Two for T?: PRS have done it again and reimagined a vintage favourite but would you pay £3k for one?

The PRS Guitars NF53 and Myles Kennedy

 On June 21 2023, PRS announced the release of their new bolt on guitars, the NF53 and the Myles Kennedy signature guitar.

Having already reimagined the S-Style with the help of one John Mayer, causing controversy as well as producing an army of Silver Sky players, PRS have turned their hands to the 'other style' guitar with the help of Alter Bridge's Myles Kennedy for the signature and Paul Reed Smith for the NF53 inspired by his own 1953 Vintage classic that is in his private collection.

Both are maple necks with , 25.5" scale, 10" radius and 22 frets with subtly different body shapes.  Each model comes with their own colour options and, perhaps more importantly, also differ tonally.

Both guitars use newly designed Narrow Field pickups that include longer bobbins to exaggerate the  windings, but they differ in specific design within this new category of pickup.  The NF53 utilises the traditional wiring pattern of a telecaster but the pickups are not single coil pickups.  PRS state that they are seeking to produce the courage of a humbucker with the spank a single coil.  In essence from the videos that I have watched they do have a fatter sound but the spank is there in leaps and bounds.  The three way switch will be familiar to any tele player giving access to sounds from each pickup as well as activating both at the same time.  There is no coil tap offering further single coil sounds.

For the Myles Kennedy signature guitar there is a lot more happening tonally.  Utilising a different take on the NF pickups there is a five way switch that incorporates the usual tones but includes being able to use the coil split on the treble pickup.  Added to this, the tone pot can be pulled out to set the tone to a preset darker setting for the treble pickup.

How much do they cost? 

Both guitars are in the Bolt-On category of the PRS catalogue and as such come with a premium of around £3k including gig bag.

Check out each product at Andertons... 

NF53 - Click for more.

Myles Kennedy Signature - Click for more

Initial Impressions

I haven't tried either yet but on the face of what I have seen with various videos, both products fix the age old 60Hz Cycle Hum that come from traditional single coils.  Both guitars bring something different to the market.  Whilst both, of course, would be great for any genre of music, judging from the PRS videos about the products I can't help feeling that the NF53 is aiming to gain some market share for this style of guitar from within the Country Music genre versus the obviously Rock focus that comes with what the signature artist is famous for.  The signature guitar seems to be of higher output being more designed to work with higher gain than perhaps the NF53.

I am curious about the pricing.  From a tonal perspective, it seems that the signature model provides more options and is technically more complex but it appears to have the same if not similar price to that of the more basic NF53.  With the price being around £3k, there will be many PRS fans who will happily part with their cash, but will that win over those players who are not so familiar with PRS?  Checking out the Andertons website for T-Style guitars between £2.5k to £5K it would seem that these guitars are a good £1k cheaper than Fender Custom Shop T-Styles and about a grand more than, for example, the Kingfish Signature Tele.

So whilst not priced in a similar level than the CE24 guitars, they are definitely sitting in their own pricing category.

Personally, I am intrigued by the Myles Kennedy model (even if I couldn't have one in Blue) but, to me, it is clear that these are for professionals and collectors, and for people like myself, we may have to wait a couple of years for the SE Models to arrive.  On that note, I get the sense that players that purchased the Core Silver Sky models felt a little miffed when the SE version arrived and were essentially delivering the same tones and feel.  

Will people be less likely to experience that again with these attractive T-Styles?