘This was made in America, right?’ And I said, ‘No. This was made overseas.’ The contract for his approval was on the table, and he leaned over and signed it as fast as he could.”

Instead of fixating on what wood and an electric guitar's place of origin, Smith underscores the importance of getting instruments in player's hands above all else.

“You should evaluate it the same way, regardless of country of manufacture,” he concludes. “How does it look, how does it feel in your hands, how does it sound acoustically, how does it sound electrically, and most importantly, will it do the job you want it to do?

Myles Kennedy may be a PRS signature artist today, but he says there was a time when the guitar maker's wares were “unattainable" for him.

In a bizarre twist, the 54-year-old singer for Alter Bridge and Slash — who has just released his third solo album, The Art of Letting Go — says his first time playing a PRS guitar went horribly wrong. As he tells Ultimate Guitar, the incident happened in 1998 while he was performing with the Mayfield Four, the band he played in before joining Mark Tremonti in Alter Bridge.

“I used to work in a music store, and occasionally, one would come to the store, and all those guitar nerds would just drool,” he recalls. “But it seemed kind of unattainable. It was just such a nice instrument. And at the time, I could barely rub two pennies together. So that seemed totally out of reach.”

That changed in 1996, when the Mayfield Four signed a major-label deal, which led to them releasing two albums. To mark the occasion, Kennedy says, their manager decided to treat himself to a brand-new PRS guitar with "a beautiful red top."

“We were playing at CBGBs in New York, and our manager went down the street and bought a PRS McCarty,” Kennedy explains. “He was just over the moon, and he was, like, 'Hey, do want to play it tonight for the show?' And I was, like, 'Absolutely.’"

Unfortunately, Kennedy was wearing a ring on his strumming hand. “And at the end of the night, I did the Pete Townshend windmill and dinged up the entire top," he says. "It was never the same. It was a mess after that one show."

The guitarist was wracked with guilt and knew of only one way to make amends.

"I ended up writing him a check the next day with my hard-earned advance that I got from the record label and bought that guitar.

"I still have that guitar to this day," he adds. "I still use it."

Kennedy went on to play the guitar in Alter Bridge on their 2004 album, Open Your Eyes, alongside Tremonti, who was by then a PRS signature artist. In 2007, Kennedy became enamored of the PRS SC 245 while recording Blackbird with Alter Bridge, and it became his go-to PRS guitar, until 2023, when he himself became a PRS signature artist.

Kennedy hailed his “six-string Swiss army knife” signature PRS when telling Guitar Player about the instrument last year. Featuring some choice tweaks, and the injection of elements from some of his favorite vintage guitars, the guitar has tonal diversity courtesy of its two PRS Narrowfield MK humbuckers. The firm's next-generation pickup system — which is now available in its SE line in the triple humbucker-equipped, Strat-style SE NF3— marries single-coil tones with full-bodied and hum-free humbucker characteristics.

As Kennedy recalls, he was overjoyed upon receiving his signature model and hearing the Narrowfield pickups for the first time. "I was doing cartwheels in the living room," he says, "because, to me, it was like a great-sounding vintage single-coil, but it also had elements of a P-90, and this midrange and cut that I didn’t expect them to achieve initially. They just hit it out of the park."

And considering how his journey with PRS guitars began, that sounds like quite a happy ending.

In other PRS-related news, Tremonti recently recalled setting his eyes on his PRS signature guitar for the first time and being gifted a guitar by Eddie Van Halen.

PRS Guitars has released a new limited-edition semi-hollow version of David Grissom’s DGT signature electric guitar. Only 200 pieces will be made, with each piece hand-signed by Paul Reed Smith and David Grissom.

The guitar is the latest production run of longtime PRS player Grissom’s signature model and the result of a decade of partnership. Notably, it’s the first semi-hollow DGT to come to market.

This particular guitar is based on a custom model that Grissom's been playing for several years, but with some extra touches not seen on Grissom’s sidekick, including moon inlays and a McCarty Sunburst finish.

The guitar has its roots in PRS’ vintage-style McCarty model and pairs a mahogany back and set neck, carved to Grissom’s preferred shape, with a maple top. Its rosewood fingerboard features 22 frets with a 10” radius and a 25” scale length.

Other appointments include PRS' patented tremolo system for “sonic fidelity, ergonomics, and revolutionary tuning stability,” and PRS Phase III locking tuners.

Grissom’s custom PRS DGT humbuckers offer rhythm and solo tones with a “Texas voice” that can be tweaked via two Volume controls, a push/pull tone knob, and a three-way toggle switch.

“I was striving for that vintage-inspired '59 Classic tone, and we came up with a recipe,” Grissom says of their invention. “It's a rewarding thing when I don't have to think about the gear that I'm using – [it] just allows me to play in an inspired way.”

Here Grissom’s custom wiring comes into its own as the two Volume controls ensure the treble and bass humbuckers can be individually set and manipulated for a more controlled output.

Paul Reed Smith’s signature has been scrawled across the front of its natural finish headstock, with Grissom’s on the backplate.

“The DGT has been my voice, it's the guitar that I reach for pretty much all the time,” Grissom continues. “The f-hole was the logical next step in the evolution of the guitar.

“The semi-hollow design has a bit warmer top end and a little less bottom than the solid body, making it a super versatile companion to my stock DGTs.”

The PRS Semi-Hollow DGT is available for pre-order now and costs $6,500.

Head to PRS to learn more about Grissom’s limited-edition model.

Long-time Telecaster lover Keith Urban has revealed he’s working with Paul Reed Smith on a new Tele-type model as he searches for something a little different in his next guitar.

Namely, he wants a Tele without limits and a PRS that isn’t as easy to play as its siblings, as the guitarist wants to wage war with his six strings rather than kneeling to their whims.

The country star has played many guitars over his career, but has long been associated with Fender guitars more so than any other brand – his 40th Anniversary Fender Telecaster, ‘Clarence,’ which he’s owned since 1989, chief among them. But now he has followed in the footsteps of his friend John Mayer by joining the PRS team.

As it turns out, Mayer’s best-selling Silver Sky signature highlighted some of Clarence’s shortcomings, prompting him to jump ship and strike up a working relationship with Smith to remedy issues he faces with his beloved Tele.

“John had Paul build a guitar for him for the Dead & Company run that he did [the ‘Dead Spec’ Silver Sky], and he wanted one guitar, like, ‘Can I just play one guitar all night?’” Urban says in a new interview with Guitar World. “I thought, ‘Let's see if I can get back to a bit more of that.’

The new project will use the T-type design as a launch pad, with Urban eager to put his stamp all over the build-in-progress.

Urban says he can “play anything on Clarence,” but adds “I just wish it sounded a little bit better. It's a frustrating thing. So, that was really the beginning of the search with Paul and the people up there at PRS.

“I want to see if we can create something modeled on the feel of Clarence but with a better tonal range.”

So far, choice changes have come from Urban and Smith in equal measure, making for an interesting concept.

“I like a little bit of a hollowbody, so it's got a little bit of that in there,” the guitarist explains. “We have a customized f-hole shape that is modeled after the phoenix tattoo on my forearm. And it's got these pickups that are specifically Paul's design.

“They're humbuckers but have an amazing, almost Dumble harmonic range. I can get squeaks and squawks out of them; unlike any other guitar I've got. And the playability is just beautiful.”

Naturally, a project as ambitious as a Tele 2.0 isn’t without its issues, with Urban wanting to concoct a guitar with a little more fight than other PRS models. In his own words, they can be too easy to play, finding the vintage guitars he’s grown accustomed to making music with being far less submissive.

“My struggle is I like a little fight out of a guitar. I'm used to it, and I'm a bit more of an aggressive player,” he details. “I'm trying to see if I can get Paul to help me get a bit of fight out of a guitar designed to give you no fight and effortless play. I do better when I struggle a little bit with the guitar, if that makes any sense.”

This isn’t the first instance of PRS turning its craft to T-type guitars, though. The company “rose to the occasion” of Myles Kennedy’s signature guitar demands for a build that was a tonal “Swiss Army knife.”

A key component for the guitar was PRS' intuitive Narrowfield MK humbuckers, which have impressed for their blend of single-coil tones and hum-free full-bodied humbucker traits. These pickups now feature in the Silver Sky’s recently-released sibling of sorts, the SE NF3.

It will be interesting to see if Smith's Dumble-esque pickups pertain a little of the Narrowfield secret sauce to widen the scope of its tones, as that is indeed exactly what Urban is chasing with his take on the Tele template.

Urban and Smith are set to continue working on the signature build, with the industry's curiosity certainly rising as time goes on.

PRS Guitars has unveiled a “sandblasted” SE Swamp Ash CE 24 electric guitar. The limited edition build is the latest addition to its affordability-focused SE series, and makes one of the company's most eye-catching finishes available worldwide.

Following the release of its triple humbucker-equipped, Strat-style SE NF3 model, the company has brought a decidedly more metal-friendly guitar to market with its latest build, leaning into the mean visage of its sandblasted top. 

That swamp ash top is sandblasted at the PRS factory to carve deep valleys in the wood, which are then filled in with a selection of colors – Blue, Green, Purple, Red, and White – which blend with a sleek black top. 

That eye-catching top is paired with a mahogany back, a bolt-on maple neck, and a rosewood fingerboard.

The limited edition guitar also offers 24 frets across a 25” scale length, with its fingerboard delivering a 10” radius.  

PRS-branded 85/15 “S” humbucker pickups provide “extended high and low end with clarity and balance.” Their versatility extends with a push/pull tone control for coil taps.

The, guitar, PRS says, “delivers addictive playability, versatile tone, and distinctive looks in a quality package.” 

“We have done runs with this treatment before, but this is the first time we are offering it at scale worldwide,” explains PRS COO Jack Higginbottom. “I really fell in love with these guitars after watching the sandblasting process in person. It’s transformational. But, these guitars are more than just eye candy – they take a ton of care to make, and they are made to be played.” 

The SE Swamp Ash CE 24 Sandblasted Limited Edition is available now for $699.

Head over to PRS to learn more.  

There’s always been a hotly contested debate among guitarists on the topic of tonewoods.

Guthrie Govan’s experiments, he says, delivered “unanimous” results proving that different woods do greatly affect tone, while Leo Fender always rubbished such thoughts.  

Notably, we’re in an age where luthiers are having to use less of certain woods, like the prestigious Brazilian rosewood, due to sustainability concerns. 

That's led to more obscure tonewoods like Urban Ironbark to grow in prominence and consequently add further fuel to the fire of the discussion.  

Now Paul Reed Smith has weighed in with his thoughts, backing up Guthrie’s corner, albeit with a twist to his argument. 

In a new column published on Premier Guitar, the luthier has revealed that PRS doesn’t deal in tonewoods. Rather, he believes “the species is less relevant than the qualities of the wood.

“I don’t really use the term ‘tonewood,’” he explains. “Because the internet uses the word, the word is used, but at PRS we just talk about wood, its beauty, and its ability to ring. 

“I guess tonewood is a wood used on musical instruments that helps give the instrument a good tone. Certain woods are classified as tonewoods and some are not.” 

Instead of measuring a wood’s “toneful” characteristics, PRS runs through a scientific checklist to determine how a wood performs. 

“Those qualities,” Smith says, “are: length of time the wood rings when you hit it, the amount of water remaining in the wood after it is dried, the resins in the wood being crystallized/not gooey, the ability to have strength as necessary (i.e., a fretboard needs to be resistant to sweating, whereas back wood doesn’t), its ability to not warp over time, and its aesthetic appeal.” 

Coloring this belief, he explains how, as a young luthier learning his trade, he typically stuck to tonewoods considered the industry standards. 

Straying from that path, however, conjured much food for thought. He found a lot to love in woods many were quick to dismiss. 

“Over the last 15 years, we have been able to experiment with woods that are not considered vintage tonewoods,” he continues. “Vintage guitar fretboards are typically made of rosewood, ebony, or maple. There are several species within those wood types that work.” 

He also adds that his current go-to six-string features a “ziricote fretboard and a chaltecoco neck. Chaltecoco is used for fence posts in Guatemala, and somehow that has given it a low-class reputation on the internet.

“To me, it makes fantastic electric guitar necks: It is strong, straight, and rings for a long time once dried. It’s got a beautiful sound.”

For PRS, that against-the-grain mindset (pun intended) extends beyond its wood choices. Electronics, hardware, and even types of finishes can impact an instrument’s tonal character. 

“Bottom line, to throw away one of the main ingredients for making instruments because the internet says ‘it doesn’t make any difference’ is, to me, like saying dead strings, rubber bridges, soft finishes, and wet woods make no difference,” Smith concludes. “With all due respect, I don’t buy it.”

It’s certainly a fresh take on the much-debated topic – yes, he feels specific materials make a difference, but the specifics of which ones are used don’t matter, so long as they perform well. 

It must also be noted that there’s often a snobbery around tonewoods. Mahogany builds sound luxurious, especially when pitted against the concept of a guitar built from Guatemalan fence posts. 

But when you contextualize that with the fact such woods have the approval of Paul Reed Smith, who was responsible for crafting 2023’s best-selling guitar, the story suddenly changes. 

As environmental concerns grow, and as luthiers continue to seek more readily available alternatives – Taylor in particular has been honored for its progress here – it will be interesting how the debate continues to rage on.

Perhaps Guthrie Govan has some work to do yet...

PRS has unveiled the SE NF3, a Strat-style electric guitar that can be seen as a sibling of sorts to the company's wildly popular John Mayer signature Silver Sky model.

With a lineage that dates back 35 years, to the PRS EG, the SE NF3 has the same, familiar outline of the Silver Sky, but updates the recipe in a number of departments, chief among them the new model's trio of Narrowfield DD ‘S’ humbucker-style pickups.

Standing in stark contrast to the Silver Sky's trio of single-coils, the humbuckers mark the first time the company's popular Narrowfield pickups have been featured in an SE line guitar. 

First introduced in 2008, the Narrowfield pickups have become player favorites for their ability to marry single-coil tones with full-bodied and hum-free humbucker characteristics, leading Myles Kennedy to load two into his signature Tele-style PRS.

The Narrowfield DD (short for Deep Dish) ‘S’ pickups, PRS says, feature taller bobbins “to fit more winds and extra metal pieces in between the magnets for a more focused, powerful tone.”

The differences don't end there, either, as the SE NF3 features only master volume and master tone knobs, in lieu of the typical three-knob Strat setup. The familiar five-way switch, however, remains. 

Elsewhere, the Indonesian-made model boasts a poplar body paired with a 22-fret, satin-finished bolt-on maple neck, with players given the choice between rosewood or maple fretboards boasting PRS's signature 25" scale length. A PRS six-point tremolo bridge and non-locking tuners appear on the hardware side of the spec sheet.

“We started the development of the NF3 ‘S’ pickup with the NF 53, so it's been an ongoing project for a while. What has amazed us all is the way we are furthering the art of ‘reverse engineering’ our own concepts and achieving success in tone inside of the SE Series,” PRS COO Jack Higginbotham says.

“Beyond the pickups, this guitar harkens back almost 35 years to our original EG, which I was deeply involved in. The neck and the neck body assembly were born of the SE Silver Sky originally and refined with the SE CE and Swamp Ash Special. So, in a way, it is a brand new guitar that is built on ideas spanning decades and reaching to the very cutting edge of our current engineering and design philosophies.”

Both the rosewood and maple models come in a choice of Gun Metal Gray, Ice Blue Metallic, Metallic Orange, and Pearl White finishes, and the guitar has already been listed for pre-order on Sweetwater for $799, $50 less than the SE Silver Sky.

Head to PRS to learn more. 

When American guitar brands suffered a dip in quality during the 1970s and ’80s, the door was open for guitar rivals to make inroads to the U.S. market. 

While many of them came from Japan, at least one homegrown guitar maker saw his “in”: Paul Reed Smith. With his PRS Guitars, Smith hit the ground running in 1985, creating widely acknowledged “modern classics,” and he’s been accepted as another of the United States’ leading guitar makers ever since.

The 1989 Custom 24 featured here was built just a few years after PRS established proper production but before its guitars were commonplace in dealerships across the country. Not only is it a classic from the maker’s “golden era,” but it wears a rare Bonni Pink finish that comes with its own story.

Having played guitar in his youth, Smith built his first guitar in 1975 while in college, an adventure that inspired him to drop out and work full-time as a luthier and repairman. A boatload of research and experimentation went into the effort over the next 10 years, during which he built an average of one guitar a month, until funds were in place for him to open the first PRS factory, in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1985. 

But shortly before then, the budding entrepreneur had tested the waters by buttonholing roadies at backstage doors, guitar in hand, to get touring stars to check out his work. 

The effort succeeded and proved the viability of Smith’s designs. He quickly received preproduction orders from such stars as Heart’s Howard Leese, Peter Frampton, Al Di Meola and, eventually, Carlos Santana, allowing the PRS factory to fire up with a substantial artist roster in place.

Although they’re familiar to most guitarists today, the features of Smith’s core design were innovative. Significant among these were:

• A hybrid Fender-meets-Gibson ethos that ran throughout the design, affecting both styling and build; 

• A glued-in neck with a hybrid 10-inch fingerboard radius and 24 frets; 

• Optional bird inlays in the rosewood necks (often Brazilian rosewood, until around 1990); 

• A 25-inch scale length that made it easy for players of other makes to adapt readily to PRS guitars; 

• Versatile five-position rotary switching with pickups wired to access both humbucking and single-coil tones; 

• A back-angled headstock with a three-to-a-side tuner layout designed to enable a straight string pull over a low-friction nut, to maximize tuning stability; 

• A floating vibrato bridge that stayed in tune with liberal use, as requested by Santana; 

• Highly figured maple tops in faded sunburst finishes, as seen on some of the most prized late-’50s Les Pauls. 

It all added up to a thoughtful redrawing of the electric guitar’s blueprint, one that applied logic and creative design principles to the matters of playability, tone, and tuning stability, rather than merely copying the classics that had come before. 

In addition to the attractive top woods, PRS carefully selected the mahogany he used for the guitars’ backs and necks while making the body backs slightly slimmer than those of the Les Pauls they partly resembled. The resulting lighter weight, along with a rounded contour in the ribcage position, made the guitars more comfortable to play than many of the set-neck, single-cutaway creations of the day, which were often quite heavy.

Introduced in 1985, the Custom 24 was PRS’s cornerstone model, and it embodied all the significant features detailed above, plus others. A more upscale Signature Series (hand-signed by Smith) was offered from 1986 to ’90, and carried the ultimate woods and appointments. After some 1,000 examples, this upgraded line was renamed the Artist Series, and has since evolved through several iterations. 

The distinctive Bonni Pink finish on our featured 1989 Custom 24 Signature model was based on an early guitar rendered in the same aesthetics for Bonni Lloyd. A PRS employee, Lloyd worked in artist relations and marketing for Smith prior to the company’s establishment and again between 1986 and ’99. 

The extremely flamey maple top and Paul Reed Smith autograph mark this example as one of the exalted Signature Models, while the distinctive finish makes it a rare – and highly alluring – early PRS by any measure.

Another characteristic of early PRS guitars is found in that small mini-toggle switch, which partnered the master volume control with the rotary pickup selector (the latter can be easily mistaken for a tone control in these photos if you didn’t know otherwise). PRS dubbed this the Sweet Switch, and it was designed to re-create the so-called tonal “sweetening” of the treble roll-off that is experienced when a long cable is used from guitar to amp. 

The two-way switch was wired for bypass in one direction, while the other took the signal through a 135-nanosecond delay line, a small rectangular component that effectively attenuated the high frequencies sent on to the output jack. 

The intention was to overcome the potential harshness of a guitar run through a wireless system or a buffered signal chain, but some later players found the “sweet” setting rather dull and lifeless, and PRS replaced this switch with a conventional tone control in 1991.

Examples of recorded PRS tones can be found all over the place, and the company has comprised a roster of artists to rival those of Fender and Gibson. 

In addition to the names already mentioned, proponents of various renditions of the classic PRS sound include Dickey Betts, David Grissom, Mark Tremonti, Orianthi, Dave Navarro, and a host of other pro players far too numerous to mention. As for the “classic” PRS sound, the chameleon-like versatility of these guitars makes it impossible to confine that to any easy definition. 

Essential ingredients

• Asymmetrical double-cutaway design

• Solid mahogany body and neck with Brazilian rosewood fingerboard

• Carved Artist-grade figured-maple top, bird inlays

• Floating six-point milled PRS-Mann vibrato system

• PRS Treble and Bass humbucking pickups

• 25-inch scale length with 24 medium-jumbo frets

• Master volume, five-way rotary selector, Sweet Switch and three-way toggle switch

Top-tier session player and PRS endorsee David Grissom has joined forces with the company once more to create the “small but mighty” PRS DGT 15 – a tube amp designed to rival Grissom’s favorite vintage amps. 

It builds on the heritage of their previous creations, the PRS Custom 30 and 50 amps, which were crafted over a highly collaborative three-year period, and offer rich, multi-layered tones that are at their liveliest when turned up to high volumes. The DGT 15, on the other hand, aims to deliver the same personality, but at a lower volume and price. 

The amp, built from the ground up, comprises two EL34 power tubes, plus three 12AX7, and a single 12AT7, preamp tubes. A Tremolo and Boost function – tweakable via a three-way toggle – are two new features, while a three-band TMB tone stack and a three-position Bright switch come positioned alongside an on-or-off Reverb, with additional controls for Top Cut and Presence alongside the Boost and Tremolo. 

There are dials for Input and Master Volumes, with the latter also getting a three-way switch, which can be viewed as a way to control the level between boosted and non-boosted tones.  

The tri-powered Bright switch – which offers versatile scope when partnered with its Boost control – allows players to tailor the amp’s top end to their exacting wants. 

There is also an option to automatically disengage the Bright switch when Boost is applied, as Grissom doesn’t like his Boost to be overly bright.  

The Tremolo, which operates on a power tube bias circuit, has controls for its Speed and Depth, and can be switched on, off, or activated only with the Boost. 

Before dialing in a tone, PRS recommends doing as Grissom would; turn all the dials to noon but max out the Master Volume. 

The amp comes with a matching 1x12” cab with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers, and a three-button footswitch to control its Boost, Reverb, and Tremolo features.

PRS’s Amp Designer Doug Sewell, who worked with Grissom on this new model and its Custom amp predecessors, has hailed the DGT 15 as “one of our most feature-laden designs to date,” belying its unassuming wattage. 

The pair have been collaborating since the late ‘80s, before turning their attention to amps in the early ‘00s, with this latest amp following on from a PRS SE David Grissom signature guitar released early last year. 

Grissom, who has toured and recorded with Buddy Guy, John Mellencamp, Robben Ford, and John Mayall, used his decades of experience to pack plenty of ambition into the amp's tiny package. 

Tonally, he explains that most of the amp’s “heavy lifting” was done making the DG Custom 30 with Sewell, who he praises for “how thoughtfully the DGT 15 was designed. 

“Doug was very meticulous and creative with updating some of the features while remaining true to the DNA of the Custom 30,” Grissom explained. “From the first time I played through it, I was blown away.”

The DGT 15 amp head is available for $1,199, or $1,648 with the matching cab. 

Head to PRS for more details. 

The latest additions to PRS’s offshore-produced SE line include two guitars that date back to the 1980s – the Custom 24 and the CE24, introduced, respectively, in ’85 and ’88 – along with a reissue of an outlier model called the Swamp Ash Special, which was originally produced at PRS’s Stevensville, Maryland, factory between 1996 and 2002. 

I tested these guitars through a Fender Deluxe Reverb and a ’48 Dual Professional, along with a row of UAFX pedals that included the Lion ’68 Super Lead, 1176 Studio Compressor, and Orion Tape Delay. 

SE CE24

Featuring a mahogany body and a maple top with a shallow violin carve, the SE CE24 is a sharp-looking guitar with its striking Blood Orange quilted maple veneer. The exposed edge shows off the thickness of the maple cap beneath while giving the effect of a binding layer between the top and the tightly grained mahogany back.

Weighing in at 7 ½ pounds, my review guitar felt light and nimble, and it delivered a bright, resonant acoustic sound with good sustain. It also excelled in the playability department, courtesy of the comfy, satin-finished Wide Thin neck and a rosewood fingerboard carrying 24 well-attended medium-jumbo frets. Their smooth tips facilitate an easy ride to the upper reaches of the fingerboard, where the scarfed neck joint and sculpted lower cutaway provide easy access to the top frets. 

The PRS-designed low-mass tuners help the CE24 stay in tune, and this carries over to how reliably the silky PRS Patented Tremolo holds pitch when bending strings with the push-in stainless-steel bar (which is adjustable for tension via a small setscrew). The molded, polished unit feels smooth to the touch, and the six adjustable saddles are free of protruding screws to jab your hand when resting it on the bridge.

The uncovered 85/15 S humbuckers (a 1985-style pickup that was redesigned in 2015) are optimized to deliver extended low and high frequencies without compromising output. They’re clear and well-defined, delivering crisp, snappy cleans, and plenty of girth for killer distortion tones. 

The volume control keeps the highs intact when you turn down, and the tone circuit maintains good definition when you roll the knob down for a jazzy neck-pickup sound or a darker bridge-pickup lead tone. 

Pulling the tone knob up provides a single-coil sound in all positions of the toggle switch (along with a slight reduction in output), offering useful options when you want crispier sounds. It’s particularly useful in the dual-pickup position, where the inside coils deliver a phasey sound that’s reminiscent of a Strat’s dual-pickup modes. 

SE CE24 – Specifications

CONTACT PRS Guitars

PRICE $699 street, gig bag included

NUT Synthetic, 1 11/16” wide 

NECK Maple bolt-on, Wide Thin profile 

FRETBOARD Rosewood, 25” scale, 10” radius, Bird inlays

FRETS 24 nickel

TUNERS PRS designed 18:1

BODY Mahogany with shallow violin carve maple top 

BRIDGE PRS Patented Tremolo

PICKUPS PRS 85/15 S humbuckers

CONTROLS Master volume, master tone with push/pull coil-tap, 3-way toggle pickup switch 

EXTRAS Available in Blood Orange, Black Cherry, Turquoise and Vintage Sunburst

FACTORY STRINGS PRS Classic .009–.042 

WEIGHT 7.50 lbs (as tested)

BUILT Indonesia

KUDOS A great-sounding guitar with killer tones and an excellent trem. Sweet price

CONCERNS None

SE Custom 24 Quilt

The SE CE24 is a toneful and great-playing guitar that offers a lot of bang for the buck. However, if you have an extra $300 in your wallet, you might consider the top-line SE Custom 24 Quilt, which shares with the CE24 a mahogany body and maple top with a shallow violin carve, but features a glued-in, gloss-finished maple neck and a 24-fret rosewood fingerboard trimmed in white binding that extends around the headstock. 

The Black Gold Sunburst finish on the quilted maple top of my review guitar looks amazing, and the peghead is also faced with a matching maple veneer as opposed to plain satin black on the CE24. 

The same fretwork quality is in evidence here, with the 24 medium-jumbos revealing even crowns, a nice polish, and smoothly trimmed tips. As with all of these guitars, the synthetic nut is carefully notched and free of sharp corners, and the factory setup yields solid intonation as you travel up the neck to where the rounded heel and sculpted cutaway give full access to high positions.

The Custom 24 proved a stable guitar that stayed in tune well. Here too, the PRS Patented Tremolo has excellent return-to-pitch capability and is so musical in how it responds to vibrato inflections. Even when not bending strings, this piece of hardware is a tonal enhancer that adds noticeable resonance and dimension even when playing unplugged.

The tones delivered by the 85/15 S uncovered humbuckers are excellent, and the complement of volume and tone controls (the latter with a push-pull coil-tap function) and the three-way blade switch facilitate dialing in sounds ranging from crystal clear to massively overdriven, which makes the Custom 24 Quilt great for rock, blues, and anything else where the enhanced warmth, compression, and sustain of this design can be preferable to the snappier and immediate response of the bolt-neck CE24. 

It’s not a “Les Paul versus Telecaster” comparison, yet there’s something about the rich, soulful tones of the Custom 24 that will forever attract players to it. It is the definitive PRS that took the world by storm in the 1980s thanks to Paul Reed Smith’s genius for spinning Gibson and Fender elements into a totally modern performance tool for players.

SE Custom 24 Quilt – Specifications

CONTACT PRS Guitars

PRICE $999 street, gig bag included

NUT Synthetic, 1 11/16” wide 

NECK Maple set, Wide Thin profile 

FRETBOARD Ebony, 25” scale, 10” radius, Bird inlays and binding

FRETS 24 nickel

TUNERS PRS designed 18:1

BODY Mahogany with shallow violin carve maple top 

BRIDGE PRS Patented Tremolo

PICKUPS PRS 85/15 S humbuckers

CONTROLS Master volume, master tone with push/pull coil-tap, 3-way blade pickup switch 

EXTRAS Available in quilted Black Gold Sunburst, Quilted Turquoise and Quilted Violet

FACTORY STRINGS PRS Classic .009–.042 

WEIGHT 7.74 lbs (as tested)

BUILT Indonesia

KUDOS A classic set-neck model with killer tones, upscale appointments and an excellent trem

CONCERNS None

SE Swamp Ash Special

Making a comeback for 2024, and available only in the SE series, the Swamp Ash Special features (as the name implies) a swamp-ash body with a shallow violin carve on the top, and a bolt-on Wide Thin–profile maple neck topped with a maple fingerboard carrying 22 nicely worked medium-jumbo frets and abalone Bird inlays. The guitar supplied for this review has a sweet-looking Iri Blue finish that shows off the abundant graining in the wood. 

Swamp ash is generally considered lightweight, but at nine pounds, our Special was the heaviest of the bunch. This didn’t seem to affect its acoustic sound, however, which was airy, open, and sustaining. The maple fingerboard tightens up the response a bit, and the bowling-ball-smooth maple sure feels nice under the fingers when bending strings. True to form, the Special offers excellent playability and superb high-fret access due to the scarfed heel and generous cutaways.

One of the main attributes of this guitar is greater sonic range, and to that end,
the pickups consist of a pair of 85/15 S humbuckers and an AS-01 single-coil, a design that uses Alnico magnets and steel poles for clarity and added punch compared to standard single-coils. With a control complement of volume, push-pull tone and a three-way toggle, the system offers the following combinations:

1. Bridge humbucker. Tone pot up adds middle single-coil; 

2. Bridge and neck humbuckers. Tone pot up is bridge humbucker, middle single-coil and neck pickup coil-tapped; 

3. Neck humbucker. Tone pot up is middle single-coil and neck pickup coil-tapped.

Having the middle pickup available with the humbuckers greatly expands the Special’s sonic palette. Not only are the full humbuckers available for lead and rhythm duties, but you now have the options of pairing them with coil-tapped and genuine single-coil sounds (the latter always sounds cooler than cutting a coil on a humbucker). 

The only thing not available is the AS-01 pickup by itself, but that’s not a big deal as the hum/single combinations offer a lot of hip sounds imbued with funky, Strat-like character, but have that humbucker muscle behind them. 

Now, you’re free to rapid-fire between sounds on the fly without worrying about losing presence and punch, all while enjoying these different textures that sound so cool played cleanly or with gobs of grind, using all that this guitar offers to craft tones that’ll help lift whatever you point it at. 

This sort of flexibility is what PRS guitars excel at, and whether you’re into rock, country, funk, jazz or blues, you’ll likely find the Swamp Ash Special an inspiring guitar that’s well deserving of a place in the SE lineup. 

SE Swamp Ash Special – Specifications

CONTACT PRS Guitars

PRICE $849 street, gig bag included

NUT Synthetic, 1 11/16” wide 

NECK Maple bolt-on, Wide Thin profile 

FRETBOARD Maple, 25” scale, 10” radius, Bird inlays

FRETS 22 nickel

TUNERS PRS designed 18:1

BODY Swamp ash with shallow violin carve

BRIDGE PRS Patented Tremolo

PICKUPS PRS 85/15 S humbuckers (neck and bridge) AS-01 single-coil (middle)

CONTROLS Master volume, master tone with push/pull for coil-tap and AS-01 activation, three-way toggle pickup switch 

EXTRAS Available in Charcoal, Iris Blue and Vintage Sunburst

FACTORY STRINGS PRS Classic .009–.042 

WEIGHT 9.0 lbs (as tested)

BUILT Indonesia

KUDOS A timely reissue of a unique ’90s-era model that offers excellent playability and a wide range of tones

CONCERNS This one is just a little on the heavy side

It might be Cyber Monday at the tail-end of another Cyber Week sales period, but Musician's Friend is still proving it's the place to go if you're a gigging musician. Right now you can still score up to 50% off popular brands, including Fender, Music Man, PRS, Epiphone, Mesa and more. 

This sale is populated with everything you'd ever need to make music, with discounts applied to everything from high-octane electric guitars to earth-shattering guitar amps, stunning acoustic guitars and must-have guitar accessories. So, no matter your playing style, guitar preferences or budget, you're sure to find something to get excited about here. 

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There's $200 off this Limited-Edition Fender Player Stratocaster with a maple Fingerboard and $100 off this Epiphone SG.

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John McLaughlin’s steel-string work in Shakti is some of the all-time most astonishing acoustic virtuosity, right alongside his hugely influential nylon-string playing with Paco de Lucia and Al Di Meola in the Guitar Trio. 

McLaughlin and tabla master Zakir Hussain are celebrating a half century since joining worlds as Shakti by releasing This Moment (Abstract Logix), the group’s first new studio album in 46 years, and going on tour. In September, Guitar Player and SFJAZZ welcomed McLaughlin back to San Francisco, where he has a storied history. 

The City by the Bay was the site of McLaughlin’s latest live album, 2018’s Live in San Francisco as well as the Guitar Trio’s celebrated Friday Night in San Francisco album, recorded in late 1980 and released in 1981. In 2022, Saturday Night in San Francisco finally saw the light of day after spending more than four decades gathering dust in Di Meola’s basement. It was recorded the night after the legendary Friday show, and Di Meola produced the project during the pandemic lockdown. 

McLaughlin says, “Al called me up and told me about finding the tape of the second show, and it was exciting that the program on Saturday night was different enough to make another album.” Via a Zoom connection from GP’s origin in the Bay Area to McLaughlin’s longtime home in Monaco, the virtuoso goes on to connect the dots of how Shakti and the Guitar Trio have shaped his acoustic career through the lens of the various instruments he’s played, right up to the new, long-awaited Shakti album.

McLaughlin’s playing in Shakti is remarkable on a number of levels. His highly evolved technique pervades impossibly complex compositions that mostly follow unpredictable Indian raga forms full of next-level improvisations. Perhaps most incredible is how the twisting, turning melody lines are so intricately linked with the rapid-fire percussion rhythms. As impressive as the GP Hall of Famer’s playing remains, Shakti serves a higher purpose. The stratospheric level of collective expertise creates a mystical musical vessel designed to take the listener on a transcendental celebration of life. The current lineup includes violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, percussionist Selvaganesh Vinayakram and vocalist Shankar Mahadevan. 

To have a fully functional Shakti at this time is miraculous. Mandolin guru U. Shrinivas passed away in 2014. McLaughlin’s arthritis became so severe that he announced his retirement from touring in 2017. Then the pandemic hit. But rather than let his world stop spinning, McLaughlin took it all as inspiration to keep his wheels turning. Using deep meditation techniques described in his 2021 GP interview, he healed himself. 

He recorded the solo effort Liberation Time during lockdown and challenged Shakti band members, who live on different continents, to learn digital recording and video conferencing technology so they could finally collaborate remotely on a new one as well. The result is pure sonic joy, full of fresh tones.

This Moment presents a contemporary take on the classic Shakti sound, and was — ironically, given its title — carefully crafted rather than recorded live in the moment. It sounds refined, with 21st century elements layered into Shakti’s signature Indian/jazz fusion. 

Shakti means “power” and McLaughlin re-energizes the timeless ensemble ina modern way, playing electric guitar and guitar synth in the otherwise acoustic affair. He makes pristine tones from his new signature PRS guitar sound at home in the worldly mix, and he uses a Fishman MIDI guitar controller and software system to conjure an array of sounds, from bamboo flute to synth bass to strings. 

How did you come to play electric guitar and guitar synth in Shakti?

There are a couple of reasons. Of course, Shakti was originally acoustic, and I played a very special guitar with 13 strings and a scalloped fingerboard. [The original Shakti guitar, built by Abraham Wechter during his tenure at Gibson, was based on McLaughlin’s favorite model, the J-200, with the addition of seven tunable sympathetic strings running underneath the main six at a 45-degree angle.] Then there was a period that started in 1978 when Shakti percussion player Vikku Vinayakram had to go back to India to run the school his father founded, after his father passed. 

It just so happened that I ran into Paco de Lucia when I was in Europe that year. We started to hang out, and that was the beginning of the Guitar Trio. I went from playing the steel-string Shakti guitar to a nylon-string guitar for a classical tone, because Paco was playing a beautiful flamenco guitar. I must have spent 10 years playing the nylon-string. I loaned out my Shakti guitar, because I believe instruments must be played, otherwise they get sick, just like humans. When the Shakti guitar was brought back to me, it was broken.

That was a big tragedy. I kept in touch with Zakir, and all the while I was playing a very fine Wechter nylon-string acoustic. When Shakti got an invitation to tour, I started playing a big-bodied Gibson Johnny Smith [archtop]. At the end of the tour, I was sitting with Zakir and I said, “Shakti is such a beautiful form. We have to find a way to keep going.” We ended up inviting Shrinivas to join us, and he played an electric mandolin with a solid body. He was a genius. I was playing the Johnny Smith Gibson, which has a very sweet, clean sound that went very well with the electric mandolin. We continued like that until we lost Shrinivas in 2014.

That was a bad year. We also lost Paco, and I got zapped with arthritis in the right wrist. It took me until 2019 to cure myself. At my tender age, when I try to play the big Wechter nylon-string, I feel a stress because of the right-hand position. I have to sacrifice playing the acoustic, because I don’t have any problems playing the electric guitar, and musically I’ve never felt better. The other good thing about playing the new PRS is that, through MIDI, I’m able to bring more orchestral sounds from my Western world into the Shakti group.

It makes me happy, and it makes them happy too, because they love Western music as much as they love Eastern music. That’s why we’re here today.

There is so much rapid-fire energy in the music of Shakti, and it’s nice to hear that the PRS is helping facilitate that. This is, technically speaking, your first signature PRS, correct?

Yes, although I first met Paul over 20 years ago at the Frankfurt Musikmesse. Finally, last year, he called up saying that he wanted to make me a signature model. Oh, the tone! He chooses wood like Stradivari, who used to walk around the Dolomites in Italy tapping on trees, saying, “I’ll take that one, not that one.” Paul has got the most astonishingly beautiful wood. The neck of my guitar is made out of hormingo, which is a wood used in marimbas for its sound-producing tines. As a guitar neck, it’s extraordinary. I’ve got three other PRS guitars, but there’s something magical about this one. Paul is a maniac. He’s as crazy about what he’s doing as I am about what I’m doing.  

Do you ever miss having a scalloped fretboard, like on the Shakti guitar that allowed you to do bigger bends?

That came about in around 1971 or ’72, when I started studying the South Indian veena, which has got a huge neck with big frets embedded in beeswax. When you bend a string, you don’t push — you pull it, like sitar. But the veena is not curved like that. It’s flat. I spent two years with my guru, Dr. Ramanathan, at Wesleyan University, before I realized my guitar playing was suffering. That way of bending the string, which they call a gamaka, you can do all the way up the fingerboard, but you’ve got to have the space under the strings, and that was the whole point of the scalloped fingerboard on the Shakti guitar. But then I ran into Paco in 1978 when we formed the Guitar Trio, and after 10 years of playing the nylon-string classical guitar, I kind of lost that bending technique. 

Can you substitute glissando?

No. That’s a Shrinivas technique. It’s more like a vocal approach. [Imitates a quivering vocal] That’s what I loved about the veena, too. And one of my first adventures coming out of Shakti was I had a luthier make the scalloped fretboard on my 1968 Gibson 345, which is big, but it’s thin. 

I’m going to try when I get some time… Well, I don’t have time at the moment, because we started touring India in January, and in rehearsal we started changing and re-arranging the tunes from the new album. We’re crazy. So now I’m busy learning the new arrangements. 

They’re so worked out, especially the lengthy melodic runs that you play in unison with the vocal and the violin. Are they written down?

No. Everything is oral. That’s the Indian way. Crazy, huh?

It seems truly impossible. 

Everything is sung in India. When you learn, even the percussion players sing the rhythm. In South India, it’s called konokol. I started studying it with Ravi Shankar in the mid-70s. Every time he came to New York, I’d go to his hotel. He taught me the rhythmic theory, and it’s all vocal. Once you get a handle on the konokol system of rhythm, you understand exactly what a drummer from anywhere in the world is doing, because, in a way, it’s all mathematics. It’s mathematics with soul, you know? 

And the biggest musical difference is the Western sense of harmony, correct?

They are as developed in rhythm as we are in harmony. That’s how crazy they are. You can hear it on the album in some of the compositions that Zakir and Selva [percussionist Selvaganesh Vinayakram] do in unison. It’s phenomenal. 

And it’s apparent when your compositions come from a different place. Las Palmas sounds a bit flamenco in a Paco de Lucia kind of way, and then there’s a bluesy turnaround. 

Las palmas is Spanish for clapping. That’s what they call it in flamenco, which is a direct influence, because it was just late last year when they finally did the memorial concert for Paco de Lucia in Madrid. All the greatest guitar players, dancers and singers were there. Oh, it was fantastic. Al [Di Meola] was there too, and we played with Paco’s nephew, Antonio Sanchez. What a monster player! At some point maybe he’ll take the crown. Las Palmas is kind of an homage to that world I love and experienced with Paco.

And what a world of difference it must be playing ragas with Shakti.

Right, there are no chord changes in Indian music. I’m the only Western musician in Shakti, so triggering sounds with the Fishman MIDI pickup and substituting another harmonic structure that gives them a completely different view of the raga are ways that I can bend the rules. 

Those guitar synth elements are clear to hear on the introduction to the appropriately titled Bending the Rules. Do you ever break from standard tuning?

I can only play in standard tuning. Don’t ask me to de-tune a string; I will be in deep trouble. 

Can you speak about how the improvisational cycles flow in Shakti?

Improvisation is the heart and soul of a band. And it’s one of the great connections Indian music has with jazz, because they’re masters of improvisation. An improvisation is like a moment of truth. You stand up to do a solo, and your trousers are down by your ankles. You cannot hide, so you have to go with it and let it all hang out. You have a structure. You take risks.

And it’s exactly the same for the Indians. They have the raga, but if I slightly modify some harmony underneath, they’ll hear it and go with it. 

Another aspect that’s so close to jazz is the rhythm. God bless Ravi Shankar for all the lessons he gave me in konokol, because as soon as we start to play the drummers are on my case, “kicking my butt” as they say. But that’s exactly what I want in music. I want somebody to stimulate me — knock me out of my little niche. All of a sudden, you’re on a tightrope. What are you going to do? You abandon yourself to the spirit, and you go with it. That’s the point where things start to happen. 

How did improvisation factor into a remote recording process?

That’s one of the reasons it took two years to make the album. We’d put down some basic files and send them around. Then I’d get files back, and holy smoke, I’d have to redo my part, and the improvisational section too. That would happen with everybody, reacting by abandoning their parts and redoing them three or four times. There was a lot of excitement going on. It didn’t feel at all like I was alone. I’d put on the headphones, close my eyes, push play, and they were with me in the room. We basically went until we couldn’t work anymore. It’s wonderful. We wanted to do a studio album because we hadn’t done one since 1977, but we’ve made some live albums because in a way we’re a live band. 

In the Equipment section of your website, there’s a re-creation of your Shakti acoustic from the ’70s credited to master luthier Mirko Borghino. Does it sound like the original Wechter, and have you considered sampling it? 

It was about three years ago when the Italian luthier came to see me. He built a Shakti guitar based on photos, and it’s so well made that it does sound like the original. It’s unbelievable. I have thought of sampling its sound. I’m fascinated by that aspect of it, but I’d need some technical training. I do miss the acoustic guitar. I miss the Shakti guitar. My problem is what I mentioned before. That’s what happens when you get old. The attack is wrong on the acoustic guitar samples that I’ve heard. It sounds artificial, and it bothers me. But I enjoy using the guitar synth to get anything orchestral, or perhaps a flute or something to accompany the voice or the violin. I use the Fishman Triple Play Connect system in conjunction with my laptop, and it works like a dream. 

What’s the main signal chain for the PRS?

I’m still in learning mode with the new PRS, because it’s got two toggle switches that engage high-pass filters, one for each pickup. So there are a lot of configurations. I like to use different tones for, say, playing arpeggios or strumming chords, but the music happens so fast in Shakti. I have to plan when to switch pickups and when to switch the EQ into the position that I want. I use a [Hermida Audio] Zendrive 2 pedal, and I’m currently experimenting with a [DSM Humboldt Electronics] Simplifier amplifier simulation pedal. You can control the amount of preamp or power amp drive and the sound of the speakers. The fact that it’s all analog is very nice, because I really like the tone. It’s different, very pure. I’m going to try it out for sure. After the Shakti tour when I’m at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival in Los Angeles [September 24 and 25] I’ll be playing with an amp, of course. 

What’s the plan?

I spoke with Carlos Santana, and we’re planning to play together on Sunday night. Maybe we’ll do a couple of golden oldies from Love Devotion Surrender, or from Welcome. Joe Bonamassa invited me to play a tune. I like Joe, and he can sing too, so I’ll probably do a number with Joe on Saturday night and just, you know, jam. 

Shakti is very different, eh?

Shakti is a totally different trip. 

Shakti's This Moment is out now and available to buy or stream

We'll be the first to admit it's too early to be talking about Christmas - we haven't even gotten the Black Friday guitar deals out the way yet - but when it's an offer this good, we have to shout about it. The fine folks over at PRS have jumped the gun and launched their epic Holiday Sale early - slashing a massive 20% off all PRS SE electric guitars from now until 31 December. 

No matter your musical preferences or playing style, there's a model here for you, from the stunningly versatile PRS SE CE24, which has a colossal $139.80 shaved off the price, to the ever-popular PRS SE Custom 24, which is down to only $799.20. 

Unfortunately, the new PRS SE DGT isn't available with a discount, but all remaining electric guitars in the range are included. It's also worth noting that the sale is currently only available to US and Canadian customers with all the major retailers getting involved. So whether you prefer shopping at Guitar Center, Sweetwater or Musician's Friend, you'll be able to bag yourself a cut-price PRS. 

We know it can be difficult to decide on the best model for you - especially when there's so much on offer. Well, don't worry, Guitar Player is here with a few personal recommendations. 

Up first is the PRS SE Silver Sky, which has a mega $169.80 off the price. When the original Silver Sky launched, it caused quite a stir. A few years on and it has become a beloved member of the lineup and easily one of the best PRS guitars on the market - and not just for John Mayer fans. 

We also have to give a special mention to the stunning PRS SE Hollowbody II. This guitar is crazy versatile, effortless to play and a treat for the eyes - and with $319.80 off the price, what's not to like? 

Lastly, we have to give a shout-out to the PRS SE Singlecut McCarty 594, which has $170 off right now. This retro-inspired axe is perfect for those looking for vintage tones but modern build quality. 

Living in the UK?

Are you living in the UK and still want to get your hands on a discounted PRS? Well, you're in luck. Andertons are currently running their own PRS sale, offering up to £500 off select S2 models. This includes everything from the PRS S2 10th Anniversary Custom 24 to the Limited Edition S2 McCarty 594 and Vela. 

Myles Kennedy has been a PRS player for many years. His induction into the exclusive league of artists who have signature PRS models required him to do some deep thinking about the myriad elements involved in creating an instrument that would suit his tonal and playability needs, as well as incorporate some of the elusive mojo of his favorite vintage guitars.

We spoke recently with Kennedy about the ingredients that went into his unique signature guitar.

What was the concept you had in mind for this guitar?

I used to play in cover bands in the ’90s and I always thought it would be so great to have a guitar that was simple and easy to navigate in a live setting. It would have that nice throaty lead or rhythm sound, but if I wanted to play like Nile Rodgers, I could get there at the flick of a switch. I feel like that’s what we’ve managed to do with this guitar. It’s like this six-string Swiss Army knife in terms of what it can do tonally. For me, the most important thing was for it to be vocal and have that midrange that would cut in a mix.

This marks the first time PRS has used the Narrowfield MK humbuckers in an artist instrument. How did they come into play with your guitar?

Bringing that pickup into the equation was PRS’s idea. They said, “We have these pickups that can mimic single-coil sounds, but without the hum.” I was like, “If you can pull it off, that would be fantastic.” The first batch [of pickups] they sent sounded great, but they were a little darker than what we ended up with. Even so, I was really impressed with how quiet they were, and I remember reaching out to them after that first prototype guitar came along and asking if we can change this or that.

So after a few weeks, Paul called and he was jumping through the phone, he was so excited, saying “Wait ’till you hear what we’ve done!” So when they sent the next round, I was doing cartwheels in the living room because, to me, it was like a great-sounding vintage single-coil, but it also had elements of a P-90, and this midrange and cut that I didn’t expect them to achieve initially. They just hit it out of the park.

How are you using the pickup selections that are available on this guitar?

It depends on the song, but I would say 80 percent of the time with Alter Bridge I’m hanging on the bridge pickup, with the tone knob pulled up, because with that more high-gain environment you need to shave off a little bit of high end. It took a while for us to get there, because in the first setup it was basically taking the tone knob and rolling it off maybe 30 percent. And then we found it was not quite enough, so now it rolls off about 40 to 50 percent. But in my solo realm, I’m sure I’ll be engaging that top end a little more, because I like that single-coil vibe. So when you plug it in, it’s like a nice marriage of a number of things that makes it work really well, at least for me.

Since this guitar came into existence, it’s really ignited my passion for playing again. I was in Germany a few weeks ago on tour with Alter Bridge, and Peter Diezel stopped by one of our shows to check out the [Diezel] amps and make sure everything was working fine. He has some of the best ears I’ve ever encountered – he can hear these nuances like no other human I know!

So I asked him to check out the guitar, and it was really great to see him in my dressing room playing it acoustically. He commented, like you did, about how resonant it is. So getting the thumbs-up from him was like the best compliment, because he’s totally honest. There’s something about that maple neck and the swamp-ash body, and it does resonate really nicely.

How did you come up with the neck shape?

I wanted something with a vintage vibe, and a lot of T-style guitars from the ’50s have that certain profile. And maybe from years of being played they have a certain mojo and comfort level. So that was as paramount as what we were trying to achieve with the pickups. Because to me, if a guitar doesn’t feel good in my left hand, then it won’t inspire me.

We talked a lot about that and how to achieve it, and a few people have mentioned that they like the profile. They feel like it’s got enough girth to it but it doesn’t feel like a baseball bat, which makes me happy, because I didn’t want it to be something that would fatigue your hand. I just wanted it to feel right and ultimately inspire you.

Did you also need to think about the scale length or the fretboard radius?

I think one of the really difficult things for me, coming from my love of vintage instruments, was knowing that the radius would be seven-and-one-quarter inches. So the whole thing for me throughout the process was whether to go for that or a 10-inch radius.

I ultimately went for the 10-inch because my other PRS guitars were in that realm, and I thought it might be kind of strange to go from playing my McCarty to playing the signature guitar and have that extra-rounded fretboard. So I’m glad we settled with the 10-inch radius because it feels really good now.

Whose idea was it to use a top-loading, flat steel bridge with round brass saddles?

The prototype that we started with had a version of that bridge, and it was top loaded, which I thought was interesting. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but as time went on I really grew to like it. One of the things we talked about as we continued to develop it was to give the bridge a little more mass and make it a little wider to have more steel touching the body, just to help it resonate more. It’s aesthetically more pleasing too.

What’s interesting about the saddles is that there’s just two of them, and so you’d think, How will it be to navigate when intonating it? But it works fine. It took me a while getting used to it, but now it’s easy as pie.

How does your guitar stand up when mixing it onstage with other guitars?

Really well, with Alter Bridge in particular. For years I was using a PRS SC245 or McCarty, and I had different pickups in those guitars from what Mark Tremonti had. He had his signature pickups, but because my guitar was also a mahogany body with a maple top, there were similarities. Our front-of-house guy would say, “At times your frequencies run into each other a little bit.” But since incorporating this guitar into the mix, the separation is there.

He has no problem getting it to cut, and it has a certain midrange to it that really sits nicely in a mix. So that’s been really nice, because it’s got a sweet spot that works well with a mahogany-body, maple-top guitar. So if somebody is playing that type of guitar with humbuckers, I feel like my guitar complements it really well.

Read our recent review here.

Visit PRS Guitars for more information.

No gaff tape marks on the stage are necessary for Simon McBride – he always remembers where the sweet spot is. Alone under the lights for his big guitar cadenza each night with Deep Purple – and just after kicking on a Tube Screamer to make his white-hot electric guitar tone a few degrees hotter – he moves to that invisible X, hits a single note high up on the fretboard, and, with zero vibrato, gets it to sustain infinitely. When a shimmering overtone emerges from within the sound, the endless note becomes all the more prismatic. It grabs your ears the way a laser beam shooting up into the night sky attracts your eyes.

It’s an old trick, but, after watching McBride do it flawlessly at 16 different arenas all over Europe last fall (I was playing with the support band, Jefferson Starship), I can report that I’ve never seen anyone do it more hypnotically. It’s mesmerizing. Rather than seeming gimmicky, it comes off as heartfelt and part of a grander musical statement.

Next, McBride suddenly jumps up to a high-altitude F-major scale pattern, and, starting on the highest A on the highest string, blazes down an octave and a half of the shape as fast as possible, repeating the dazzling maneuver again up a half step, and then again up another half step, and so on. The notes whiz by faster than tracer bullets. It’s thrilling to experience, and it incites roars of delight from each new audience.

Standing at the monitor board after taking in McBride’s many guitar solos each night, Donny Baldwin – the veteran, multi-Platinum drummer in my band – turned to me and said, “Damn, that dude plays with so much emotion!” I agree. Whether McBride is playing slowly or quickly, I still feel each note. If you still think of Steve Morse as “the new guy” in Deep Purple – even though the brilliant Dregs guitarist’s tenure in the iconic rock band was, at 28 years, far longer than that of founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore – you’re forgiven. There may still be a few guitar fans who haven’t yet heard that Morse announced his retirement from Deep Purple last summer to help his wife, Janine, through ongoing chemotherapy treatments as she confronts stage IV cancer.

The new new guy is Simon McBride. Hailing from Belfast, the Irish guitar hero was already established before joining Deep Purple, with multiple solo albums and videos released under his own name. (Want to hear a spectacular fuzz guitar break? Listen to McBride engage his Vahlbruch Octavia pedal on “Kingdoms,” from his latest solo album, The Fighter.) McBride had also proved his worth to the Purple camp by touring and recording with two legendary members of the band, keyboardist Don Airey and singer Ian Gillan, long before they ever knew they might need to enlist him for Purple.

“Two-thousand-twenty-two was weird but also wonderful,” McBride says of the year he officially joined forces with the British rock titans. “At first I was sort of subbing in for Steve, but when they said he was stepping away and asked me to join, I said, ‘I’ll think about it.’” He laughs. “No, I actually immediately said, ‘Yes.’”

Of all the guitarists you’ve seen perform in your lifetime, who most blew you away with the sheer level of emotion in their playing?

It’s got to be Gary Moore. Gary was a massive influence on me, starting when I was a kid. Obviously, he was from Belfast too, but when I was about 10 years old and my dad took me to see him, it inspired me to go, “I want to do that.” He played with such aggression and passion, and I think from learning all his stuff over the years it’s a natural thing that comes out in me, too. I have to thank Gary for that.

There are so many Gary Moore songs that a lot of people don’t really listen to, because he was so popular for his blues thing, as that’s what really broke him and made him massive. But people forget the heavier stuff, like Corridors of Power. He has so many brilliant albums, all of them full of great riffs.

What’s your philosophy on getting a kick-ass hard-rock guitar sound in an arena?

It’s about having teeth. I do have a lot of modern gadgets like, for example, the [Neural DSP] QuadCortex, which I use in the studio and think is great. But live, I’m that old-school kind of a player who is used to having a fire-breathing dragon – a wall of Marshalls – shouting at me.

I started using Engl stuff when I joined Purple, and it’s great. I used Steve [Morse]’s heads for a while, and they’re great, but while that amp suits Steve, it is a bit more compressed and high-gain than what I prefer. Plus, there are too many buttons on it for me. I’m a very simple guy. I’m like, “Just give me my bass, mid, treble, gain and volume.” Done.

So the guys at Engl tweaked a head for me to have more aggressiveness, especially around the high mids, because that’s how a guitar frequency cuts through. Once you start sucking the mids out of your sound, you lose the guitar, whether you’re playing a small club, an arena or a stadium – especially in a band like Purple, where you’re competing with [Airey’s] Hammond running through two Leslies and a Marshall, which has a similar frequency range as your guitar.

One modern development, though, is that I now run my stage rig in stereo, and for that I blame COVID, because for two years I was sitting in my home studio playing in stereo through my studio monitors. When live gigs started happening again and I plugged in my mono setup, I was like, “This is not gonna work.” [laughs] I now run a simple left/right setup with stereo effects courtesy of TC Electronic Plethora and Boss Space Echo pedals. I also tried the wet/dry/wet thing, but it wasn’t for me.

You get an amazing spectrum of sounds from that Paul Reed Smith with the f-hole. [McBride has played a red-finished custom PRS 408 and now has one in gray.]

Yeah, I had it made for me about nine years ago. It’s basically a PRS 408, which they stopped making – maybe because the pickups had slightly odd shapes, which meant people couldn’t swap them out easily if they wanted to. But I love the 408’s design. It’s very versatile. You have a three-way toggle selector, plus two little switches that split each humbucker. And it cleans up brilliantly through a proper valve amp. I think there’s a capacitor in there that helps it get a little brighter when you roll the volume back. People always ask me why I don’t have a tone knob on the guitar, and I’m like, “I haven’t used a tone knob in 25 years, so what do I need one for?”

There’s an exciting moment in “Hush” each night where you and Don trade licks back and forth and really seem to be pushing each other. It’s a total head-cutting duel.

Oh, yeah, every night it’s a full-on battle. It’s great because at that point it’s just me and Don, with only Ian [Paice]’s drums behind us, so we can drift in and out of stuff and go wherever we want, musically. Don has told me, “It’s 14-1 to you, Simon,” but I don’t know. Every night I have to try harder, because he comes down to soundcheck each day and practices, coming up with ideas to try and screw me up. [laughs] Really, it’s just fun. We’re just having a jam and having a laugh. We just love doing it.

Is there a secret to kicking off “Smoke on the Water” each night? Any pressure when you’re starting off what is possibly the world’s most famous guitar riff?

At the moment, no. But the first time I did it I was very nervous, because that was with Ian Gillan in front of about 10,000 people. But it’s such a simple riff. The main secret is just giving it the right tempo. Then Don kicks in with the Hammond playing the same thing, Roger kicks in with the bass, and it’s just a wall of power. Some people overcomplicate the “Smoke” riff by playing it like a guitar player – you know, they throw vibrato and other things into it – but then the riff loses its essence. You just have to keep it simple. There are plenty of other places in the set for me to try new things.

People always ask me, “Do you have freedom to improvise in Deep Purple?” The answer is yes. But there are certain things you just have to play as they were recorded, like Blackmore’s solo on “Highway Star.” It would be very arrogant of me to think that I can do better than that. That’s a brilliant solo. It’s iconic.

PRS’s expanding series of artist guitars now includes an instrument created for Myles Kennedy, guitarist/vocalist/songwriter for Alter Bridge and Slash and the Conspirators. This signature model is a bit different for PRS, as it features a Tele-esque flattop body made of swamp ash, and a bolt-on, scarfed-construction maple neck that’s carved to Kennedy’s own custom shape. The 25 ½ inch-scale maple fretboard has Birds inlays and carries 22 well-groomed medium frets.

The strings run across a smooth bone nut on their way to a set of nickel-plated vintage-style tuners, and at the opposite end there’s a top-loading PRS plate bridge with two large brass saddles that carry three strings apiece. Each round saddle is adjustable for height via a recessed set screw at each end, while intonation adjustments are made by two spring-loaded machine screws per saddle. It’s a serious piece of hardware that looks proportionally correct on this guitar, which also has a black single-layer phenolic pickguard and a geometric owl on the truss-rod cover, as seen on Kennedy’s solo release The Ides of March.

Ergonomic touches include a comfy back bevel and a sculpted cutaway that provides easy access to the high frets. Kennedy’s choice of Narrowfield humbuckers brings an interesting twist to this artist model – as well as the standard-production NF 53 guitar which shares many, but not all, of the same components (more on this to come).

Introduced in 2010, these pickups were designed to take a great-sounding single-coil and combine it with the “positive characteristics” of a humbucker – i.e. no hum and a full sound. The idea for the narrow design is that it captures the vibrations of a smaller section of the strings, creating a more focused single-coil sound. The top of the pickup is also stair-stepped so that the distance between the magnets and the strings remains consistent across the radius of the fretboard.

The Kennedy signature features all-new Narrowfield MK pickups, and the rear unit is angled toward the bridge on the treble side. The controls are volume and tone, and the latter has a push-pull function that activates a preset treble roll-off to slightly darken the sound in all positions except the neck setting.

The five-way blade selector offers the following settings, from bridge to neck:

Position 1: Bridge humbucker

Position 2: Bridge humbucker and neck coil-split

Position 3: Bridge and neck humbuckers

Position 4: Bridge and neck, both coil-split

Position 5: Neck humbucker

It’s noteworthy that the aforementioned NF 53 differs from the Kennedy in its use of Narrowfield DD (deep dish) pickups that carry more winds and deliver more output, and they are mounted parallel to each other. The NF 53 also has a three-position blade switch and does not have a push-pull tone control.

My review guitar felt a little on the heavy side due to the thick body and somewhat beefy neck, but its acoustic sound is resonant and lively, and it has excellent sustain. As set up by the factory, the playability is great. The neck sits nicely in the hand, the action is low and buzz free, and the tuneful intonation made it enjoyable to play before I even thought about amplifiying it.

Tested on some gigs with the guitar plugged into either a Fender Deluxe Reverb or a Tonemaster Princeton Reverb, the Kennedy proved to be a great-sounding and versatile electric guitar. It has a ballsy sound, with nice midrange presence on the back pickup. That position got plenty of use with the tone knob pulled up, creating a slightly browner tone (at least compared to the brighter knob-down sound) that was excellent when dirtied-up with a TWA SH9 pedal or run clean through the cranked-up Deluxe. And with its natural sustain and the way notes sing when pushing an overdriven amp, this guitar sounds killer for slide.

The pickups are dead quiet and sound great in the other positions too. The dip in output in positions two and four makes it easy to get a pristine clean tone – the bridge and neck pickups both coil-split, which is great for that– while the bridge humbucker with the neck pickup coil-split is cool when you want to channel Chic for a funky rhythm groove. And by notching the selector a click or two in either direction, the girth comes back for a meaty lead tone on the neck setting or a clear, stringy rhythm sound with both humbuckers on.

The more I played the Myles Kennedy signature and experienced what it can do, the more I liked it. This six-string lightning rod is a helluva guitar, and it gets an Editors’ Pick Award.

Specifications

• NUT: Bone, 1.64” wide
• NECK: Maple, Myles Kennedy custom shape
• FRETBOARD: Maple with Birds inlays, 25.5” scale, 10” radius
• FRETS: 22 medium-jumbo
• TUNERS: Vintage style, non-locking
• BODY: Swamp ash
• BRIDGE: PRS plate with two brass adjustable saddles
• PICKUPS: Two PRS Narrowfield MK humbuckers
• CONTROLS: Volume, tone (with push-pull treble rolloff for the bridge pickup), five-way blade switch
• EXTRAS: Available in Antique White, Hunters Green, Black, Tri-Color Sunburst and Vintage Natural
• FACTORY STRINGS: PRS Classic .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 8.66 lbs (as tested)
• BUILT: USA

Visit PRS Guitars for more information.

PRS has joined forces with electric guitar great John McLaughlin to create a new signature Private Stock model.

Even within the luxurious ranks of Private Stock guitars, the McLaughlin signature – of which only 200 examples will be built in 2023 – is truly something else, with a raft of eyebrow-raising appointments, not the least of which is the guitar legend's autograph on the backplate.

You can hear the guitar in action below.

The PS McLaughlin guitar features a maple top, mahogany back, and a unique neck made from hormigo, a tonewood most often associated with marimbas. Its 25” African blackwood fretboard features 22 frets, with striking abalone “Celtic“ knot inlays featuring holly spikes and ovals made of crushed opal.

Sonically, the model boasts two TCI pickups, tweakable by volume and tone knobs, a three-way pickup switch, and a pair of mini-toggle EQ switches that – when activated – give players a cleaner, more defined high-end. Hardware, meanwhile, comes in the form of PRS Phase III locking tuners and the company's Gen III tremolo.

Aside from McLaughlin's signature on the backplate, the Private Stock model also features the signatures of PRS head honcho Paul Reed Smith and the company's Private Stock Director, Paul Miles, on the back of the headstock, plus a Private Stock Eagle headstock inlay, and a McLaughlin-labeled truss rod cover.

“Playing music is a way of being. Playing an instrument requires you to move out of the normal level of consciousness. If you’re thinking, you’re not playing. If you’re playing, you’re not thinking,“ McLaughlin said in a press release. 

“If you have problems with your instrument, you’re not going to move out of the thinking zone and into your own world. This is why I love my guitar. For me, it’s perfect.“

The exact price point for the PRS Private Stock John McLaughlin model – which is is finished in Charcoal Phoenix with a Smoked Black back – has yet to be revealed as of press time, but, given its limited numbers and top-tier features, it probably won't come cheap.

For more info on the model, visit prsguitars.com.

“When it comes to marriage or relationships, I’m a one-person person,” says Carlos Santana, who married his drummer, Cindy Blackman, after proposing to her onstage at a gig in Illinois. “But when it comes to guitars,” he adds, “I’m definitely not a one-guitar person.”

However, Carlos has been pretty brand-loyal over the course of his almost 50-year career. He was a staunch Gibson man in the years following his eponymous band’s debut at Woodstock. The SG he played at that historic 1969 festival didn’t last very long, but one magical Les Paul served him through Santana’s classic golden period, from 1970 to 1972, when he made Abraxas, Santana III and Caravanserai.

Carlos switched to Yamahas in the mid Seventies, designing his own model in collaboration with the Japanese guitar-making giant. But ever since the early Eighties, he has been one of the foremost advocates of Paul Reed Smith guitars.

He rode a PRS to fame on his phenomenal 1999 comeback album, Supernatural, and on many other outstanding recordings. Smith himself will tell you that Santana can be demanding when it comes to guitars. Much like the renowned guitar maker, Carlos has a great ear and can assess a guitar’s tonal virtues after playing just a few notes or chords on it.

“As soon as I hear it, I can tell if it’s gonna be a lamp or something that can go onstage,” he says, and laughs. “You can tell when a guitar sounds all nasal and weird. All you can do with it is wire it up for a light bulb and put a lampshade on it. That’s all it’s good for. It may look nice, but if it doesn’t have the tone I want, I’m not interested.

“Some people might add a lot of pedals to fix the tone, but that’s not for me. It’s gotta be straight from my fingers to the amplifier. If it don’t sound good like that, you’re not gonna fix it with a mixing board or computers.”

Still, Santana isn’t averse to picking up the occasional Strat or other guitar, as long as the tone is there. Pulling out some of his finest instruments, he just can’t resist plugging a few into an amp and letting rip. 

1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom

This instrument, a refinished maple-top Les Paul, is pretty much the holy grail of Santana guitars. Carlos purchased it at Prune Music in San Francisco in 1970, shortly after his group’s big breakthrough. It was a replacement for the red Gibson SG he played at Woodstock.

“That SG wouldn’t stay in tune, so I destroyed it,” he says. “At the time, if I wanted a new guitar, I had to ask the band, ’cause we were all paying for it. The band didn’t want to get me a new guitar, so I destroyed the SG. Then I had to get a new one. This guitar was my main workhorse for at least seven albums. It’s got the tone, the feel. You grab it and it’s ready to go.”

This is the guitar that generated the fiery leads on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va,” and, indeed, just about everything else on the classic Abraxas album from 1970, as well as the inspired discs that followed in its wake.

PRS Santana Model Prototype

Master guitar builder Paul Reed Smith began showing Santana his guitars in 1976, just as Smith was launching his business. The instrument that hooked Santana was the legendary Paul Reed Smith Golden Eagle, the first maple-top guitar Smith ever built, owned by Heart’s Howard Leese.

Carlos borrowed the guitar to play the leads on his 1981 Zebop! album and fell in love with the instrument.

“It had a very rich, low, masculine tone,” he recalls. It was like, ‘Ooh, I’ve been playing a soprano, and this is a tenor.’”

Santana commissioned Smith to start building guitars for him. The guitars that Smith custom-built for Santana in the Eighties would eventually become the basis for the PRS Santana II model. The one guitar that particularly pleased Carlos was the model seen here, known in the Santana camp simply as Number Two.

PRS Santana II “Supernatural”

“This guitar really is supernatural. I played most of the Supernatural songs on it. There is the Woodstock guitar and there is the Supernatural guitar. Those are huge doors to walk through.”

Of the many guitars that Paul Reed Smith has made for Carlos, this one holds a very special place in the guitarist’s collection. It arrived just as Carlos was beginning work on Supernatural, which would usher in an exciting new phase of his career.

Carlos has often spoken of being divinely guided in creating Supernatural, and the guitar’s appearance seems providential.

Carlos calls it his Red Coral guitar. He knew there was something unique about it as soon as he picked it up. “It was the tonality, the weight of it, and the feel of it,” he says. “And the color: a beautiful orangey, salmon red. A lot of times, the color of a guitar changes the mood for me. And what can you do without the right mood?

1952/1953 Gibson Les Paul

Another historic Les Paul in Santana’s collection is this instrument that belonged to the late blues master Mike Bloomfield. “He was one of my first heroes,” Carlos says. “Before I heard Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, I heard Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop in the Butterfield Blues Band in 1965. So I treasure this guitar.”

It was Bloomfield who gave Carlos his first shot at notoriety, inviting him onstage to jam at the Fillmore West. The event led to Santana’s discovery by Fillmore owner and entrepreneur Bill Graham.

Also notable is the fact that this Les Paul was originally a gold top and was subsequently refinished with a flame top. In addition to the refinish job, the original trapeze tailpiece has been replaced with a Tune-o-matic, and humbuckers have taken the place of the original P-90s.

1963 Fender Stratocaster

Carlos picked up this Strat at a Guitar Center sale several years ago. He recalls, “They told me, ‘Some guy in Ukiah [California] had this under his bed for years.’” He bought the guitar on the spot and used it to play his interpretation of “Little Wing” on Guitar Heaven.

Carlos has fond memories of a recent gig at which he played this Strat through Stevie Ray Vaughan’s legendary Dumble Steel String Singer amp.

“When I got this guitar, I had the same dream over and over, where Stevie Ray came to me,” he says. “In the dream, Stevie Ray said, ‘Listen, Carlos, you know where I am, man. I’m not in the body anymore. And where I am, I have no fingers. I’m just pure light. But I miss the sound and feel of my guitar. Please call my brother Jimmie and ask him to lend you my Steel String Singer. I need to feel your fingers through this amplifier.’

“A few nights later, I had the dream again. So I called Jimmie Vaughan and asked to borrow the amp, and he was like, ‘Hell no!’ But then René Martinez, who was Stevie Ray’s guitar tech, had the same dream too. He called Jimmie and told him. Next thing I knew, the amp arrived.

“The amp and the Strat came in time for a gig at Madison Square Garden. I plugged the guitar into the amp at soundcheck, and it was like...whoosssh! I said, ‘I wanna play the whole concert with this!’”

For all the big-name players who have been drawn to Paul Reed Smith guitars, Zach Myers’ dedication to the brand is hard to beat. A faithful devotee since acquiring his first Custom 22 at the age of 14, the Shinedown lead guitarist was honored with his first SE signature model – a triple-humbucker single-cut – in 2010.

The recently released SE Zach Myers is the third PRS model to bear his name, and it does so while adding a new degree of elegance. In addition to his incendiary chops, Myers’ guitar-tech experience made him well primed to spec out an impressive new signature model, and the SE Zach Myers displays several thoughtful design touches as a result.

Based on the PRS single-cut shape and construction, it sports a chambered mahogany body with maple cap and flame-maple veneer. The top is bound in single-ply white plastic – rather than the traditional PRS “maple reveal” edge – other than within the cutaway, which displays the depth of the maple cap.

The top is finished in what PRS has dubbed Myers Blue, complemented by the clear knobs from his previous signature model, with a matching flame-maple veneer on the headstock face (the first time such a feature has adorned an SE model) and “Zach Myers” engraved on the truss-rod cover.

Like a lot of players, I tend to find the familiar PRS wide-fat neck profile one of those just-right shapes. This one doesn’t disappoint, and it’s arguably all the more comfortable thanks to its satin finish. It’s carved into a glued-in neck of solid mahogany, which is capped by a bound rosewood fretboard with bird inlays. It’s 1 11 /16 inches wide at the nut, which is the usual black synthetic affair, and the top end carries Kluson-esque vintage-style tuners with black buttons.

Scale length is the slightly shorter 24.5 inches that PRS has used when chasing a more traditional single-cut vibe.

The bridge is the guitar maker’s adjustable wraparound with brass saddles and studs – which Myers calls his favorite bridge of all time – and pickups are 245 “S” humbuckers wired to individual volume and tone knobs and a three-way selector.

Tested through a Princeton 1x10 combo, a 65amps London tube amp head and 2x12 cab, and several high-gain presets on the Neural DSP Quad Cortex, the SE Zach Myers proved to be an able-bodied rocker with plenty of nuanced character of its own.

With clean settings on the amp, the chambered mahogany lent a certain roundness and airiness to the clear, articulate pickups, which enhanced the depth and body of the guitar’s tone. I was impressed with how well the overall sound held together when shown some more drive, however, which enabled very tight, aggressive heavy-rock voicings without slurring the guitar’s inherent character.

Through a louder amp with overdrive, the guitar allowed easy feedback when desired, and excellent sustain, but it remained impressively controllable throughout, short of any foolish close-proximity high jinks with the 2x12 cab pumping hard in my studio.

Using the 245 “S” humbuckers with more vintage PAF- leaning winds (at 7.94k ohm neck and 8.72k ohm bridge) seems a wise move here, and they help the guitar stay clear and bright for rhythm chordal or arpeggio work, yet still chunky and well defined when pushing, say, a Boogie Mark IIC+ preset on the Quad Cortex – which, I have to add, was a lot of fun on this guitar.

All together, it makes for a versatile package that isn’t limited by any overly pigeonholing design choices.

All in all, this signature SE is an impressive model that should appeal to many players well beyond the Zach Myers fan base, and a great value at this price, earning it an Editors’ Pick Award.

Specifications

• NUT: Synthetic self-lubricating, 1 11/16” wide
• NECK: Mahogany, wide-fat profile
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, 24.5” scale, 10” radius
• FRETS: 22 medium-jumbo
• TUNERS: Vintage style
• BODY: Chambered mahogany with maple top and flame-maple veneer
• BRIDGE: PRS Adjustable Wraparound
• PICKUPS: Two PRS 245 “S” humbuckers
• CONTROLS: Two volume, two tone, three-way toggle switch
• FACTORY STRINGS: PRS Classic .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 7.4 lbs (as tested)
• BUILT: Indonesia

Visit PRS Guitars for more information.

With much fanfare and after even more anticipation, PRS launched the SE version of its John Mayer signature Silver Sky electric guitar last January.

At the time, the SE Silver Sky was only available with a rosewood fretboard. Now, though, the SE Silver Sky has – like its pricier big brother – been made available with a maple fretboard, and in three new finishes, to boot.

The new finishes – Nylon Blue, Overland Gray, and Summit Purple – are specific to the Maple SE Silver Sky.

Aside from the finishes and, of course, the fretboard, the Maple SE Silver Sky is identical to its rosewood sibling.

It sports a poplar body that boasts a 25.5” maple neck highlighted by a 22-fret, 8.5" radius fretboard with small bird inlays, and a trio of SE 635JM pickups, which are tweakable via a single volume and two tone knobs, plus a five-way blade switch.

Hardware is also still the same – vintage-style, non-locking tuners stand on both sides of the guitar's Silver Sky inverted headstock, with a PRS steel tremolo also coming standard. All hardware is finished in nickel.

Along with the announcement of the Maple version of the guitar, however, PRS also tweaked the lineup of the rosewood SE Silver Sky.

The rosewood model originally was offered in Moon White, Stone Blue, Dragon Fruit, and Ever Green finishes, the latter two of which have now been dropped in favor of new Storm Gray and Piano Black looks.

The PRS SE Silver Sky Maple is available now – with a gig bag included – for $849, the same price as its rosewood counterpart.

For more info on the model, visit prsguitars.com.

In the late 1980s, Paul Reed Smith called on Ted McCarty – ex-president of Gibson and the visionary behind the ES-335, SG, Firebird, Flying V and Explorer – to consult with him on guitar design and production techniques. McCarty became a mentor and friend to Smith, and in 1994 PRS issued its first McCarty model, leading to a series that now comprises four U.S.-made Core models, three S-2 series guitars (also made in Stevensville, Maryland) and three SE McCartys made by Cor-Tek in Indonesia.

The latter includes this latest 594 Singlecut, featuring all-mahogany construction, a maple-veneer top, 58/15 LT S pickups and the zinc bridge and stop tailpiece found on the costlier Core and Private Stock guitars.

The SE McCarty 594 (the number refers to the 24.594-inch scale length) is a sweet looker, with its bird inlays and cream-white binding on the body and neck. The top on this one is straight-grained rather than flamed, but that’s fine as it looks real and the wood has a lovely richness under the gloss sunburst finish. The binding and inlays are well done, and the medium-jumbo frets are nicely crowned and smooth on the tips. The nut is also level with the binding, with no sharp corners.

The strings load through a nickel-plated zinc tailpiece anchored with brass studs, and they pass over a TOM-style bridge with brass saddles and height-adjusting wheels on the way to a set of vintage-style tuners with ivory-colored “tulip” buttons. It’s a classic setup that facilitates the McCarty’s sweet intonation and abundant sustain and makes it fun to play without plugging in.

The factory setup provided great playability right out of the box, and the Pattern Vintage neck feels awesome with its slightly chunky profile and 10-inch radius fretboard. The guitar has ideal balance hanging from a strap, and the ergonomics are enhanced by a comfy contour on the back.

On the electronics side, there’s a pair of low-wind PRS 58/15 LT S humbuckers (selected via a three-way toggle on the upper bout) that feed dual volume and tone controls, the latter with push-pull switches for splitting the coils. The system provides numerous possibilities for blending the pickups in humbucking and single-coil mode (or combinations of both), enabling the SE McCarty to deliver excellent tones for just about anything you point it at.

Tested though a Fender Deluxe Reverb reissue (with hand-wired circuitry by Alessandro), a Matchless Chieftain 2x12 combo and a Boss Katana MKII, it covered everything from sparkling clean tones to soaring distortion. The neck pickup sounds warm, with a bit of vocal character in the upper mids, and its presentation remains clear and well focused when the volume is rolled down.

The tone controls shave off highs smoothly, all the way to zero, and pulling the knobs upward to activate single-coil mode yields slimmer and more open sounds without overly reducing output. The combination of the neck pickup split with the bridge humbucker was great for rhythm, and running both pickups split also yielded some of the guitar’s funkiest clean tones.

On the distortion side, a lot of credit goes to the 58/15 humbuckers, which, with their fat, gutsy snarl, make the SE McCarty a great rock machine when paired with a high-gain amp or OD pedal, such as a new TWA SH9 I used for these tests.

A classic in its own right, the SE McCarty 594 follows a traditional template, but is completely PRS in terms of playability, hardware, pickups and all the details that make it such a hip evolution of a vintage design. It makes sense that such an instrument would spring from an alliance between two guitar visionaries, and kudos to PRS for producing a version that’s affordable enough for more players to enjoy.

Specifications

• NUT: Black synthetic, 1 11/16” wide
• NECK: Mahogany, Pattern Vintage profile
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, 24.594” scale, 10” radius
• FRETS: 22
• TUNERS: Vintage style with “tulip” buttons and nickel-plating
• BODY: Mahogany with Shallow Violin carve flame-maple veneer top
• BRIDGE: PRS two-piece bridge and stop tailpiece, nickel-plated zinc
• PICKUPS: PRS 58/15 LT S humbuckers with nickel-plated covers
• CONTROLS: Volume and tone for each pickup, push-pull switching on tone pots for single-coil, 3-way toggle switch on the upper bout
• FACTORY STRINGS: PRS Classic .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 8.06 lbs (as tested)
• BUILT: Indonesia

Visit PRS Guitars for more information.

An American-voiced amp with a Portuguese name, the Sonzera 20 was recently re-released by PRS, and on paper at least it does appear to fill a crucial space in this Maryland-based maker’s lineup. The 20-watt, black-panel, 1x12 reverb combo has been a seminal template ever since Fender’s legendary Deluxe Reverb hit the scene in 1963.

Add a foot-switchable gain (lead) channel, effects loop, and external bias adjustment facilities to the feature set, and if it lives up to its name in the tone department – sonzera being slang for cool sound – it’s almost certain to be a winner at this price. Even though the 2023 Sonzera 20 comes in at approximately $200 more than the original 2017 release, the sub-$1,000 price tag appears extremely reasonable, from a quick assessment.

It looks to be even more of a bargain when you learn that PRS amp designer Doug Sewell has not only refined the amp’s voicing but has also redesigned the printed circuit board (PCB) for lower noise and improved durability, upgraded component specifications, and made the cabinet build more rugged, along with overhauling the combo’s look.

Regarding the styling, I feel the black Tolex with silver grille and piping is a winner, and the 19-by-18-by-10.5-inch combo looks sleek, timeless and ready for business.

Despite its American inspiration, the Sonzera 20’s control panel is laid out British style, with the signal flowing leftward from a single input at the far right of the fascia. From here, we first approach the Gain channel with its own bright switch, followed by controls for drive, level, treble, mid and bass. A front-panel channel-selector toggle follows, with the Clean channel’s volume, treble and bass after, then global reverb and presence.

On the back, right to left, are the power and standby switches, loop send and return, output-tube bias checkpoints and adjustment pot, the TRS foot-switch jack (a two-button foot-switch for reverb and channel selection is included), and five speaker outs: one for the onboard 12-inch Celestion V-Type at 16 ohms, two eight-ohm and two four-ohm.

Chinese construction has helped to keep the Sonzera 20’s price at this level, but the re-released combo reveals a robust build and sturdy components nonetheless. Inside the chassis this means a PCB and consumer-grade parts, naturally, but I’d say it’s on par with most other all-tube amps at this price, and arguably more confidence-inspiring than many.

The Sonzera 20 carries four 12AX7 preamp tubes for gain-stage, reverb and phase-inverter duties, along with two 5881s in the output stage (they can be substituted with two short-bottle 6L6GC STRs, if desired).

Sewell tells us the larger output tubes enable a big-amp voice in a lower-output package and are easily regulated by voltage levels and careful transformer design to operate in something of a “permanently power-scaled” state. Used in this way, the bigger output tubes are also likely to enjoy an extended lifespan, which should help reduce maintenance issues.

I tested the Sonzera 20 with a Fender 1954 Telecaster Reissue and a Gibson SG Standard with humbuckers, and quickly discovered an amp that more than lives up to the value that its specs-to-price ratio implies.

Sewell points out that the Sonzera 20’s standby control is really an input-mute, so the usual “amp on” background noise will be heard even with that switch still off, but in fully operational mode the noise level is reasonable, even with the Tele’s single-coils.

With either guitar, the Clean channel offered impressive headroom throughout its range, delivering classic snappy, tight and articulate tones in a broad, balanced voice entirely redolent of the ’60s American classics.

While players also loved the original’s ability to be set at the edge of breakup for semi-clean tones that are still dynamic and singing, the Sonzera 20 avoids tipping into clipping all the way up the dial, and maybe just edges toward it at top whack with the SG’s humbuckers applied.

But that’s just what we call a pedal platform these days, and as per its design intentions this channel interacts beautifully with a range of overdrive pedals – including the Wampler Tumnus Deluxe, Origin M-EQ Driver and a Victory The Duchess that I tried with it – to enable a “third channel” of sorts, achieving the pushed-cleans and crunch tones that the amp itself lacks.

The Gain channel can be dialed down for edge-of-breakup clean-ish tones too, but then you would miss out on the delightfully thick, rich, singing lead voicings available here, which I found to be some of the most fun tone zones in the entire amp. American leaning, but with a nod toward British stack territory, this channel proved a gutsy rock warrior with surprisingly versatile capabilities, and it was one of the biggest surprises of this new Sonzera 20.

Both the Clean channel’s volume and the Gain channel’s level control can trick you into thinking there isn’t a whole lot of volume available here, given the gradual increase from silent to the high-noon position.

From there, though, things just keep getting proportionally louder on both channels, rather than merely folding into clipping as on many vintage amps, so it’s really more a matter of adjusting your expectations to an evenly tapered potentiometer.

The tube-driven spring reverb is impressive on all fronts: It doesn’t wash out the clarity and attack of your picking, even when maxed out, and it’s a lush and richly atmospheric effect by any measure.

All in all, this is a versatile and great-sounding amp by any standard, and it’s all the more impressive given its $999 price tag.

Given all of the above, the Sonzera 20 earns an Editors’ Pick Award for its achievements.

SPECIFICATIONS

• CHANNELS: 2
• CONTROLS: Gain: drive, level, treble, mid, bass, bright switch. Clean: volume, treble, bass. Global: reverb and presence
• POWER: 20 watts
• TUBES: Four 12AX7 preamp tubes, two 5881/6L6 output tubes
• SPEAKER: 70-watt 12-inch Celestion V-Type
• EXTRAS: Two-button foot-switch for reverb and channel select. FX loop, bias check and adjustment points. Five speaker outs for 4Ω to 16Ω cabs
• WEIGHT: 42 lbs
• BUILT: China

PRS led off its 2023 with the introduction of the SE DGT, a significantly more affordable, SE series take on its top-of-the-line Core DGT David Grissom signature electric guitar.

Now, it seems, the Maryland company is potentially preparing to introduce another upscale signature model to its entry-level SE series. 

In a recent interview with Premier Guitar, Orianthi – the Australian hard-rock guitar ace whose resume includes a handful of well-received solo albums, time in Michael Jackson's band, and a series of high-profile collaborations with Richie Sambora – revealed that she's in talks with PRS about producing an SE version of her signature model, currently only available in $11,000 Private Stock form.

“We’re in talks right now [and there's] probably an SE model coming of that one [the Private Stock model]," she said.

“A lot of people wanted to buy it and they couldn’t afford it. It’s very expensive, but it’s very well made. That is a dream guitar that was brought to life by the PRS team. Paul has really dialed it in. He picks the right woods, and everything is quality. They’re like Porsches, you know what I mean?”

Orianthi's Private Stock PRS model is based on a one-off build – itself a personalized spin on PRS's Custom 24 – that the company made for her in 2017.

It features a solid mahogany body, a two-piece flamed maple top, and a mahogany neck adorned with a 24-fret rosewood fingerboard highlighted by a stunning Lotus vine inlay pattern.

The Private Stock model is powered by a pair of PRS 58/15 humbuckers, the output of which can be tweaked by individual volume and tone controls, and a five-way blade pickup switch. 

Hardware on the guitar, meanwhile, comes in the form of PRS Phase III locking tuners and a PRS Gen III vibrato, with an eye-catching Blooming Lotus Glow burst finish rounding out the spec sheet. 

Orianthi didn't offer any details about the (presumably less ornately-spec'd) SE version of the model, or when it might arrive, but we'll update you with any specs and a release date as soon we get wind of either.

Keep an eye on prsguitars.com in the meantime for more info as it comes along.

Since its introduction in 2007, the PRS DGT (for David Grissom Trem) has been one of the most successful, and most highly acclaimed, variations on the flagship PRS models and a firm favorite of numerous guitarists.

Created in close collaboration with the Texas guitar slinger, the DGT is often held up as the PRS to convert players who didn’t think they liked PRS, and as one of the most versatile electric guitar designs period from any major maker.

Given that history, the arrival of the more affordable PRS SE DGT is seen as a big deal in some circles – and should be a big deal for anyone seeking an extremely flexible, capable performer at a sub-$1k price point.

PRS’s SE range, manufactured at the Cor-Tek Musical Instrument Co. factory in Indonesia, has often been praised for delivering impressive quality at reasonable prices, and clearly both the design origination and QC oversight of the PRS USA headquarters in Stevensville, Maryland, has played a big part in that achievement.

If anything, I’ve experienced the SE range improving steadily over the years, and my initial impression upon sliding the SE DGT out of its gig bag is that this isn’t likely to change soon.

Outwardly, the DGT – both this SE and the Core original – might appear to follow the standard PRS formula, and indeed it does in many ways. The basics include a solid mahogany body and carved flame-maple top with natural maple-edge “binding,” glued-in mahogany neck with unbound rosewood fingerboard, 25-inch scale length and archetypal PRS vibrato bridge.

However, several subtle alterations in the recipe add up to quite a different playing feel and enhanced versatility for the DGT that has proven to really suit some players.

The original DGT was based on a vibrato-equipped PRS McCarty model that Grissom was playing prior to its development, and to which he suggested a raft of modifications.

The McCarty body was already a tad thicker than that of the similar-looking PRS Custom, and the DGT retains that, along with the chunkier, more extended neck heel used to give the McCarty a more Les Paul-like sustain and resonance.

At the other end of the neck, the traditional 1 11/16 inches width at the nut was shaved down by 1/32 of an inch to a Gibson/Fender compromise, and the profile was carved to a rounded “C” with a medium depth of 27/32 of an inch (.843 inches) at the nut.

Rather than the volume, tone and five-way rotary selector that many foundational PRS guitars carried, or the alternative volume, tone, three-way toggle and push-pull, Grissom requested individual volume controls for each pickup so he could balance their signals in the in-between position, plus a three-way toggle selector and a master tone control with push-pull switch to split the coils on both pickups.

Finally, the pickups themselves played a big part in the DGT’s uptake, and the SE versions here contribute significantly to the SE DGT’s performance.

Created with both greater adherence to the original PAF humbucker design and the goal of realistic single-coil tones when split, they are lower output than many preceding PRS humbuckers (though by no means low-output in the broad sense).

Also, wiring them through the push-pull switch with an individual resistor lifting part of the tapped coil from ground keeps part of that coil in the signal at all times, resulting in a fatter and more authentic single-coil sound.

Savings come from the offshore manufacturing, for one, and the use of several cost-cutting measures. The top is less sumptuously carved, with less of an arch overall and less contouring around the upper horn, and the controls and switch are flush with the top rather than set into shallow recesses as on the Core DGT.

Rather than the nitrocellulose formulation that has been a big part of the USA DGT’s resume, the SE DGT is sprayed with polyurethane. It looks fabulous nonetheless, though it might feel less wood-adjacent in the hand as a result.

Tuners are more-traditional enclosed PRS units, rather than the Phase III Locking on upscale models.

The control and spring covers sit atop the back, rather than being recessed, and several other bits and pieces of hardware are SE-spec rather than USA/Core.

Regardless of all that, the guitar feels great in the hand and exhibits good craftsmanship from tip to tail. It rings like a bell when strummed unplugged and plays faultlessly up and down the neck, and it stays in tune remarkably well through heavy vibrato use.

One of two options initially available, this one also strikes a classic PRS chord in its McCarty Tobacco Sunburst finish with bird inlays, while the other offers the Goldtop with moon inlays that graced Grissom’s much-played original McCarty Trem.

In fact, having owned a couple of DGTs over the years, I’d say the SE makes an impressive first impression all around, and the alterations to the build and components quickly melted away once I started playing.

Tested through a 1966 Fender Princeton combo and a 65amps London amp head and 2x12 cab, the SE DGT felt comfortably familiar, and superbly playable.

From a thick, Gibson-ish grind from power chords and singing, sustainful leads with the pickups in full-humbucking mode, to brighter, snappier, yet still gristly Fender-meets-P-90 tones with the pickups split, there are sounds here to attack just about any genre you’d need to tackle.

PRS has another winner with these pickup specs, and they manage to be both gutsy and dynamic at the same time, with good string articulation even amid the overdrive from pedals – a Wampler a Wampler Tumnus Deluxe and a feistier JHS Angry Charlie.

So many PRS guitars are already known for their chameleon-like capabilities, but I’d say the DGT platform adds further layers of versatility even to that, making this SE rendition one of the best gig-ready jacks-of-all-trades you’re likely to find at this price.

Sure, it’s missing certain elements of the overall build quality, feel and tone of the Core model – call it a notch or two down in elegance and opulence, if you like – but that’s a $4k-plus guitar bought new today, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Given that, the SE DGT appears to perform even higher above its pay grade, and makes a worthy Editors’ Pick Award winner.

Specifications

• NUT: Bone, 1 21/32” wide
• NECK: Mahogany, PRS DGT rounded “C” profile
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, 25” scale, 10” radius
• FRETS: 22 medium-jumbo
• TUNERS: PRS enclosed
• BODY: Solid mahogany with flamed maple top
• BRIDGE: PRS patented vibrato
• PICKUPS: Two PRS DGT “S” humbuckers
• CONTROLS: Two volume, shared tone with push-pull switch for coil splitting, three-way selector switch
• FACTORY STRINGS: PRS Classic .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 7.45 lbs
• BUILT: Indonesia

Visit PRS Guitars for more information.

After initially establishing his reputation with electric guitars, and following with acoustic guitars and amplifiers, it seemed an inevitability that Paul Reed Smith would fill the missing link in the signal chain – pedals.

And so here we are looking at three new PRS stompboxes: the Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive, the Mary Cries Optical Compressor and the Wind Through the Trees Dual Analog Flanger.

Designed and assembled in the U.S.A., these elegant pedals feature textured housings and individually etched top panels, true-bypass switching and the ability to run on a nine-volt power supply or a battery (not included).

I tested these pedals with a Stratocaster and Telecaster, as well as a Reverend Crosscut and a Slick SL56 thinline, and plugged into a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a PRS HDRX 20 head and a Peavey Vypyr X2 digital 1x12 combo.

Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive

I couldn’t help notice that putting two of the pedals’ names together gives you “The Wind Cries Mary,” which falls in line with PRS’s recent focus on Hendrix with the HDRX line of amplifiers.

But that’s neither here nor there when it comes to the Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive, which is its own animal that stands out by having a large gain knob located at the top center, where it’s easy to grab.

Below it are the on/off LED and the level, voice, treble and bass controls. As with the other models in the series, the input, output and adapter jacks are on the front face to allow for placing the pedals close together.

The Horsemeat lives up to the transparent overdrive part by sounding true to the guitar driving it. Its core tone is clear and balanced, without excess midrange coloration, while its distortion range is broad and can cover everything from dirty rhythm playing to lead work where a medium-gain OD such as a Tube Screamer or a Zendrive might be called on.

The Horsemeat’s treble and voice controls also bring to mind the old Hermida-designed pedal in the way they interact for enhanced sculpting of the distortion tones.

It’s not clear if the Horsemeat’s controls are similarly configured post gain-stage and pre gain-stage, respectively, like the Zendrive’s, but the net effect is that it’s very easy to dial in different guitars to steer toward darker or brighter textures while maintaining excellent clarity, without drifting into harshness.

The Horsemeat has plenty of output to overdrive an amp’s front end, and it doesn’t compress either, which makes it feel responsive in a tube-like way to changes in guitar volume and picking strength.

It sounds great when running the gain on the low side and cranking the level to push the amp into breakup, but the Horsemeat also brings the saturated grind when you have to keep the amp volume down but still want the sound of sweating tubes when the pedal’s gain is cranked up.

In all, it’s a flexible machine with the EQ power to deliver happening tones with different guitars and amps, and that’s what makes it a good choice for those who, either by choice or what’s available at the venue, need an OD pedal that plays well with others.

Mary Cries Optical Compressor

The Mary Cries Optical Compressor is based on the famed Teletronix LA-2A rack-mount studio compressor, which reaffirms PRS’s statement as to the new pedals being studio-grade devices.

Designed to level out signal peaks, increase sustain and clarify your sound, the Mary Cries can also be used to boost your signal, and this makes it great for guitar use, where compression always seems to require an increase in level.

The pedal features conveniently stacked controls for compression (with an LED that indicates the onset of compression and gets brighter as it’s increased) and output gain.

Using it is simple: Find the sweet spot where compression enhances sustain, helps smooth out a rhythm part and/or makes something sit better in a track, and from there adjust the output gain to restore or increase level as needed.

As always with compression, there aren’t any rules – whatever sounds good is good. Just find the settings that enhance whatever it is you’re going for.

And even if you’ve decided that compression isn’t your thing because it kills the guitar attack, the Mary Cries could change your mind about that because of how it can deliver the volume lift of a booster while still letting you squash things to make country licks pop, or a slide solo soar.

Compression isn’t a particularly exciting effect (if you can even call it that), but this LA-2A in a box could turn out to be one of the hippest pedals on your board.

Wind Through the Trees Dual Analog Flanger

Featuring the largest housing of the trio in order to contain 10 twistable functions, the Wind Through the Trees Dual Analog Flanger has two independent flangers.

Each has controls for manual (controls delay time), depth (adjusts sweep depth and sounds more swirly as it’s turned up) and rate, and the latter includes an LED that pulses in sync with the speed.

The WTTT delivers such a broad palette of effects that taking the manual’s advice and setting all the controls to noon is a good way to start exploring the myriad ways that a pair of flangers can be dialed to create everything from classic swooshing effects – which you can quickly sample by using

There’s also a mix control for blending the two flangers (a.k.a. LFO-1 and LFO-2), a global regeneration control that feeds the affected signal back into the front of the signal path to increase the intensity, an Added Highs control to restore lost high frequencies at the output stage, and a global dry/wet control.

It’s an adventurous pedal to say the least.

suggested settings in the manual – to dramatic pitch-bent sounds, eerie whistling tonalities and things that sound like alien chatter and ’50s-style sci-fi sound effects.

All of this can be summoned by using disparate settings on the LFOs, adjusting mix ratios to allow one flanger to reign supreme over the other, turning up the regeneration and using Added Highs to keep it all sounding clear and detailed amid the sonic mangling.

For my own pedestrian needs, I could use LFO-1 set to a slower speed and blend in LFO-2 manually to add color, or turn it all the way to the right for a totally different flanging effect and speed.

Having a foot switch to toggle between the LFOs would be nice, as would a volume control or trim pot to give the flanging some boost when it’s switched on.

The Wind Through The Trees Dual Analog Flanger is an impressive debut thanks to the controllability it offers, its rich analog sound and super low noise.

PRS has created a beauty of a beast that signals its arrival on the stompbox scene in a big way.

Specifications

Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive:

• CONTROLS: Gain, level, voice, treble, bass. Foot switches for amplitude, octave and magnitude
• I/O: Input, output, 9VDC jack
• EXTRAS: True-bypass. Can be battery powered
• SIZE: 4.75” x 3.50” x 1.75”
• BUILT: Designed and assembled in USA

Mary Cries Optical Compressor:

• CONTROLS: Compression (with LED), output gain
• I/O: Input, output, 9VDC jack
• EXTRAS: True-bypass. Can be battery powered
• SIZE: 4.75” x 3.50” x 1.75”
• BUILT: Designed and assembled in USA

Wind Through The Trees Dual Analog Flanger:

• CONTROLS: (LFO-1) Manual, depth, rate. (LFO-2) Manual, depth, rate. Mix (blends between LFO-1 and LFO-2). Regeneration, Added Highs, dry/wet
• I/O: Input, output, 9VDC jack
• EXTRAS: True-bypass. Can be battery powered
• SIZE: 5.75” x 4.75” x 1.75”
• BUILT: Designed and assembled in USA

Visit PRS for more information.

To maintain any kind of position in the guitar market alongside the likes of Fender and Gibson, let alone be seen as equally prestigious is no mean feat, yet PRS has managed that build serious equity with guitarists ever since they burst onto the market in the mid-80s. Mixing a distinct look with a player-centric design, the best PRS guitars are more than a match for the biggest names in the industry.

Over the years myself and the Guitar Player team has played and tested the vast majority of PRS guitar releases, from the divisive Silver Sky through to their more esoteric baritone and seven-string models. Combined with decades of experience testing, we've put our real-world experience of these guitars into a handy list to help you decide which you should buy.

If you want the very best of the best, then have a look at PRS Custom 24, which is the guitar that first put PRS on the map and remains one of their best inventions. For those without loads of cash to spare, the PRS SE CE 24 delivers all of the PRS signature looks, playability, and tone, all while costing just below the $500 mark.

If you're not sure which guitar to go for or you'd just like to learn more about PRS guitars, have a look at our how to choose and FAQ sections for more in-depth info. To see the very best PRS guitars available right now, just keep on scrolling.

My top picks

Best overall

If you were to ask 100 guitar players to name a PRS model, at the top of the board, without a shadow of a doubt, would be the Custom 24. This is hardly surprising since it was the guitar that kicked off PRS, making its debut at the '85 NAMM show.

Favored by session players for combining the best elements from Fender and Gibson, this modern classic is sure to get any job done. The 25" scale length neck is set into a mahogany body, with a maple top, which is adorned with a Strat-style tremolo system. The 85/15 humbucking pickups offer superb clarity, while the five-position switch allows you to access Strat-style tones at the drop of a hat.

This is a Swiss army knife of a guitar and can easily jump from soulful blues to hi-gain metal and everything in between.

Best budget

Representing the best value for money you can get when it comes to a PRS in my opinion, the PRS SE CE 24 is simply superb value for money. Coming in just below $500, you get an ultra playable instrument that looks and sounds much more expensive than it actually is.

When I was testing the CE 24 alongside a bunch of beginner guitars, I found it stood head and shoulders above the competition. Okay, it wasn't the cheapest out of all on offer, but if you're willing to spend an extra $100-200 on a guitar, the jump in quality is absolutely huge.

The coil split option means you can cover everything from heavy metal through to jazz and blues, with the dual PRS-designed humbuckers delivering some incredible guitar tones. I also found the tremolo worked really well, unlike those on the vast majority of beginner level guitars, the guitar stayed in tune no matter how hard I leant on it.

Best acoustic

The SE A20E, which is new for 2022, is the all-mahogany version of PRS’ Angelus mid-sized acoustic. The Mahogany imparts a subtle warmth, which adds richness to the bass while slightly taming the high end. Moreover, it thickens up the mids, making the SE A20E a guitar with some serious mid-range punch.

Its amplified sound comes courtesy of a Fishman Sonitone Pickup system that’s been uniquely custom-voiced by Paul and the Fishman team to sound as close to a natural guitar tone as they could get. Just the same, the preamp, which is stowed discreetly inside the top of the soundhole, has tone and volume controls that enable you to tweak the EQ to your heart’s content.

The SE A20E is a very dapper acoustic, all dressed up with fine accouterments such as a bone saddle, ebony bridge and fretboard, bird inlays, cream bindings, herringbone purflings, and a handsome black top. With Paul’s signature on the headstock, you’d think it would be priced way out of reach, but it’s actually surprisingly affordable.

Best for metal

Just because you enjoy heavier style of music doesn't mean you can't get a PRS guitar to suit your style. The PRS SE Mark Holcomb SVN can do everything from high gain precision djent tones to warm and clean tones, making it a lot more versatile than you'd think for a seven string guitar.

The neck does feel chunkier than a six string of course, but it's not as large as you might think. It did take me a short while to get used to that extra string but once that initial warming up period was over I never felt like I was stunted by the extra heft. You can absolutely shred on this thing.

The pickups are also surprisingly versatile. A lot lower output than you might expect from a heavy metal guitar, in the bridge position the Seymour Duncan humbucker delivers uber-precise breakdowns and cutting rhythm tones aplenty, while the neck position gives a warmer, more rounded sound that's great for nuanced leads and clean passages.

Best for blues

It’s the one the world was waiting for, an affordable version of the most controversial PRS guitar ever, finally with us. John and Paul’s Fender-inspired S-shape certainly divided opinion back in 2018, but for many, the most pressing question was, ‘when are we going to see an affordable SE version?’

The biggest change is the body material, which is now Poplar rather than Alder. However, we don’t notice any significant difference in voicing, this is a guitar that still has that characteristic S-shape tone in spades, whatever the tonewood. It’s a similar tonal story with the rest of the build. It's 635JM “S” pickups aren’t quite the same as the 635JM pups in the pricier Silver Sky, but they’re darned close. To our ears, the original versions boast a touch more clarity, but that’s about it.

The other changes are also subtle – the locking tuners are gone, the nut is synthetic, the finish is poly rather than nitro, the fingerboard radius is slightly different, and so on – but so what? None of them detract from the sound or authenticity of this guitar. At this price, the SE Silver Sky is not just a good deal, it’s still very much the real deal.

Best for jazz

Next up is a semi-hollow offset guitar with bags of personality - and the first from the S2 range to be featured in this guide - the PRS S2 Vela Semi-Hollow. For those who aren't familiar, the S2 range is a collection of guitars that take a back-to-basics approach, opting for a more straightforward design.

The Vela is a little more basic when compared to the likes of the Custom 24. Although the flamboyant flamed maple top, iconic bird inlays and intricate tremolo system are absent, this quirky guitar still shares a lot of the DNA that makes it a Paul Reed Smith instrument.

The sleek curves and effortless playability means this is unmistakably a PRS, while the brass saddle T-type bridge and Type-D Singlecoil pickup bring something new to the table.

Also consider

How to choose

PRS have five key ranges of guitars to choose from: Core, Bolt-On, S2 Series, SE Series, and Private Stock. These vary pretty significantly – certainly when it comes to price – so let’s briefly break down what can be expected from each.

1. SE range

Their SE range is PRS’s entry-level offering that is far from entry-level in quality. Manufactured in Indonesia, they may not have the same prestige that an American-made PRS commands, but they are some of the best bang-for-buck guitars money can buy. The quality is still sky high, and there are also some stunning finishes that you’re unlikely to find on any other guitar under $1,000.

2. S2 range

For those wanting to experience an American-made PRS instrument, but without the crazy price tag, you can save a considerable amount by moving to the S2 series – though don’t think these are cheap guitars, they still command a pretty hefty price tag.

S2 guitars differ from the Core and Bolt-On lines by their less flamboyant finishes, which helps to shave down the costs, however they utilize the same pickups as their bigger brothers, so still sound just as incredible. The S2 line also has some unique shapes, including the Vela, a sort of offset PRS shape that is utterly beautiful, particularly in semi-hollow form.

3. Core range

The Core range is the benchmark. PRS’s series by which all of their other instruments are judged. These are premium, USA-made guitars that come at an equally premium price point, with legendary models such as the Custom 24 and McCarty sitting in this range.

Across the Core line, you can expect to find vintage-inspired instruments, along with more modern and speciality designs. While PRS wouldn’t want to put their instruments directly up against other manufacturers, you can consider this the range that would be put against Gibson’s ‘Standard’ and ‘Custom’ line of instruments.

Alongside the Core range is the Bolt-On line of guitars, made to an equally high standard, but using bolt-on neck technology as opposed to set necks, with comfort being a key selling point. In this range you can find guitars such as the Custom 22 and the divisive Silver Sky. These share a similarly premium price tag as the Core range.

4. Private stock

If you’re the other end of the spectrum, and finding the pinnacle in PRS guitars is what you’re looking for, look no further than their Private Stock range. These are extremely exclusive instruments, which only certified dealers will be able to stock.

You can go pretty outlandish with these guitars and spec them however you wish – though this comes at a significant price. As part of that price, your guitar will be personally inspected by both Paul Miles, the Director of Private Stock and, the man himself, Paul Reed Smith, so they will face the highest level of scrutiny before reaching your fingertips.

5. Acoustics

PRS currently builds only three acoustic body styles. The Angelus is a mid-sized cutaway that probably best exemplifies the benefits of Paul’s hybrid X/Classical bracing system. It comes in a variety of tonewoods, all voiced to boast sparkly highs, a sweet mid-range, and a low end that’s full of warmth and clarity. The Angelus is an amazing guitar for fingerstyle but has plenty of projection for flatpicking and loud strumming styles too. Of the range, it might be seen as the best do-it-all model.

If you’re looking for something that excels at strumming, the Tonare models are modestly sized jumbo-shaped guitars that offer more volume and midrange – perfect for bashing out some chords with. As you’d expect though, they are more versatile than just strumming, and sound pretty good at flatpicking and fingerpicking too.

Finally, the brand’s parlor range takes the Tonare body shape and shrinks it. The result is a small guitar with much more depth and projection than you’d expect.

These three models only fit across two of PRS’s ranges, rather than across five ranges like their electrics. Primarily they sit in their SE range, however they also offer Private Stock acoustics, which sit right up there with luthier-made acoustic guitars for quality.

There is a limited run of pre-specced Private Stock acoustic guitars released each year, however, if you want, you can design and specify your own acoustic model. As with the Private Stock electrics, these instruments are one-of-a-kind works of art and their price reflects that.

FAQs

How we choose products

At Guitar Player, we live and breathe everything guitar related. It's our passion and we certainly hope this passion comes through in our buyer's guides. Everyone at Guitar Player is an expert in their field and we draw on this knowledge and experience when selecting the products for our guides.

When choosing what we believe to be the best PRS guitars available right now, we combine our hands-on experience, user reviews and testimonies and engage in lengthy discussions with our editorial colleagues to reach a consensus about the top products in any given category.

When making our lists, we pay careful consideration to everything from budget to feature set, playability and durability to come up with an accurate representation of the best electric guitars available right now.

Read more on how we test gear and services at Guitar Player.

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• Want an affordable amp? Well, here are the best guitar amps under $1,000

Small amps that kick ass are always welcome, and PRS just made it a whole lot easier to enjoy what their bigger HDRX 50- and 100-watt amps have to offer by introducing the new HDRX 20.

It’s a smaller and lighter version of the behemoth 100-watt head that PRS based on a particular Marshall Super Lead amplifier used by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock and which now resides in Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture.

I tested the HDRX earlier this year, and at the time it was hinted that a lower-powered version would eventually be offered.

Naturally, the reaction here was: bring it on!

Right off the bat, the HDRX 20 threw me a curve. I expected to see EL84 or 6V6 output tubes, because they’re so ubiquitous to amps of this power class. Instead, it uses a pair of very American Tung-Sol 5881 tubes (running in Class AB), which are actually rated at 25 watts apiece.

When I think of Hendrix and Marshall, I think British valves, but PRS obviously had good reasons to go with 5881s, and I’m guessing it had to do with headroom, resistance to compression and just a more muscular presentation.

Inside the Tolex-covered birch-ply cabinet, a steel chassis houses a large PCB and a smaller one for the rear-panel speaker jacks, bias test points and bias pot. The power-tube sockets and the transformers and choke are chassis-mounted and hand-wired to the PCB.

As on the 100-watt HDRX, there’s only an on/off switch. PRS says the high-value electrolytic filter caps provide sufficient charging ramp to prevent the tubes from being smacked with high voltage when the juice is flicked on, and that’s why there’s no standby switch.

Starting from the left side of the front panel, the controls are presence, bass, middle, treble, high-mid gain switch, master volume, treble volume (with bright switch), bass volume and single input jack.

The two channels are internally jumpered, so you can use them individually or combined to get extra gain and take advantage of their different voicings.

The rear panel has five speaker jacks (see the specs chart below for impedance choices), three bias test points (V4, V5, common) and a screwdriver-adjustable bias pot.

It’s a simple procedure to bias the tubes when a new set is installed: Set your DVM to millivolts (mV), stick the black probe into common and the red probe into V4 or V5, and look for a reading of 25 to 30mV, adjusting the pot if necessary.

After unboxing the HDRX 20 and firing it up to check that everything was in order, I took the head and PRS cabinet (which measures 24 by 18 by 10 ½ inches) to an outdoor gig where I could turn it up reasonably loud and spend some quality time with it.

I set all the controls halfway and kept the high-mid gain switch on and the bright switch either off, with a Fender Vintage II Tele, or on, with a Gibson Memphis 1961 ES-335.

The HDRX 20 proved a formidable little beast that delivered plenty of volume and had enough clean headroom to keep everything sounding clear, tight and dynamic with a selection of distortion pedals, in this case a Warm Audio Centavo and Warmdrive and a Fulltone OCD.

I barely touched the amp’s EQ knobs and mainly adjusted the presence to suit single-coils or humbuckers, so the HDRX definitely passes the no-fuss test when switching between different guitars.

The HDRX 20 is really in its element when you crank up both volumes, the tone controls and the presence knob, which itself adds a bit more gain when dimed. It’s a majestic sound, with the amp revved up enough to appreciate that low-end thump and crunching upper-midrange bite.

The amp is designed so that you can really push the treble without it sounding harsh, and this is also where you can appreciate how Paul Reed Smith and amp designer Doug Sewell took great care to develop vintage-sounding transformers, especially the output transformer, which contributes so much to the HDRX’s smooth, late-’60s Plexi tone, and how the amp responds so musically to your playing touch and guitar volume changes.

In keeping with the Super Lead formula, the HDRX 20 stays tight at high volume, and the master volume (which is not present on the HDRX 50 or 100) is a good addition here as it allows for tailoring the output to smaller rooms without the need for an attenuator, which was an absolute necessity with the bigger HDRX amps.

The HDRX 20 is great choice for anyone who loves classic Marshall tone and wants it in the purest form possible.

This compact, lightweight amp is a pleasure to take on gigs, and it’s quite affordable too, considering what many boutique 20-watters will set you back.

Kudos to PRS for creating an amplifier that gives more players the opportunity to experience old-Plexi tone in a package that really makes sense for working musicians.

Some amps may have a ton of functions, but the HDRX 20 is a ton of fun, and that’s why it gets an Editors’ Pick Award.

Specifications:

• CHANNELS: Two (internally jumped)
• CONTROLS: (from left) Presence, bass, middle, treble, high-mid gain switch, master volume, treble volume, bright switch, bass volume
• POWER: 20 watts TUBES Three JJ ECC83S (12AX7) preamp tubes, two Tung-Sol (Electro-Harmonix) 5881 power tubes
• SPEAKER: Tested with PRS closed-back 1x12 with Celestion G12H-75 16Ω speaker ($999)
• EXTRAS: Bias jacks and pot. Five speaker jacks: 1x4Ω or 2 x8Ω; 1x8Ω or 2x16Ω; 1x16Ω
• WEIGHT: 19.78 lbs head; 25.18 lbs cab (tested)
• BUILT: Indonesia (designed in Maryland, USA)

Visit PRS for more information.

If you like in-depth interviews with great guitar players AND you like to hear them play, then you need to listen to our No Guitar Is Safe podcast.

Presented by Guitar Player and hosted by Jude Gold, No Guitar Is Safe is free to listen to at your leisure on iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts.

With over 150 episodes uploaded there’s plenty to get your teeth into.

Ready to “fly the ‘copter” all the way to Germany? 

Well, being that Jude Gold was just on tour with Jefferson Starship opening shows for Deep Purple all over Europe (so cool!), you know there was NO WAY he was not going to land an interview with their brilliant new guitarist, Simon McBride.

This exciting episode takes us all the way to Oberhausen, Germany, for an inspiring backstage guitar hang with the Irish six-string virtuoso, where, in a side room at the town’s Rudolf Weber-Arena (FKA the König-Pilsener-Arena) Simon plugs in his custom Paul Reed Smith.

Here, he demonstrates many of the captivating electric guitar approaches employed each night on stage with his legendary bandmates – Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Roger Glover, and Don Airey.

Simon also reflects on what it means to take over the guitar chair from longtime Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse – who, after 28 years in the band, stepped down earlier this year.

Elsewhere, the maestro reveals what it’s like follow in the footsteps of Deep Purple’s founding guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore; trade licks each night with the band’s formidable keyboardist, his good friend Don Airey; and start off one of the world's most iconic guitar songs each night, "Smoke on the Water."

Thank you for listening!

Visit the Deep Purple website for news and tour info.

Blues guitar legend Robben Ford has posted pro-shot footage of his set on August 3 at Koko Jazz Club in Helsinki, Finland, and it is notable for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it’s awesome. Seeing Ford in a casual club environment, with no raised stage, playing before a sea of tables, makes for an unusually intimate look at the virtuoso in action, and the ease with which he and his all-Finnish backing band work through the set is inspiring, the Californian calling out the tunes as they go along – quite literally when they play “Go,” from his latest album, Pure.

Secondly, it finds Ford debuting his long-awaited PRS signature electric guitar, that was first introduced on his Instagram account around a year go. 

Finished in all-black, with what looks like natural maple or cream binding, the double-cut model sounds incredible through what looks like a black-panel Fender Deluxe – certainly not the Dumble Overdrive Special (serial number: 002) that he has been associated with ever since he got the amp in 1983.

“How’s the guitar?” Ford asked the crowd. “Too loud? Not loud enough!? This is a brand new guitar for me. First time I’ve ever played it on gig, so I’m fulling around with it a little bit.”

Ford was joined on the night by Timo Hirvanen on bass, Jussi Lehtonen on drums, and Holgar Marjamaa on organ, with the band warming up to Marjamaa’s bravura organ-led progressive jazz exercise, “Bouncing with Holger.”

Ford takes to the stage after seven and a half minutes, opens with “Bird’s Nest Bound”, the Big Joe Williams track from 2013’s Bringing It Back Home, and inaugurates a set of laid-back genius. Ford follows that with a cover of Allen Toussaint’s “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky”, again from Bringing It Back Home.

“Truly a pleasure to be here and especially to be playing with these great musicians back here,” said Ford, introducing the band. “I do know them by first name but last name not so much.”

Other highlights from the night included “What I Haven’t Done”, a standout from 2018’s Purple House, written by Kyle Swan. The only disappointment is that there is no waiter service on YouTube, so you'll have to fix your own Martini and dim the lights for that jazz club vibe. 

Ford returns to the States to play the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco on September 16, before heading to San Diego’s Music Box on September 18. See Robben Ford for more tour dates.

There has been no confirmation from PRS that there is a Robben Ford model incoming. Other features include a wrap-around bridge, dual humbuckers branded with Ford’s personal seal, a pickup-splitter mini-toggle, volume, tone, and a three-way pickup selector, and an oversized headstock.

Paul Reed Smith says listening to Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced album inspired him to play guitar as a teenager, setting him on a path as a musician and a guitar maker. 

In that latter capacity, Smith has devoted himself to investigating all the elements of great electric guitar designs and invented ways to improve them. The PRS record speaks for itself. The same level of commitment extends to guitar amps, which PRS introduced in 2007 after bringing Texas amp builder Doug Sewell onboard to create a line that includes the Archon, DG Custom 30, MT 15, and the new HDRX. 

So it’s no surprise that Smith would focus his attention on an amplifier that was a mainstay for Hendrix – the circa-1967/68 Marshall Super Lead – and utilize his team’s energies into recreating an amp that Hendrix purportedly played at Woodstock and is now housed at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Washington. 

The HDRX project began in 2018 when Smith and Sewell visited the museum to document the amplifier. “Studying Hendrix’s amp not only showed us the circuit, which is well documented, but also what had been modified,” Smith says. “We had to take what we were seeing and consider the guitars and pedals that were being used with it, as well as the fact that this amp was significantly modified, in part to work on American power without blowing up and in part to further dial-in the sound. 

“Still, designing the HDRX was not an exercise in over-engineering,” Smith continues. “It’s a fairly straightforward build. We kept the historical aspects where it made sense, and we made substitutions where it made sense based on availability, safety, and experience. In the end, I think we created an authentic-sounding amplifier with exceptional build quality and enough power to blow your pant leg when you play it.”

Starting in the engine room, the HDRX 100 uses four Electro-Harmonix EL34 power tubes and has three JJ ECC 803S (12AX7) tubes in the preamp. The output transformer is a custom-designed “straight-edge” type (it came loose during shipping on the first amp we received), and the power supply and DC heaters are designed for low noise. Note that for tonal consistency, the 50- and 100-watt models use the same power supply. 

Sharp-eyed readers will notice the absence of a standby switch, which PRS says is unnecessary due to the “historically correct high-power value filter caps.” The manual recommends pulling the guitar cable slightly out of the input jack when you want to mute the signal. 

The plywood cabinet is covered in black Tolex and features screened openings to provide airflow. The front and back panels are black Plexiglas with gold lettering and black pointer knobs. There’s also an Authentic Hendrix logo along with Hendrix's signature and a statement that reads, “Based on Jimi Hendrix’s amplifier circuit in the permanent collection of Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture.”

Circuitry inside the steel chassis is laid out on double-sided, through-hole PCBs, which PRS says improves both consistency and reliability over vintage-style tag-board construction. Still, there’s a fair amount of hand wiring involved in connecting the control pots and the output-tube sockets. 

To facilitate servicing, there are bias jacks and a screwdriver-adjustable bias pot on the rear panel. There are also five speaker jacks: two 1x4 ohm or 2x8 ohm, two 1x8 ohm or 2x16 ohm, and one 16 ohm. The AC socket permits operation on 100, 120, and 230 volts by simply changing a fuse, and there’s also a single H.T. fuse. Weight is a modest 41.5 pounds. 

A single input jack replaces the four holes on a vintage Marshall, and the channels are internally jumpered. Controls from right to left are bass volume, treble volume, bass, treble, middle, and presence. There’s also a three-way bright switch and a high-mid gain switch that adds a cap to the circuit to enhance upper-midrange response. This was a mod discovered on the Hendrix amp, and PRS put it on a switch to give you a choice of having it in the circuit. 

I tested the amp with a PRS HDRX 2x12 cabinet fitted with Celestion G12H-75 16-ohm speakers ($899; a 4x12 with the same speakers runs $1,199). I also used a Universal Audio OX to control the volume, as there’s no master on this amp and it’s extremely loud. This also allowed playing the HDRX through studio monitors, which is fun with all the rooms and options the OX offers. 

The spirit of the HDRX is rooted in an era when volume was the objective and Marshall was king with the stacks it had developed for the world’s top rock players. Things like master-volume controls, let alone attenuators or power soaks, weren’t even in the picture, as they would have simply gotten in the way of what the Super Lead was designed to do – produce a lot of sound on big stages at a time when P.A. systems weren’t up to the task. 

The HDRX is an anachronism in that sense, but it sounds killer, and that’s all that matters if you’re into badass tube tone. With the volume controls set around noon or higher, there’s a lot of grind on tap, and it’s imbued with awesome dynamic feel and an in-your-face presence. 

Obviously, you can’t experience the full glory of such an amp without playing it at top volume through a 4x12 (or two), but even through a 2x12 and throttled down, the HDRX is a muscular amplifier that sounds awesome for lead and still delivers a great dirty-rhythm sound when the guitar volume is turned down.

Listen to Hendrix's live playing on “Little Wing” or “Like a Rolling Stone” when he’s not using the fuzz, and that’s where the HDRX is coming from. As Smith puts it, “The HDRX is designed to push the high end so that it is very clear, but not so much that it’s harsh, and it allows for aggression that can be backed off for smooth, sweet tones.” 

I mostly kept the bright switch off and the tone controls cranked, except for presence, which varied depending on whether a Strat or a Les Paul was used.

Activating the high-mid gain switch subtly increases gain while emphasizing upper-midrange bite. Hendrix must have dug this tweak because West Coast Organ and Amp Service – his Southern California–based amp modder – hardwired it into the Super Lead’s circuit. They also replaced the power transformer with what PRS calls a “cherry-picked” unit. A photo in the accompanying brochure shows a paper label on the transformer housing that lists the electrical specs. 

It took some four years to get the HDRX up and running according to PRS, which isn’t surprising considering the effort required to re-create a particular Marshall Super Lead used by Hendrix, while doing so in a way that enhances just about everything (tube quality notwithstanding) that made these amps so famous more than five decades ago. 

The HDRX isn’t for everyone, but if you want an amplifier that replicates what Hendrix plugged into at Woodstock, it delivers. It’s a beast unto itself and a thrilling ride to an era of guitar amplification when it was all about going big.

CONTACT: prsguitars.com
PRICE: $3,199

Evolution is the name of the game at PRS, so it’s not surprising that the new-for-’22 S2 Custom 24-08 (which is an advancement on the previous S2 Custom 24) carries things forward with a switching system that puts a range of tones intuitively at your fingertips.

The model on review here is a beautiful electric guitar with its Lake Blue finish, an iridescent-blue color that showcases the figuring of the maple like you’re seeing it through the waters of a pristine tropical reef.

The blue-planet theme is continued on the back, neck and headstock, and cool as this package is, if that’s not exactly what you’re looking for, you can choose from five other sumptuous shades.

Hardware consists of a PRS Patented Gen III Tremolo bridge with a push-in bar, a pair of 85/15 S uncovered humbuckers with a complement of volume and tone controls featuring easy-grip fluted knobs, a three-way selector and a pair of mini-toggle switches for activating the pickups in coil-split mode.

The Pattern Thin neck on our review model is set into the body and features a rounded heel that, along with the contoured lower cutaway, makes it easy to grab notes as high up the neck as you want.

The rosewood fingerboard has 24 well-finished frets, and the chunky synthetic nut is smooth on the edges and provides straight string-pull to the Low Mass tuners, each of which has a thumbscrew to lock the strings and prevent any slippage. (The thumbscrews aren’t “captured,” but an extra is included in case you lose one.)

The factory setup was excellent, providing low action with no fret buzz, along with sweet intonation in all positions. The trem is adjusted to float, and pitch up and down maneuvers felt very silky, while tuning remained stable throughout.

Perhaps because the bridge doesn’t rest on the body, you can hear a little more natural “reverb” coming from the springs, which seems to enhance the acoustic airiness of this guitar and makes it enjoyable to play unplugged.

Tested with a Fender Deluxe Reverb and a Line 6 Catalyst 100 1x12 combo, the S2 Custom 24-08 delivered balanced tones in all settings.

The 85/15 S pickups don’t present exaggerated midrange or bass frequencies, and they stay very smooth on the top, even when digging in on the bridge setting.

Activating the single-coil mode on the rear pickup reduces output a bit and brightens the response, but without causing spikiness or requiring undue attention to the amp EQ.

The noise is nil in split-coil mode too, which is another benefit of the 85/15 S design.

Using the mini-toggles to select split-coil on the neck pickup and full humbucker on the bridge yielded tones that cover everything from crisp, funky cleans to ballsy dirty-rhythm tones when driving a tube amp that’s on the cusp of breakup, and a flick of the switch yields smooth, singing leads as you floor the rear pickup into a high-gain input, in this case the drive channel on the Catalyst.

By itself, the neck pickup’s rich sound proves to be spot-on for clean jazz guitar sounds, and it’s the bomb for blues guitar, delivering touch-responsive grind in humbucking mode when hitting the Deluxe Reverb with its volume at around five or so, and becoming more aggressive and wailing when played through an OD pedal with the gain set on the low side and the volume cranked to give the amp more overdrive muscle.

Paul Smith changed the game in 1985 by creating the Custom 24, which introduced players to a sleek, offset double-cutaway axe that improved on just about everything, and looked terrific to boot.

The S2 Custom 24-08 carries forth the legacy, delivering a similar level of performance, and then some, in a U.S.-made guitar at a price that puts it within reach of those who play for a living. It earns an Editors’ Pick Award for doing so.

SPECIFICATIONS:

• NUT WIDTH: 1 11/16”
• NECK: Mahogany with Pattern Thin profile
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, 25”-scale, 10” radius. Birds inlays
• FRETS: 24 medium jumbo
• TUNERS: PRS Low Mass locking
• BODY: Mahogany with beveled, book-matched figured-maple top
• BRIDGE: PRS Patented Tremolo, Molded
• PICKUPS: PRS 85/15 S humbuckers
• CONTROLS: Volume, tone three-way selector. Two mini-toggle coil-tap switches
• FACTORY STRINGS: PRS Signature .010-.046
• WEIGHT: 7.4 lbs (as tested)
• BUILT: USA

For more information head on over to the PRS Guitars website.

Released in the arms of superstar John Mayer in 2018, the original Silver Sky model from Paul Reed Smith made a big splash and raised some eyebrows in the process.

The notion of this storied maker undertaking an idealized rendition of the time-honored Stratocaster drew gasps from some quarters, but those who played the thing almost universally praised its clever and archetypal PRS-like reworking of the form, and the superb playability, tone and efficiency of the effort.

With that in mind, the new SE Silver Sky is set to make big waves of its own.

Likewise released with Mayer’s full approval, and with a string of launch events to prove it, the model brings PRS’s creative take on the 25.5-inch-scale, bolt-neck, three-pickup classic to the world of hard-working guitarists at a much more accessible price, while maintaining the style, features and design in the way that has long made the offshore-built SE line a big success.

This guitar isn’t cut straight from traditional cloth, as various design points make evident.

Stand-outs include the three-to-a-side PRS headstock, and visual queues such as the diving-bird inlays on the 22-fret rosewood fingerboard.

A closer look also reveals the distinctive bevel given to the inside of the lower cutaway and the rounded neck heel, both complementing the traditional, comfort-enhancing ribcage and forearm contours by aiding playability at the upper frets.

Rather than use ash or alder, as found on Strats of the ’50s and ’60s, the SE Silver Sky has a body of poplar, which was used for models like the Mustang and Duo-Sonic II.

Our review sample is finished in Dragon Fruit, a luscious deep-pink-meets-purple gloss that comes alongside Ever Green, Moon White and Stone Blue in the new SE lineup.

Together with the three-ply white pickguard, white pickup covers and knobs, and light-gray tuner buttons and truss-rod cover, it makes for a stylish look that’s both familiar and subtly modernized.

Beneath that aforementioned fretboard, the neck is made from maple, with a scarfed joint for the gently back-angled headstock and a four-bolt joint to the body.

PRS calls its profile the 635JM shape, an easy-to-like rounded “C” that measures .828 inches deep at the first fret and .968 inches at the 12th.

The frets are smooth and well dressed, something we’ve come to expect from the Cor-Tek-made SE line, and the guitar plays easily and inspiringly in all positions, which is something we’ve come to expect from PRS in general.

In the electronics department, the SE Silver Sky sports exactly what you’d expect from a contemporary, though vintage-inspired, S-type.

The three single-coil pickups are PRS’s 635JM “S” units, made to the same specs as those on the standard Silver Sky, with a RWRP middle pickup for hum-canceling in the two and four settings.

They’re wired to a five-way blade switch with master volume and two tone controls (the lower for the bridge alone, the upper shared by the middle and neck).

Add it all up, and everything about the SE Silver Sky inspires confidence – the design, the build quality, the playability and, as we shall see, the tone.

The neck is both fast and comfortable and should present very few obstacles for fans of any particular or peculiar profile. Ultimately, this is a guitar that’s easy to sink into and run with.

PRS sets up the two-point vibrato bridge so that the back edge of the base is in contact with the body of the guitar, as is the artist’s preference, allowing for down-bend only. They have published instructions online for setting it to float parallel to the body, enabling a more even up-and-down vibrato action, should you desire. We adjusted it to the latter position, and it yielded an easy yet firm action and good return-to-pitch capabilities.

We tested the SE Silver Sky into Friedman Mini Dirty Shirley combo and a blackface Fender Bassman (head and 2x12 cab) amps, using a selection of pedals in front.

The short answer – and no surprises here – is that it does anything you’d hope to get from a good S-type, yet it does so with more ease and aplomb than you’re likely to get from many straight-out copies or reissues of the breed at this price point.

The poplar body delivers similar voicings that I’d expect to hear from an alder-bodied Strat with a maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, and the archetypal glassy shimmer, snap and quack are all part of these pickups’ sonic arsenal.

There’s also more girth underpinning much of it than many traditional S-types deliver, however, with good meatiness behind each pickup position when you dig in, and an impressive avoidance of ice-pick highs.

The pickups are all wound to the same spec of around 7 k-ohms, which leans toward the beefy side for traditional single-coils of this type.

It also means they’re a little fuller sounding in the middle and neck positions, although the overall balance is decent in this regard, and the bridge position delivers enough grunt for anything from thick twang riffs to snarling rock and roll.

Tone-wise, we were most impressed by the appealing blend of harmonic sparkle, wiry bite and gutsy punch from an electric guitar well into the sub-$1,000 zone.

That achievement firmly plants it at the center of bolt-neck SSS model’s traditionally broad range of capabilities, which in itself means the SE Silver Sky can really do just about anything you set your mind, heart and fingers to.

At this price, and given its versatility, overall build quality and the execution of the “alternative-S-type” concept in general, the PRS SE Silver Sky easily earns an Editors’ Pick Award.

Specifications:

• NUT: Synthetic bone, 1 5/8” wide
• NECK: Maple
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, , 25.5” scale, 8.5” radius
• FRETS: 22 medium-jumbo
• TUNERS: Vintage-style, non-locking
• BODY: Solid poplar
• BRIDGE: Two-point steel tremolo with vintage-style, bent-steel saddles
• PICKUPS: Three PRS 635JM “S” single-coils
• CONTROLS: Master volume and two tone controls, five-way blade switch
• FACTORY STRINGS: PRS Classic .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 7.75 lbs
• BUILT: Indonesia

Visit PRS for more information.

Santana's legendary Abraxas album – which took the band's one-of-a-kind, genre-fusing sound to dizzying heights, winning them legions of new fans in the process – celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

To celebrate, PRS has unveiled a limited-edition electric guitar celebrating the album and its legacy, the SE Santana Abraxas 50th Anniversary model. 

Like its sibling, the stock SE Santana, the Abraxas model features a beveled maple top, plus a mahogany back and mahogany neck. The neck boasts a rosewood fretboard with a shorter 24.5” scale length and 24 frets with bird inlays.

Other similarities include the same two PRS Santana “S” pickups, with the same control set of individual volume and tone knobs plus a three-way toggle pickup switch. A molded PRS tremolo also, just as it is on the original SE Santana, is fitted to the guitar.

The main difference, of course, is the artwork, which – set against the guitar's otherwise black finish – pays tribute to the album's cover.

“It is an honor to co-join with PRS Guitars in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Abraxas with a new Santana SE Abraxas 50 guitar," Santana said in a press release.

"Abraxas represents beauty, power, grace and the mystical, and PRS allows you to access this vocabulary at your fingertips with the universal tone that delivers power and clarity, allowing you to find your own voice in your heart’s music. We invite you to spread your wings and find your voice with this beautiful instrument."

The PRS SE Santana Abraxas 50th Anniversary guitar is available now – in a limited run of 1,000 examples, and with a PRS SE gig bag included – for $829. 

For more info on the model, stop by prsguitars.com.

Robben Ford is busy preparing for the release of Pure, his first instrumental studio album since 1997, but that new record might not be the only project the virtuoso guitarist has been working on lately.

This past weekend, Ford took to Instagram to give fans a look at a new PRS guitar, custom-made just for him. 

A new signature model? We're not entirely sure (Ford did partially caption the video "sneak peek") but one-off or not, the guitar boasts a number of notable features, among them an oversized headstock inspired by those found on the CBS-era Strats of the late ‘60s – early ‘70s.

A spin of Ford's video below also reveals the guitar's custom chrome pickup covers, beautiful black finish, and "Robben Ford" truss rod cover. The guitar also boasts two toggle switches – a three-way pickup selector and a smaller switch, for coil-splitting purposes.

Elsewhere, the guitar features a 22-fret fingerboard with PRS's trademark bird inlays, a PRS SE Stoptail bridge, and vintage-style tuning machines.

If we hear anything else about this gorgeous custom build, we'll be the first to let you know. In the meantime, if this tease gives you Robben Ford rig fever, take a guided tour of his pedalboard.

Following the success of its HXDA guitar amplifiers, PRS has announced a new brand that aims to recreate the sound of some of rock’s most classic guitar tones. The Maryland guitar giant’s HX amps have been designed to emulate the character and nuances of the late, great Jimi Hendrix – specifically, a modified Marshall amp he is believed to have used at his historic 1969 Woodstock appearance. 

With the blessing of Paul Allen and The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle prior to his passing in 2018, along with the legendary guitarist’s sister, Janie Hendrix, PRS amp designer Doug Sewell and company founder Paul Reed Smith were given the unique opportunity to study this one-off piece and glean the secrets of its legendary tone.

“We have married our part selection process with historical research and The Museum of Pop Culture amplifier to create an amp with the same great tone, feel, and reliability,” says Sewell.

The amp – which currently resides at the Seattle museum – was heavily modified at Hendrix’s request by Dave Weyer of West Coast Organ and Amp company. In addition to some practical enhancements such as converting it to take American rather than British mains supply, the Strat-wielding guitar hero also made suggestions and requests that would modify its tone. Consequently, the amp is something of a work-in-progress frozen in time. 

“[The PRS HX design] is not a painstakingly historical re-creation of the amplifier Hendrix used, but a snapshot in the development of a series of modified amps he came to use on tour and in the studio,” continues Sewell. “Consideration was given to reliability, compatibility with his effects and guitars, the tones he achieved, and the feel and response of the amp.” 

Although the PRS HX amps immediately appear over half a century apart in terms of looks, company founder Paul Reed Smith emphasizes that, above all else, they are engineered to sound like Hendrix’s live rig did back in the day.

“These HX amps are intended to sound exactly the same as Hendrix’s touring rig, not look exactly the same,” underscores Smith. 

“We know this is hallowed ground. We feel privileged to reach back into history and bring something special into the current music landscape.”

PRS HX amps are available in both 100 and 50 watt formats along with matching 2x12 and 4x12 cabinets loaded with modified Celestion G12H-75 Creamback speakers.

For more information and to hear the HX in action, check out the PRS website. 

The latest PRS guitars model introduced this year is the Special Semi-Hollow, which is special indeed, thanks to its hum/sing/hum pickup configuration, which uses a PRS Narrowfield unit in the middle position flanked by two 58/15 LT humbuckers in the bridge and neck. 

The Narrowfield is designed to deliver single-coil clarity and bite, but without the hum, and the whole idea is to enhance the versatility of this elegant design. 

The Special’s amplified performance centers on an electronics package consisting of a five-way blade switch that provides the usual pickup selections (neck, neck/middle, middle, bridge/middle, and bridge), along with two mini toggles that independently tap the humbuckers to provide single-coil flavors.

It adds up to 12 pickup combinations, and, coupled with master volume and tone controls, the system offers easy access to a ton of sounds. The way that the Narrowfield pickup is situated a little lower than the humbuckers makes it more accommodating to picking without feeling cramped for space. 

A beautiful guitar with its violin-carved striped-maple top – a 10-Top on our review sample – the Special Semi-Hollow wears a new and striking Purple Iris nitro-over-cellulose (CAB) finish that really shows-off the purple-ish colorations in this highly figured piece of wood.

The guitar is available in 19 other colors, and you can subtract $660 from the price for a standard maple top. The carved-out mahogany body enhances the guitar’s vibrational qualities and is a big factor in its light weight and nimble feel.

The Pattern set neck has an ideal shape for those who like the girth of vintage-Gibson necks, and it’s topped with a rosewood ’board with 22 PRS Standard frets and sweet-looking abalone bird inlays. A smooth synthetic nut and an excellent factory setup make for righteous playability and accurate intonation.

Hardware consists of a PRS patented Gen III tremolo with a push-in arm, and a set of open-gear PRS Phase III locking tuners that turn easily and keep the strings from slipping on the winding posts.

From a functionality standpoint, the bridge is a cool piece of machinery that offers butter-smooth operation, has no sharp edges to interfere with your hand, and looks neat with the nickel-plated steel body and brass saddles and screws.

Strings load from the back into the brass inertia block, and the unit is set up to float with four springs attached. The system has a light bending feel that makes it very expressive to the touch, and it returns to pitch reliably when worked hard.

We tested the Special Semi-Hollow using a Fender Deluxe Reverb and a Matchless Chieftain combo, as well as a variety of OD pedals. It has a resonant acoustic sound, and the pickups do a fine job of capturing that airy character at all volume levels, particularly when the guitar is up loud enough to enjoy the singing, edge-of-feedback sustain that semi-hollows do so well.

The PAF-style, low-wind 58/15 LT humbuckers are a great match, as they sound super clear and detailed when played cleanly, and they’re smooth and sinewy, with plenty of bite when pushing a distorted amp or pedal.

The sweet-sounding neck pickup is superb for rhythm and jazzy solos, and it also sounded cool with the coil-tap switch activated (where its slimmer response was dynamite with a lower-gain pedal) and used like an overdrive to get more amp grind. What a killer SRV-style blues tone with the Deluxe!

Sounding like a big single-coil, but rounder and more even sounding than, say, a P-90, the Narrowfield pickup has an output that matches well with the humbuckers, so there’s very little loss in level when you flick it on.

The Narrowfield is also great in positions two (neck/middle) and four (middle/bridge) when you want a funkier tone, especially with the humbuckers in tapped mode, which is where the Special Semi Hollow yields its chimiest and most Strat-like tones.

The fourth and fifth positions provide instant access to a lot of cool tones for rhythm and lead, and depending on how much gain you’re running, that bridge ’bucker covers a ton of ground, delivering everything from fat, bright Tele-style snap to super buttery sustain, with plenty of stops along the way for dirty/clean textures, all of which respond beautifully to how the volume and tone controls are voiced.

The bottom line is, anyone looking for a superbly playable, do-it-all axe that’s armed with great tones and looks sexy as hell should take the Special Semi-Hollow for a spin.

Specifications

• PRICE: $4,200 base, molded hardshell case included. $4,860 as tested with 10-Top
• NUT WIDTH: 1.687”
• NECK: Mahogany, Pattern shape
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, 25” scale
• FRETS: 22 PRS Standard
• TUNERS: PRS Phase III locking tuners
• BODY: Flame-maple top with violin-carve, mahogany back
• BRIDGE: PRS Gen III trem
• PICKUPS: Two 58/15 LT humbuckers, one Narrowfield single-coil
• CONTROLS: Volume, tone, 5-way selector, mini-toggles for coil-splitting the humbuckers
• FACTORY STRINGS: PRS Signature .010-.046
• WEIGHT: 6.78 lbs (as tested)
• BUILT: USA
• CONTACT: PRS Guitars

After getting pulled from the PRS lineup at the beginning of 2021, the Archon amplifier is back.

Featuring two channels – clean and lead – this new Archon is available in the form of a 50-watt 1x12 combo or a 50-watt head with matching 1x12 and 2x12 cabinets.

The lead channel's gain controls aim to offer tones ranging from tight, traditional rock punchiness to blistering metal roar. The clean channel, meanwhile, boasts significant headroom, making it a perfect pedal platform.

The Archon features volume, bright switch, treble, middle, bass, and master controls for each channel, in addition to global presence and depth controls. It's powered by two 6CA7 power tubes.

“The Archon gets a lot of attention for the very high gain on the lead channel. What people might not realize is that it has a great clean channel too," Paul Reed Smith said in a press release. 

"There are several country players using Archons. Doug and the team did a great job of making sure the Archon not only kept its quality and versatility, but they made significant improvements. That’s not so easy.”

The price and release date for the PRS Archon 50 amplifier have yet to be announced as of press time.

For more info on the Archon, stop by prsguitars.com.

PRS guitars has teamed up with Joe Walsh to create the new McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition guitar.

The singlecut features a bound, 24.594” scale length mahogany neck and a Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 stainless steel frets and PRS's signature bird inlays.

It's fitted with a pair of PRS 58/15 LT+ pickups, controlled by two volume and two tone controls with push/pull coil taps, and a three-way switch.

Unique visual appointments on the guitar, meanwhile, include Paul Reed Smith’s handwritten signature on the front of the headstock, and Walsh’s signature on the backplate.

“I don’t like new guitars, but out of the box this is absolutely perfect," Walsh said of his new signature model in a statement. "All the stuff on a new guitar that I always have to try to fix, is already done here. Out of the box. Thank you, Paul.”

"Joe's endorsement of the McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition means the world to me," added Smith. "We work very hard to keep pushing the guitar-making craft forward without losing sight of its rich history. 

"The McCarty models have always embodied that balance, and to have a player like Joe Walsh say we’ve nailed it is heartwarming.”

Limited to just 200 pieces worldwide, the PRS McCarty 594 Singlecut Joe Walsh Limited Edition is available now. Its price has yet to be revealed as of press time.

For more info on the guitar, stop by prsguitars.com.

PRS has unveiled the Antique White SE P20E acoustic guitar, a White-finished version of its stellar SE P20E parlor acoustic.

In addition to the Antique White finish that gives the acoustic its name, the Antique White SE P20E features a solid mahogany top and natural mahogany back and sides.

Otherwise, this P20E is the same as its standard counterpart, with PRS' hybrid X/Classical bracing, an ebony fretboard and bridge, a bone nut and saddle, as well as PRS' trademark bird inlays and headstock design.

The acoustic also comes loaded with a Fishman GT1 pickup system, featuring an undersaddle pickup and soundhole-mounted preamp with volume and tone controls.

The PRS Antique White SE P20E acoustic guitar is available now – in a limited run of 3,500 instruments – for $579.

For more info on the acoustic, stop by prsguitars.com.

Fresh off the announcement of its new Fiore and Silver Sky in Lunar Ice models, PRS guitars has unveiled the SE Custom 24-08 in Eriza Verde.

The eye-catching, new-for-2021 finish adorns this unique version of PRS' ever-popular SE Custom 24, which features two mini-toggle coil-tap switches that split either or both humbucking pickups into single coils.

In addition to the announcement of the SE Custom 24-08 in Eriza Verde, PRS also added Faded Blue Burst, Black Gold Burst, and Bonnie Pink finishes to the SE Custom 24.

For 2021, PRS has also brought Narrowfield pickups back to its Core lineup. The company's Special Semi-Hollow model now features a humbucker/Narrowfield/humbucker configuration with volume, tone, and five-way blade controls, while the Studio model now features a Narrowfield/Narrowfield/humbucker layout, with volume and push/pull tone knobs, and a five-way selector switch.

For more info on these updates, and all things PRS, stop by prsguitars.com.

PRS has teamed up with Snarky Puppy guitarist Mark Lettieri to create a new signature guitar, the Fiore.

Named after the Italian word for "flower," the guitar boasts a swamp ash body, maple neck, and maple fretboard with a 25.5" scale-length. A two-point steel tremolo, a truss rod cover featuring a flower image designed by Lettieri's mother, and vintage-style locking tuners also come standard.

Perhaps the guitar's most notable features though, are its pickups – the Fiore-S and Fiore-H. Voiced by Lettieri himself, they aim to front explosive funk and rock attacks, articulate even the most delicate of melodies, and provide powerful high-gain lead tones with a silky top end between them, according to PRS.

The pickups are controlled by a single volume and two push/pull tone controls, and a five-way blade switch.

The PRS Mark Lettieri signature Fiore guitar will be available – in Amaryllis, Sugar Moon, and Black Iris finishes – in May. A price for the guitar has yet to be announced.

For more info on the guitar, stop by prsguitars.com.

PRS guitars has unveiled a new, limited-edition version of its John Mayer signature guitar, the Silver Sky. 

Most notably, this version of the instrument boasts a polychromatic "flip-flop" Lunar Ice finish, which reflects light differently at every angle. It's also the first limited-edition Silver Sky with a maple fretboard.

Otherwise, this Silver Sky features the same specs as its less flashy counterparts – an alder body, a reverse headstock, PRS' signature bird inlays, three 635JM single coil pickups, and a steel PRS tremolo with Gen III knife-edge screws.

The PRS Silver Sky Limited Edition Lunar Ice guitar will be only be made available in a limited run of 1,000 instruments. A price and release date for the guitar have yet to be announced.

For more info on the guitar, stop by prsguitars.com.

From the most ornate of custom electrics to the simplest of parlor acoustics, Paul Reed Smith has designed all kinds of guitars over the course of his illustrious career.

As Smith told John Mayer in a recent Zoom chat however, there are some ideas that are so out there – putting more than two dozen onboard effects into a guitar, for instance – that not even he can make them work properly.

“Carlos Santana and I worked on this project for a long time,” Smith told Mayer. “We put about 25 tones in the guitar that you could rotate through different people’s pedalboards. You would set the pedalboard, and then you would have all that circuitry on a DSP in the guitar.”

“And so I built him this big pedalboard and it had [EarthQuaker Devices] Bit Commanders and all these wild-sounding pedals on ‘em. I put tape over the whole thing so he couldn’t see it. He just had switches to hit.”

“It sounded immense," Smith continued. "And I wanted to put it in the guitar so somebody sitting in the store just goes, click click click… I think it’s a good idea. Never gonna make it.”

Mayer, for his part, was intrigued by the idea. “I love hearing about things that are good ideas that nobody’s gonna want,” he said. “It excites me tremendously!”

You can watch Smith and Mayer's entire chat – which also covers Mayer's signature PRS, the much-talked-about Silver Sky – in the video above.

Back in May, PRS dipped its toes into new waters with the launch of the SE P20 and P20E, the guitar giant's first-ever parlor acoustics.

Now, the company has introduced an eye-catching, limited-edition Powder Blue version of the acoustic-electric SE P20E, complete with a blue-finished mahogany top, and natural mahogany back and sides.

Otherwise, the guitar – of which only 1,000 examples will be made – features the same hybrid ‘X’/Classic bracing, Fishman GT1 pickup system, ebony fretboard and bridge, and PRS 'bird' inlays and headstock, as a standard SE P20E.

The PRS SE Parlor P20E in Powder Blue is available now – with a gigbag included – for $579.

For more info on the guitar, stop by prsguitars.com.

PRS guitars has been celebrating its 35th anniversary this year by venturing into uncharted waters with new lines of affordable instruments and head-turning Private Stock creations alike.

Now, the company is closing out its celebration with Paul's 85, a luxurious new Private Stock guitar personally spec’d by Paul Reed Smith and crafted by PRS's Private Stock team.

The Paul's 85 guitar was crafted from a selection of wide-curl maple tops that Smith set aside. He also selected all of the other woods, assisted on the neck shapes of every Paul's 85 guitar, spec’d the pickups and played and adjusted each example until it was “right.”

“We believe guitar making is an ongoing process of discovery, and this Paul’s 85 guitar utilizes all of the parts, processes and workmanship I have spent my career (to date) seeking, testing, refining and teaching our craftsmen," Paul Reed Smith said in a statement. 

"My hope is that these benchmark instruments are something remarkable for our company and the industry. There is no better way to close out our 35th Anniversary than with these extraordinary, hopefully magic, guitars.” 

The Paul's 85 guitar features a dark Peruvian mahogany neck, Honduran rosewood fretboard and headstock veneer, solid red abalone birds with mother of pearl outlines, a bone nut, vintage-style tuning pegs and aluminum stoptail bridges with brass inserts and brass studs.

Sonically, the guitar is outfitted with PRS TCI pickups, and it sports a paper-thin, vintage-formula nitrocellulose Electric Tiger Glow finish. 

The PRS Paul's 85 guitar is available exclusively through authorized PRS Private Stock dealers. In accordance with its name – only 85 examples will be produced.

For more info on the guitar, stop by prsguitars.com.

”I’ve always seen the guitar as a tool to make music with, and I was trying to make a tool that worked for everything,” Paul Reed Smith says of the foundational guitars he created decades ago that blazed the trail for PRS Guitars becoming what it is today — a phenomenally successful manufacturer of sleek, beautiful-playing instruments that have consistently delivered exceptional tone and quality. 

PRS may not have been producing guitars during the birth of rock and roll (or earlier, as some can claim), but in a strange way the company seems almost timeless, as if the entirety of modern guitar history was assimilated into its DNA, spawning concepts that would have been unthinkable, or at least overlooked, prior to its debut in 1985. 

Only a forward thinker with the inventive smarts, guitar-playing experience and sheer knowledge of how to put it all together could have created an entity that holds such relevance in the guitar-playing community. And, somehow, Smith made it happen in a relatively short amount of time. 

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, PRS now boasts an extensive array of products. It spans five guitar lines that comprise the Core, Bolt-On, S2 and SE series, and Private Stock models; SE and Private Stock acoustics; a range of basses (Core, SE and Private Stock); and a complement of tube amplifiers that includes the Archon series, Grissom series, J-Mod, MT-15 and Sonzera series.  

But it all began with one guitar, the Custom 24, which has remained incredibly popular over the decades and is now offered in seven Custom models in 24- and 22-fret configurations. In developing the Custom 24 (or simply the Custom, as it was originally called), Smith had what seemed like fairly modest goals, but the realization of those ideals had enormous impact for guitar players at that time.

“I was trying to make a really comfortable guitar that somebody would want to own and use,” he says. “The neck shape was between an old Tele and an old Les Paul, and the scale length was in-between the two. By making the guitars work well in terms of finish and neck shape, and by addressing the tremolo, the pickups and controls, the weight, balance and all that stuff — I thought my guitars had a chance. I had so much to offer, and nobody wanted to have anything to do with me. I was screaming, ‘I have something to offer!’”

We spoke with Smith about creating his first production solidbody guitar and other models that have been significant to the evolution of PRS Guitars.

What were you noticing about guitars in 1985 that made you believe the time was right for something different? 

I thought there were things the guitar makers of the ’50s had done that had been lost. For instance, if you looked at a 1967 Tele and a 1969 Tele, they’re exactly the same, except one was soaked in polyester and the other had nitro lacquer on it. So they started to make changes and compromises that were making the guitars not work so well. 

The Custom 24 brought to the scene a spectacular design with superb playability and killer tone. It also had an outstanding trem bridge that seemed to come out of nowhere. How did you develop the original tremolo? 

Carlos Santana wanted a tremolo that stayed in tune and wasn’t a locking type. I told him I could do it and hung up the phone — and I didn’t have any idea how to do it. But here’s what I did: I put a roller nut that I made on the guitar to get rid of the friction of the nut, put locks on the tuning pegs to get rid of the rotational irregularities, put a knife edge on the bridge and knife edges on the screws, and I drilled the block out so that the ball of the string was very close to the top of the saddles. 

Eventually, I took off the roller nut and put on a version of a Teflon nut. The bridge was designed to keep the saddles from moving side to side, and the insert for the arm kept it from breaking off, like they did on Fenders. I approached all the problems and solved them, and Carlos was happy. 

What were the Custom 24’s pickups inspired by?

It was a slightly overwound PAF but had magnetic pole pieces on the slug side to give it a little more of that Fender snap. I’ve only seen one or two people who actually understand how to use them. The guitar player in Firefall, Jock Bartley, used to get that tone — half Fender and half Gibson — and he was good at it. 

A lot of people thought the pickups were too bright, but they were intended to be clear. We changed them to the HFS and the Vintage Bass pickup models within a couple of years, and when we did that we also got rid of the Sweet switch, because it was no longer needed. 

What amps did you use to voice them? 

It was either a four-input Marshall or something with a Soldano Hot Mod in it. That was a tube with three gain stages that you could put in a socket for a 12AX7, and it added gain. 

The highly figured tops that you started putting on your guitars were kind of novel in 1985, even though a few other companies, such as Moonstone and Oasis, were using figured woods. Was it widely accepted? 

I remember showing my guitars to Richard Ash of Sam Ash Music in New York, and he looks at the sales guys and says, “You guys think this curly maple will sell?” And the sales guys go, “Oh yeah, we can sell it. Get us the curly maple guitars.” 

But at the time, at NAMM, the curly maple was mainly in the violin department. Even a Les Paul had no curl in the top. Moonstone and Oasis, and also S.D. Curlee, Alembic and Hamer did have curly maple guitars, and they helped pave the way for PRS. But I wasn’t interested in paving new ground. I was interested in making guitars that people would buy and then buy again.

The Custom was the first model you put into production. What did that involve? 

To put it into production you had to have a jig for everything: for the body shape, the top carve, the headstock thickness, tuning-peg holes, neck carve, heel, neck joint, pickup holes… You name it. You had to have a machine for every single aspect of the guitar. 

All those machines had to be drawn up, and we’re talking something that took a year. It drove me crazy, yet I did it all by myself. I was also spraying all the guitars at night. I’d start spraying at six and I’d go home at 10:30. 

Your first high-profile endorser was Carlos Santana, which was obviously an immense validation of all the things you had worked toward with your guitars. Was it an overnight success? 

It was unbelievable. I was always told that if you build something magic, the world will pave a path to your door. But it’s not true. If you build something magic, you can get an appointment. [laughs] I thought if I could get Carlos to play my guitars, everything would change. 

That’s what I was telling myself. So one night after he had the second guitar I made for him, he was on the Tom Snyder show [NBC’s Tomorrow Coast to Coast] with his band, and they were killing it. They played for a half hour, and for 20 minutes it was a close-up of the guitar — not even Carlos, just the guitar — and it was worldwide. 

But afterward, nothing changed. What had happened was, I had the right to get an appointment. They would at least see me now. So having Carlos as an endorser was incredibly important. He didn’t go to meetings to help sell the guitars, but he said, “Give this guy a chance!”

The McCarty was a game changer. Tell us about its development and the role Ted McCarty played. 

That guitar was the game changer. It was the PRS that sold on the internet. People would say, “I know the quality is good, so I’ll buy it online.” The McCarty was 22 frets, and the body was a little thicker, though not as thick as a Les Paul. David Grissom designed it. He wanted a guitar that sounded like Duane Allman at the Fillmore East. I told him I wanted to put Ted’s name on it, and he thought that was okay. I showed the guitar to Ted and said, “This is what you should have made.” He goes, “No, I don’t think so.” [laughs] Ted was great, and David finally got the DGT, which is a McCarty with a tremolo. It all just kind of worked. 

Wasn’t the Dragon actually your first 22-fret guitar? 

It was the first McCarty in a way. It didn’t have the thinner headstock and the vintage tuners, but it had the thicker body and 22 frets. I thought they were beautiful. I played a Dragon for a long time. 

One time The Edge asked me for my personal guitar, and I gave him its brother. But he loved mine. It just happened to be Dragon number one and prototype number one. I should have given it to him on the spot. It sounded perfect through his rig. 

What was the reason for the McCarty’s longer heel? 

I made it longer so the neck would be stronger. When I put that heel on the guitar, you still couldn’t feel it when you played the last fret, but everybody looked at it and went, “Uh-uh.” I remember taking it to the first trade show, and the lead designer for Gibson looked at the heel and said, “You’ll never be able to buff that out in production. It’ll never work.” I looked at him and I thought, Well, you’re wrong. 

I was going against the grain, because people were doing a much more flowing, Alembic-type neck joint on guitars at this time, and the idea of going back to a traditional neck joint wasn’t well thought of by production people. But guitar players liked it. 

The McCarty also had the new PRS Stoptail bridge/tailpiece, which was so elegant in its simplicity. 

The Stoptail was a modification of the original McCarty bridge, as Ted called it. I designed it, and we made one, and everybody at the factory thought it was awful. I was in England and showed it to Doug Chandler [of Chandler Guitars, in London], who walked me into the English market. And he said, “You’re going to sell an awful lot of those.” 

What can you tell us about developing the McCarty pickups and how it influenced your pursuit of PAF tone? 

The McCarty had a thicker sound, and the DGT was even thicker, so I started to get enamored of the sound of really good PAFs, which can be very bright, even brighter than Strat pickups. There’s something beautiful about them in the bass position, and I was trying to learn from it. 

It’s not a simple equation, though. If it was simple, the 20 companies that have taken shots at PAFs would have all gotten there. But as we know, PAFs wouldn’t cost $4,000 to $5,000 each if you could buy one that sounded exactly the same. So we spent a lot of time on it, and I think it’s getting better and better. Every time we make an improvement, we release it, and right now we’re selling just as many McCarty 594s as we are selling Customs. 

So are you satisfied with your PAF-style humbuckers at this point? 

I’m still learning. There are three vintage pickups in the factory that we got, and we’re starting to understand why certain ones of certain years sound different than others. How come if it’s the same design for 15 years that only certain years sound different? 

It must be a very sensitive equation. So I use those pickups as a way to learn, and if I find something that sounds beautiful, and I think we can add a flavor to the guitars, we do it. For me, designing pickups is more about making artists like Robben Ford, David Grissom, Carlos Santana, Mark Tremonti and John Mayer happy.They’re using these live, and they’re not going to use something they don’t love. 

What was the reason for introducing the Singlecut? 

I wanted to make it so that somebody who is comfortable playing a guitar with four knobs and a toggle switch on the upper bout could do that with one of our guitars. So we came out with the Singlecut, and we changed the positions of the knobs. 

Things were going along fine, and then we got sued [by Gibson] and we got shut down for a couple of years. Then it was over, and we were back. Essentially, I had decided to get into the minivan business, and the people making minivans said, “You can’t make minivans.” I said, “Yes, we can! It’s okay for us to make double-cutaway guitars and single-cutaway guitars, and regular and single-cutaway acoustics. It’s just guitar making, right?”

What did Mark Tremonti do for the Singlecut?

The Singlecut has been a hard sell for us, but the Tremonti models have always done well. People have a way of pigeon-holing things. Carlos Santana is playing a Singlecut now with a tremolo and 24 frets, but he knows what he’s doing. He likes the sound of a single-cutaway guitar, and he likes 24 frets and a trem, and he’s got the right pickups in it. So he’s happy.

Very often the artists are playing something slightly different than what the market will accept, but I think the Singlecuts will always be with us and be a percentage of our sales. I guess we’re known for double-cut guitars, but I still like ’em. 

What led to the Hollowbody Spruce, which was a pretty radical departure for you back in 1997? 

I wanted a guitar that had a hollow sound and didn’t get away from you when you played really loud. So we put that sound post between the front and the back. My preference was always the non-piezo Hollowbody, but we had trouble selling them. 

Mike Einziger in Incubus was using one for a long time, but by the time he started playing one, we had already cancelled it. You know, the guitar market takes its sweet time about things. I mean, how long was it before Hendrix picked up a Strat? 

You do a lot of research on guitar designs, so let’s talk about the Tonare Grand, which is based on a bracing design Antonio De Torres developed in the mid 1800s.

Yes, I had studied an old Torres to try to see what he was thinking when he made his guitars. That is what led to our bracing pattern for the Tonare. It was heavily braced on the back and sides to lock them down, and the thin top was left to vibrate as much as possible, like a speaker. 

I didn’t want noise coming out the back of the guitar; I wanted it all coming out of the front, and I wanted it to be a concert-level instrument. I could have used a lot more time to work on it, but I thought the basic idea was really good.

I got a letter from somebody who bought six of them, and there’s a lot of people using them, including Tony McManus, John McLaughlin and Steve Vai, who says it’s his favorite instrument right now. That means a lot to me.

PRS has teamed up with music retail giant Sweetwater to create the Owls in Flight guitar.

A collaboration between PRS Guitars' Private Stock Director Paul Miles and Sweetwater Category Manager for Acoustic Instruments Thom Grant, the limited-edition Private Stock range was inspired by the owls that reside near Sweetwater's Fort Wayne, Indiana headquarters. 

Each Owls in Flight guitar features an exclusive Owls in Flight fingerboard inlay with a two-tone color scheme. Each of the guitars also sports a unique perched-owl headstock veneer - crafted from a variety of different, high-quality woods - and a unique “large gibbous moon” on the headstock, made from mother-of-pearl, glow-in-the-dark Luminlay and other materials.

The guitars' eye-catching finishes, according to Sweetwater, were inspired by the texture of owl plumage, lingering sunsets and other scenes from nature.

The Owls in Flight guitars sport custom electronics. Buyers can spec out their own customized design or choose between Sweetwater's pre-built models.

For more info on the guitars, stop by sweetwater.com.

PRS has a long history of attention-grabbing and luxurious Private Stock guitars, but with its latest Private Stock model, the "Snarling Tiger," the company has truly outdone itself.

This custom McCarty 594 model features a one-piece curly maple top and a figured mahogany back, plus a curly maple neck and fingerboard with ebony binding and mother of pearl bird inlays and side dots. 

The guitar's curly maple headstock features ebony binding, while the model is also anointed with PRS Phase III set-screw locking tuning pegs with curly maple buttons, a gold/nickel PRS two-piece stop-tail bridge, a bone nut, figured mahogany backplates and a curly maple truss rod cover.

Sonically, the guitar snarls with PRS 58/15 LY humbuckers. These are controlled by two volume and two push/pull tone controls, plus a three-way toggle.

Of course though, the elephant (or, tiger) in the room is that top, which was hand-carved by veteran wood carver Floyd Scholz. According to Scholz, the tiger was carved out of "very hard maple," with alternating, contrasting grain patterns making the carving "a challenging process."

The PRS “Snarling Tiger” Private Stock guitar is available now - in a Satin Nitro Antique Natural Smoked Burst finish - for an even $21,990.

For more info on the guitar, head on over to willcuttguitars.com and/or floydscholz.com.

• Dive into our pick of the best PRS guitars