I think I have a problem with PRS Guitars!

 

In January 2022, I purchased my first PRS guitar.  It is the PRS SE Starla and I have written an article about that guitar more recently. 

I absolutely love it, I use it all the time and I get so many tones out of it that I can use for lots of different styles of music and songs.  It has literally rebooted my interest in six string electrics and guitar tone over a period of 35 years, mostly as a bass player.  Brilliant!

Added to this, I absolutely love the marketing from PRS Guitars.  Obviously it is aimed at getting you to buy their guitars but the man himself, Paul Reed Smith, is just brilliant at explaining how electric guitars work and I have been glued to their videos.  So in theory, I should be one of the legions of fans who end up buying multiple PRS guitars and proudly post on PRS Owners Facebook groups about how I have purchased my sixth PRS Private Stock in some exotic colour for £10k.

Apart from not having anywhere near the disposable income to spend thousands on PRS guitars, I have found myself obsessed with trying to understand the collective fascination of thousands of guitarists for PRS.

This has meant me trying to find every opportunity to try out different versions of their guitars with the hope of sparking a deeper level of fascination and indeed satisfaction.

The video below shows me playing the PRS SE Paul's Guitar in Faded Blue Burst.

I have tried their SE Hollow Body guitars, their SE Paul's Guitar, their CE 24, obviously my SE Starla and I have also tried out the SE Silver Sky.

These are all fine guitars, but it has only been the SE Starla and the SE Silver Sky that have made me excited.  When I say excited I mean that feeling when you pick up a guitar for the first time and immediately the creative flow is tingling.

Can the upcoming PRS SE DGT make me feel different?

I have to admit I have not tried any of the S2 or Core models and with the imminent arrival of the SE DGT, I am excited to see if that can make me feel excited.  The DGT is a very popular PRS model (for those who can afford it, and so the SE version will make the tone and playability of this guitar more accessible to those who can only afford sub £1000 guitars.

I am really excited that PRS take their really expensive guitars and then go and release a more financially accessible version that still provides the same tone and playability even if there is a compromise in terms of types of wood, finish and hardware.

Just because a guitar costs a lot of money, it doesn't mean that it will appeal to you personally.

So why is it that I have tried guitars such as the PRS CE24 and I am feeling a little "Meh!" The CE24 is £2500! Surely a guitar of this price point should totally blow my senses! It is really frustrating, I want to buy an expensive PRS guitar because it should overload my senses and make me want to play better.

Enjoying a guitar is a subjective experience, just because a guitar is thousands of pounds to buy, doesn't mean that it's own mix of parts is going to set your world on fire.

Interestingly, my PRS SE Starla does have this effect on me, every time I pick it up and this is a £500 guitar.  The SE Silver Sky had this effect on me too and that is a £700 guitar.  So what is different?

It's a mix of sound and technique!

Firstly, it is the pickups.  The Starla uses the PRS designed DS-02 pickups which are different to the PRS 58/15 "S" that I have tried on other SE guitars and different to the 85/15 pickups that are on the CE24.

For me, the DS-02 pickups are much more sharper in the tone at the higher frequencies.  It wouldn't be too difficult to get that 'Ice Pick ' tone that a lot of PRS guitarists seem to detest.  I guess because I am an Albert Collins fan, this is not a problem for me, but with my Starla, I can get lovely warm tones with my neck pick up and I use the more 'ice picky' bridge pickup for clarity on lead lines.  I particularly find that the Starla lends itself really well to beautiful rhythm sounds when strumming chords.

The same goes with the Silver Sky, tonally it seems really well suited to how I play.  It was exciting to play.  The SE Silver Sky, is obviously a single coil instrument and so will also be more 'toppy' in my opinion.

Whilst writing this, I have also realised that one interesting difference is that I don't use a pick.  I used to, but more recently I have developed a way of playing that is my own unusual finger style.  It is in using my fingers then that a guitar such as the PRS SE Starla that is a more toppy or jangly in sound actually becomes less 'ice picky' because the attack is less sharp with my fingers but still has the jangle for rhythm sounds.  When I play other PRS guitars that are more 'mid' tone focused then perhaps my style of playing simply doesn't set the guitar alight for me. 

The other thing for me is that I don't get excited about beautiful wood work.  A lot of the more expensive PRS guitars will use exotic woods and absolutely beautiful ways of staining and finishing those woods.  This level of craftmanship isn't totally lost on me, but it just doesn't make a lot of difference to me in terms of my way of playing.  A good example of this is the fact that I use a Fender Telecaster 1972 Thinline reissue.  

It has a natural wood finish but I have never really liked the look of that guitar, I bought it because of how it played and sounded and more importantly, how it made me feel playing it.  I even had a friend of mine ask my about why I used it because, given my style of playing, it didn't seem "Rock n Roll enough!"  The finish on it didn't really mean anything to me, it was tone and playability that did.

To be fair, it was the solid powder blue colour of the Starla that got me excited to actually pick the guitar up.  It was also the fact that it had a name rather than a number that got the old school guitarist in me excited too, but the tone and playability had to be right for me otherwise the colour and name meant nothing. 

OK, so what's the deal with my problem with PRS? 

I guess that there isn't really a problem with PRS, per se. My problem is experiencing FOMO when seeing posts on Social Media about those really expensive guitars that come out of Stevensville, Maryland.  PRS are one of today's top guitar manufacturers.  The SE Silver Sky has proven to be one of the top selling guitars in 2022.  Their guitars appeal to the masses  and for good reason.  They are made well, sound great and the company truly is focused on helping guitarists and songwriters to sound brilliant.  I truly absolutely love what they are doing, but I just don't feel like I fully fit in with the crowd.

I think I was suffering from seeing loads of videos of great guitarists saying how great their PRS guitars are and so that 'must' mean that those guitars would be great for me.

The fact is, my problem with PRS, is simply that I am unique and don't buy into all of the hype.  I love my Starla but I don't see anyone posting Instagram videos about their SE Starla and so when you see videos of the £3500 PRS guitars being bandered around by influencers, it can start to make you feel inferior and then it makes you want to be like them when they sound good.  But those influencers are not me, they don't play like me and I guess that the point of this article is to say that maybe it is time to allow myself to recognise that my thing is unique and has value and it is OK if I don't fit in with the majority.

We perhaps all need to understand that our very own 'tone' is unique enough to cut through the mix.  Once we see the value in what we can give, then who knows where that will lead us! 

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