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The Latest Breaking News from Paul Reed Smith

“You could argue that the pickups are the most important thing. But in the end, there’s nothing more important on the guitar than this”: Paul Reed Smith on a guitar's most crucial feature – and how it dictates your tone

Forget pickups and the weight of a guitar – this is where tone really starts, according to Smith

Guitar World

“BB held one note for 12 bars… I set my guitar down, and I walked off the stage. That was the biggest musical lesson I’ve ever learned”: Zach Myers on Shinedown’s secret weapon, the limitations of shred, and that time he got schooled by BB King

Signing in from Shinedown's epic summer tour, Myers talks about the band's long-awaited studio album, the controversy over his relic'd Silver Sky and why Eric Bass is the band's ace in the hole

MusicRadar

“If you listen to Summer Nights, the Van Halen tune, that’s a headless guitar. It sounded fantastic”: Could PRS ever make a headless guitar?

Strandberg, Ibanez and Schecter have all been flying the flag for headless designs – could PRS be next?

Guitar World

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“He called me and said, ‘Paul! Paul! I need your help. Eddie’s coming up”: Paul Reed Smith on the time Kramer asked him to build a guitar for Eddie Van Halen

Smith was asked what he would have made if Van Halen had ever asked for a PRS guitar – but it turned out to be something of a trick question

Guitar World

“We have to ask: canthe electric guitar get any better?” With 40 years of groundbreaking luthierie behind it, the limited PRS Charcoal Phoenix is deserving of its mythical status

One of PRS Guitars’ 40th Anniversary special editions, limited to 150 units, this is the one Paul himself plays, and it’s perched at the summit of our wishlist

Guitar World

“I didn’t know John had a pink one coming out, so it looked like John had given me a pink guitar and I’d relic’d it. People were mad”: Zach Myers’ heavy relic’d PRS John Mayer Silver Sky has given him so much grief he might burn it

Myers got the jump on PRS when he started playing a relic'd pink Silver Sky – before the official Roxy Pink version came out

Guitar World

“The wood buyers didn’t think we would be able to use it. I went, ‘Oh no, that's going to turn into a ridiculous color’”: PRS turned unwanted wood into some of its best guitar finishes – including the one found on Paul Reed Smith’s go-to guitar

Emerald Green and Charcoal – two of the firm’s most eye-popping offerings – were stumbled upon by accident

Guitar World

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“He talked to me about fly fishing for two hours and never mentioned a guitar”: Shinedown’s Zach Myers on the “genius” Paul Reed Smith, his forthcoming signature model – and THAT relic’d pink Silver Sky

Myers says he caught so much heat for his distressed hot pink John Mayer Silver Sky that he joked with his tech that he was going to torch it onstage

MusicRadar

“They’re humbuckers but have an amazing, almost Dumble harmonic range”: Keith Urban offers first look at his Tele-inspired PRS signature model

Urban saw John Mayer with his Dead Spec Silver Sky and set about designing a guitar that he too could use for a whole set – and it has an f-hole shaped after his tattoo

Guitar World

“I said, ‘Ted, you can see inside the horn, it's got a maple cap.’ He goes, ‘Shut up’”: Paul Reed Smith says early Les Pauls were all Goldtops to hide a tonal breakthrough from Leo Fender

The PRS Guitars founder answers the million dollar question: why were all the early Gibson Les Pauls Goldtops?

Guitar World

“Steve Vai goes, ‘I’ve been thinking about this a long time. He’s a really good guitar player.’ That’s unusual’”: Paul Reed Smith on the time John Mayer was hailed by a shred hero – and why he found it strange

Smith recalls Vai singling out Mayer for praise – and reveals what Mayer’s songwriting background means for his overall guitar style

Guitar World

“We had a room full of Nashville session players, and they said, ‘Paul, if we don't use your guitars on the tracks, we get fired’”: Why Paul Reed Smith isn't interested in chasing Fender or Gibson – but is focused on cementing PRS in history

Smith reflects on his decades-long involvement in the guitar making space

Guitar World

“We spent more than four years in research and development, working closely with Herman to get everything exactly right”: PRS activates total shred mode for the launch of Herman Li’s feature-packed Chleo signature electric

Available in Orchid Dusk and Charcoal Purple Burst, limited to 200 units, we've got 13 unique tone combinations from its HSH Fishman pickups, a Gotoh floating vibrato and Eclipse Dragon inlays too

MusicRadar

“We all have easy access to the parts needed to make a pickup… You certainly don’t have to start like Seymour Duncan did with a record player’s turntable”: Why more guitar builders are making their own pickups

We speak to Juha Ruokangas about why his company took pickup design into its own hands – and then retrofitted an old PRS Custom 24 with his humbuckers to see how they sounded

Guitar World

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Guitar World

“He needed nobody; Jerry was his only customer”: Tom Lieber apprenticed to Jerry Garcia's guitar builder Doug Irwin in the ’70s – now he’s raising the ’Dead once again

This is the story of Tom Lieber, the aspiring guitar builder who wouldn’t take no for ananswer and ended up learning how to make some of the rock world’s most prized instruments

Guitar World

“Warm, woody tones and a beautiful vintage character”: PRS celebrates the launch of the first humbuckers with the 40th Anniversary McCarty SC56 – a limited-run, traditionally-styled troublemaker with bags of charm

The latest addition to its 40th-anniversary releases, the time-machine axe tips its hat to luthiery innovations from the year Paul Reed Smith was born

Guitar World

“They looked at me like they had seen a ghost. They were like, ‘We’ve got to make this for people’”: Brad Paisley’s new signature Telecaster is based on a vintage gem so rare Fender couldn’t believe he had one

The ‘Lost’ Telecaster features an obscure paisley finish that revives a long-forgotten treatment from the late ’60s

Guitar World

“Such a rare piece”: Dave Navarro has chosen the guitar he’s using to record his first post-Jane’s Addiction material – and it’s a historic build

Navarro will be taking a milestone six-string from PRS into the studio with Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins

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Guitar World

“What blew me away was that everyone wanted the curly maple top. People were calling, saying, ‘I’ve got to have the bird inlays’”: Paul Reed Smith on raising the Standard 24, finally cracking the noise-free guitar and why John Sykes is a tone hero

We take Paul Reed Smith back to the start of his 40-year-old company to discuss the new Standard 24 and quite a bit more

Guitar World

“The Custom 24 has been our flagship design. Updating the 24-08 version for our 40th anniversary allows it to ‘sing’ in a beautiful voice of its own”: PRS's new semi-hollow stunner brings enticing updates to one of the company's very first models

Keeping its 40th birthday party going, PRS has added both visual and sonic upgrades to one of its foundational designs

MusicRadar

“These things work for me and I am finding out a lot of other guitar players like ‘em too”: Paul Reed Smith loved his Charcoal Phoenix so much that PRS has released this rare bird in strictly limited numbers

This collectible stunner was inspired by the John McLaughlin Private Stock signature model and has been thoroughly road-tested by the PRS Guitars founder

Guitar World

“Smith has road-tested this guitar, refining its design and tone”: The PRS Charcoal Phoenix is Paul Reed Smith’s personal guitar of choice – and it’s already starred onstage next to John Mayer

The new, limited-edition beauty sprung from Paul Reed Smith’s desire to create a stoptail-equipped variation of John McLaughlin's signature Private Stock PRS

Guitar World

“Paul Reed Smith and I grew up on the same street. He knew I was finishing guitars and one day asked for help. Eventually we needed somebody to head up the factory. He said, 'You’re it’”: How Joe Knaggs became one of America’s most respected guitar makers

Having cut his teeth working at the PRS factory, rising from finishing assistant to production manager and head of Private Stock, Knaggs built his brand from the ground up. Here’s his story…

Guitar World

“You talk about PRS and some say, ‘They’re too nice.’ What’s too nice? You want that special vibe that only tuning every song can give you? You want bad intonation?!” John Mayer pays tribute to Paul Reed Smith at PRS Guitars’ exclusive anniversary show

10 years since his first phone call to the firm, the guitar hero hailed the iconic guitar builder as “the hidden member of everyone’s band all the time”

Guitar World

“When I was a teenager, I had a dream about a guitar with a dragon inlaid down the neck. That dream has since become an important part of our history”: How Paul Reed Smith created the ultimate Dragon for PRS Guitars’ 40th Anniversary

Debuting PRS’s “throaty” new McCarty III humbuckers, the Private Stock 40th Anniversary McCarty Dragon is a work of art and a triumph of engineering – and, says Smith, it’s built to play

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