PRS Experience 2007

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'DEDICATION' is the one word I would use to sum up what building a PRS Guitar is all about, or 'THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION' if I had to put it into a short sentence. I'll go into more details about the building of a PRS Guitar, when I write about the tour of the factory further below.

After an 8 hour flight across the 'pond', a small party of invited UK dealers, the directors of Headline Music (UK distributors for PRS Guitars) and Dave Burrluck (product review editor for Guitarist magazine, as well as author of the PRS book) are invited to a gathering at Paul Reed Smith's house, along with key dealers from the USA, Japan and Australia and a few key members of the PRS staff. Entertainment in Paul's lounge is provided by jazz fusion pioneer, and one of the first major players to use a PRS guitar, Al Dimeola, performing on his new Private Stock acoustic - It was also announced that Return To Forever are reforming with a new album and tour to follow.

Day 1 at the PRS factory starts with a performance seminar by Al Dimeola, followed by a questions and answer seminar with both Al and Paul. This is later followed by a seminar with Paul Reed Smith himself and again a very enjoyable questions and answer session. 'What makes a great guitar'? The answer is 'great ingredients' - This was the opening statement at the start of the seminar - Wood, glue, alnico magnets, hardware, decorative inlays, pickup windings, lacquer/finish, ceramic pickups paraffin or wax dips for the pickups, frets, switches, etc etc - Around 2 hours was spent discussing many related issues - A small selection of these raw ingredients were laid out on the stage for us to see, including 'sheets' of some of the most decorative abalone and mother of pearl I have ever seen. Such is their pursuit of the finest raw materials, and the contacts required to acquire these items, that the owner of a small business that has supplied most of the major guitar builders for a number of years with abalone and mother of pearl shell, had kept for around 30 years a small stash of the finest pieces. The owner is now going into retirement and as such has offered these items for sale. Needless to say these have been purchased by PRS. The same dedicated search applies to Brazilian rosewoods, flamed maple tops, premium grade mahogany etc etc. PRS will pay a higher premium to the timber yards for the best woods.

The early evening was followed by a concert in a large marquee at the PRS factory. The PRS Dragons were the house band for the night including the awesome Grainger brothers on bass and drums. Paul himself started the show with his tasteful and very accomplished blues playing. This was then followed by a number of PRS artist each playing 2 or 3 numbers including Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy (Alterbridge), Dan Toler (Allman Brothers), David Grissom (The Dixie Chicks and John Cougar Mellencamp), Derek St. Holmes (Ted Nugent), Paul Jackson Jnr (Session guitarist inc American Pop Idol + Christina Aguilera) Mike Scott (Prince and Justin Timberlake), Nicky Moroch (David Sanborn band) and the now legendary Johnny Hiland.

Day 2 saw a number of product and playing technique seminars by Johnny Hiland and Dave Grissom, with product demonstration clinics by J. Hayes (PRS Product specialist and a star on YouTube) plus more questions and answer seminars with Paul Reed Smith and Joe Knaggs - However the UK dealers were more fortunate to get a personal 1 on 1 chat with Joe - Joe Knaggs heads the PRS Private Stock team and is also head of design and development - All new models are built, designed and tested by Joe and the Private Stock team before released as a production model, including the development of signature models with the appropriate artist, like the Johnny Hiland model and the new DGT Dave Grissom model (guitars4you already have the first one on order to be shipped into the UK) - At least one hour was spent throwing questions at Joe about a mutual love of PRS guitars - All the why's how's and what fors - It even finished with me ordering 2 Private Stock guitars - One for myself and a 513 with a few tweaks - Our 513 will have a semi hollow body - Faded indigo nitro cellulose finish - new bird inlays - Brazilian rosewood neck + fingerboard along with the headstock eagle - Finally it will have the 'standard' neck profile - Not sure yet on both price + availability.

Later day 2 was also our long awaited chance of a factory visit - Without writing a book about it, lets just touch on a few points - The whole factory visit was far better than I ever imagined - We all know the attention to detail is legendary, but even I was surprised to what extent this goes to. I just assumed that many of the staff (around 200) would just be a fairly local based work force - WRONG !!!!!! - Nearly all the staff are guitar players with a love for both PRS and quality, many have moved from all over the USA after applying for jobs to work at PRS - All with various luthier skills - If you have a big passion about guitars both playing and building, then this is the place to work.

Our tour guide was Matt E, an infectious guy with over 10 years of working with PRS - After 10 years of service PRS named a finish after him - Blue Matteo (Matt E 0) - The timber room sees all the grading for various models inc 10 tops, Modern Eagles, artist pack etc etc - The required wood is ordered and delivered as premium grade, yet a waiting process that can take up to 15 weeks in some cases, to ensure the wood is kiln dried to deliver 5/6% humidity levels within the wood is required - Any more than that will lead to movement within the wood, resulting in warp necks or shrinking fingerboards, leaving rough fret edges, to name but 2 problems - The heart of the guitar is the wood and even hear painstaking selection is paramount - Like all major manufactures, even the small guys like Tom Anderson, PRS use CNC machinery to cut the neck shapes, body shapes, routing holes for controls, tremolos, pick-ups etc, nothing wrong with this, as not only is it quicker, it is far more precise, even down to the extent that as the cutting blade becomes more used, hence slightly worn and less precise (maybe we are just talking about .001") the computer will make an allowance for this and then reset it self as a new blade is fitted - However once the work force start assembling the guitars from the appropriate neck and body blanks, all key work is now carried out by hand - Checked and double checked, then checked again by the team or section leaders, who are normally the more experienced guys. All the sanding, checking neck profiles, fingerboard radius profile, frets correctly fitted and correctly contoured, level and smooth, body/neck joins are correct with the right pitch angle are all checked and carried out by hand. Whilst Paul is no longer involved in the day to day building of the guitars, he regularly visits the 'production line' (if you can call it that) and the issue he pays more attention to when inspecting and checking up, is to the neck - He wants it building to such an agreed detailed specification, to deliver that awesome playing experience - Incidentally Paul is still very much hands on at PRS - Which other major brand has the owner looking at build quality, new designs, buying the ingredients, promoting the business, gigging and playing the guitars, just to name a few day to day chores.

Back to the tour - After the guitars are assembled and checked again, they move to the finishing process - Again all the attention to detail is done by hand, checked again and again, and at any point the guitar is not met with full satisfaction, then it is moved back to an earlier process then corrected - If at this point a correction is not possible, then it will receive the dreaded bandsaw test - CUT UP AND PRONOUNCED DEAD !!!! - Finally after the finishing process, the guitar will be assembled with appropriate hardware etc - Just to remind you that all pick-ups are actually built in the PRS factory (with the exception of the Soapbar used on a couple of models and the Vintage Rails as used on the Swamp Ash) - After assembly the check-up and set-up work is carried out - Imagine just been able to play and test a number of finished PRS guitar all day and every day - Even at this stage a final check over procedure is carried out, by hand, to ensure only perfection is cased, boxed and sent to the dealer - The whole work force is like a small family with a big passion for excellence - Hey!! If not, they sure had some good Hollywood actors there that day.

The new PRS Mira

To finish our trip, we visited a small showroom were we could handpick a few finished guitars to be delivered to us - These will be with us early October and info posted on the web site shortly - Another guitars4you exclusive.

I said earlier that DEDICATION and the PURSUIT OF PERFECTION sums up my visit and this is my lasting memory - If you want more info and a long phone call, or a coffee and a chat then you know were I am - I'm sure there is much more I can add to this story.