Paul Reed Smith Guitars

Before listing guitar info: shipping will be insured and will include hard shell case. Strap and strap locks are included with guitar. The body is in great shape with one body ding too small to pick up by the camera on the front side of the body. There is some minor buckle rash in the back as well.

 HARDWARE: Chrome trem, chrome PRS locking tuners (chrome, with black "wing" pieces on the PRS locking tuners). Translucent gold knobs for tone and volume, white cover on three-way toggle switch. The electronic compartment cover on the back of the body is black, as is the truss rod cover, located on the headstock. The intonation on this instrument was dead perfect from the factory, so I have not adjusted this. The usual PRS slippery Teflon-type black nut is appropriately cut.

WOODS/FINISH: Swamp ash body, maple neck, maple fingerboard. Clear poly finish; no paint. The swamp ash body is highly figured, and is very blonde in color; it almost perfectly matches the highly figured maple neck, fingerboard and headstock. The fingerboard is actually a separate piece, and is not just a part of the neck that was cut flat and fretted, like on some other guitars with maple fingerboards. The figuring of the maple is evident even on the fingerboard. "Birds in Flight" abalone inlays. Side dot markers are white and somewhat hard to see against the very light-colored wood, in normal room light.

NECK: The neck is a 22-fret, 25-inch scale bolt-on, more toward the wide/fat PRS necks than toward the wide/thins, but not as thick as the wide/fat necks I have played. If a wide/thin is a 1 on the thickness scale and a wide/fat is a 10, this is about a 7. Much more of a round neck than a v-shaped one. I have big hands, and the proportions are welcome. Frets are perfectly dressed and well-polished; they're the usual beefy PRS type. Neck pocket fit is good, but a touch less tight than my PRS CE bolt-on. The back of the neck is done in light poly; it feels like lacquer, and is substantially identical in feel to the finish on the PRS CE and EG necks. This one isn't. The fingerboard feels fast and smooth, and the finish isn't sticky at all. It's one of the few maple fingerboards I've liked.

MISCELLANEOUS: This guitar is visually stunning, in an 'au natural' kind of way. I've seen pictures of the other finishes, and I did not like the way many of them looked with the maple neck...therefore, I wanted the natural. It just so happens that the natural swamp ash is almost exactly the color of the maple in the neck and headstock. The body is arched on top, carved and shaped in the manner of a PRS Custom

ELECTRONICS/PICKUPS: Neck: PRS "McCarty" humbucker, with silver/chrome cover and crème bezel. Middle: Seymour Duncan "vintage rails". Bridge: PRS "McCarty" humbucker, with silver/chrome cover and crème bezel. There's a Les Paul-style three-way toggle switch instead of the now-familiar PRS rotary switch; this three-way switch is located in the same place as the rotary switch is on, say, a PRS CE or Custom. The three-way toggle is a definite improvement over the PRS rotary switch, which I have on my CE, and while I understand the electronic reasons for the rotary, I have never learned to love it. Other controls include volume and tone, in the usual PRS places. The volume control, as with most PRS guitars, is unusually linear for a passive electronics setup. The tone control is a push-pull pot, and is also quite linear.

Here are the pickup selections:
TONE POT IN DOWN POSITION: It's a Les Paul, as follows: Neck switch position----PRS McCarty neck-position pickup. This position is fat, fat, fat and creamy...the pickup is very well matched to the guitar. The amount of bass is huge (if you are primarily a strat player you won't believe it), but the sound retains pretty good definition and a sweet top end. Clean, it's REAL sweet and pretty-sounding. At high gain, it kicks, but is unusually smooth, with just the right amount of midrange. Middle switch position--both McCarty pickups, together. The "dual" sound I tend to think of when I hear a good Les Paul. Bottom thump and top snap, at the same time. Almost a doubled sound, at the right amp setting 
Bridge switch position--PRS McCarty bridge-position pickup. This is a big improvement over the Les Paul sound. Exactly the same McCarty pickup as in the neck of this guitar, but, of course, lots more top in the tone, because it's placed in the bridge position. It remains thick and full, even with the increased treble. There's enough top to cut through any band, but it's a bit bassier than a Les Paul freak might be used to.

TONE POT IN UP POSITION: it's a strat, kinda sorta: Neck switch position----coil splits the neck-position McCarty, and gives you the neck-most coil of that pickup in combination with the Seymour Duncan. This sounds like the "between the neck and middle" position of a strat. The electronics are not actually out of phase, but they have that same quacky, semi-cancelled sound. A credible imitation...almost certainly due to the Duncan pickup. Middle switch position—neck-most coil of neck McCarty plus Seymour Duncan plus full bridge McCarty. This is an odd and very complex sound; there are FOUR coils active in this position. Played clean and finger-picked, it sounds almost like some acoustic-electrics I've heard. It's kind of like the "neck plus bridge" position on a Telecaster, but with a slightly phased sound, at the same time. It's hard for me to describe it any better than this, because I've never heard anything quite like it anywhere else. At high gain, it's a mellow-sounding tone, but with a snap in the attack; clean, it's almost not there, and it IS there, all at the same time. It kind of reminds me of nylon strings, at times, in the attack, when played clean. This position sounds even more unique chorused. I'm not wild about this sound, and I don't see that I'll have a lot of use for it...perhaps I'd use it for certain rhythm work where I want to stay well in the background. Bridge switch position--Seymour Duncan plus bridge McCarty. Interestingly, this is VERY strat-like---and it doesn't even coil split the bridge McCarty, but instead, simply combines it with the Seymour Duncan middle pickup. At high gain, it sounds remarkably like a lead strat sound...lots of snap and top end.