Paul Reed Smith Guitars

PRS McCarty Rosewood - 10 Top

Out Of Production!

JUST RELISTED - NEW INCENTIVESNO RESERVE AUCTION

PaulReedSmith
McCarty Rosewood

Flamed Maple 10-Top

You’re looking at a 2002 PRS McCarty with the highly prized and sought after Vintage Yellow finish, on a sweet flamed, Eastern Maple, 10 top (clearly defined figure across its entire top with no "dead" spots), with abalone ‘birds’ fret inlays, and a solid Rosewood neck.

“If you’ve ever played one of these ‘tone monsters’
you already know how amazing they are.”

The PRS McCarty offers a single volume and tone control (lifting the tone pot engages the coil tap) and a standard three-way selector switch. The volume knob is in a great position for quick volume adjustments. You can crank the overdrive on your amp and then roll off the volume on your guitar to clean up your sound with no tone loss. Gradually increasing the volume draws out the sweet sustain of this ‘brazen beast’.

PRS McCarty’s Wide-Fat neck profile is amazingly smooth with 'frets to die for'. With the Rosewood Neck you can actually feel the sound resonate in the palm of your hand and when it’s up against your body you can also feel the guitar reverberate at the top of your abdomen! Guitars fitted with these necks tend to produce a loud piano-like tone with rich even harmonics over the entire range.

“The rosewood neck is truly the best feature.
It’s easy to play and hard to put away!”

The nickel covered McCarty pickups, coupled with the Tone Pros System II locking bridge equipped with Graph Tech saddles, give it a rich, singing sustain and vintage tone. It's thinner headstock, and Les Paul® Vintage Style tuners pay homage to the tradition of classic electric guitars.

Not Your Typical Rockmaker

This guitar handles all styles extremely well. The McCarty wiring setup includes a nice coil-tap that sounds very good when engaged, but don't expect to get all those 'Strat' sounds because you just can't extract them without big fat single coils, reversed middle pickup, 3-pot tone controls, the famous 5-Way selector switch, and maple neck on either an Ash or Alder body.

This McCarty packs a punch, though, that the single-coil Strat is embarrassingly unable to deliver with its FAT humbucking tone. The midrange response and lead tones on this guitar offer ‘world class’, warm, crunchy chording and hot, searing solos. Even with a Mahogany neck, McCarty’s blow away many axes, but this one has the $700 optional solid Indian Rosewood Neck!

“Once you play this guitar you'll understand the inspiration
that comes from rich, harmonic, tonal woods,
and how Santana's solos soulfully erupt.”

It’s All About Tone

Each part of the guitar seems to play a role, be it significant or subtle, in determining the tonal characteristics of the instrument. The clarity of tone, relative harmonic complexity, and high, low, or mid bias are also determined partially upon who’s doing the listening. The quality of tone  then is therefore, somewhat relatively subjective.

In very general terms, the top, or soundboard including the bridge, seems to affect the guitar’s responsiveness, the quickness of its attack, its sustain, some of its overtone coloration, and the strength and quality of each note’s fundamental tone.

The hard, Eastern Maple of the McCarty tends to be loud with a strong upper midrange, bright highs, but has the tightest lows for the extended range. Maple tends to be very bright and penetrating. Low notes have a sharp attack, plenty of harmonics, and excellent sustain.

Top And Bottom - High And Low
?The staple of vintage construction the Maple top adds crispness to the mahogany body, but the lows and low mids of mahogany are still apparent. The Maple combs out some of the upper mids, not because Maple lacks in these areas, but because it is vastly different from mahogany in its handling of the upper midrange. There is battle going on in that range between the two pieces that results in a neutralizing of some of those upper midrange frequencies. That’s part of the 'smoothness' associated with the Les Paul & PRS types.

The exquisite, Cherry finished, Mahogany body on this McCarty has relatively high velocities of sound and contributes much to the overtone coloration. It is strong, stable and resonant, has a sweet 'woody' tone. It’s consistent density compresses the mids a little, and this can be considered a thick sound, because it does still produce good lows and low mids. Without the mids popping out, not being as responsive to dynamics, its more of a transparent 'wall of sound'. The softness of the Mahogany makes it more sensitive, allowing you to hear the swelling of the overtones as a note sustains. With a good balance of primary and overtones for higher register soloing, the high notes are very rich and substantial.

‘The Neck Turns The Head’

The neck wood strongly influences the tone of the guitar, because it occupies perhaps the most important part of the body, the center. The Rosewood has strongly pronounced low overtones, usually the lowest resonating frequencies in the entire guitar. These lows help to create a complex bottom end and create a somewhat general darkness of tone.

Overall the Rosewood makes for a warm rich sounding guitar with great resonance and volume, having an extremely high velocity of sound and a broad range of overtones. Rosewood also has a pronounced 'reverby' tone, caused by a strong, clear set of sympathetic harmonics with a delayed onset and slow decay.

Rosewood necks produce excellent sustain while also smoothing out the highs. Generally with greater sustain comes a brighter top end, although the strong mids and highs serve to reinforce overtones generated by the top, contributing to a 'fatness of tone' on the upper registers.

“For what it's worth, the C.F. Martin Co.,
who I'd say are a fairly authoritative source on tone quality, did some studies that found there was little or no difference in sound between Indian and Brazilian rosewood.”

Indian rosewood has become the general substitute for Brazilian rosewood and sounds virtually the same as Brazilian. The Indian rosewood has two added advantages: it is less prone to cracking and it is grown in a sustainable fashion on plantations, which makes it environmentally superior.  It is also affordable, although prices are continuing to rise.?
Fretboard
?Fretboard materials also exert an influence on overall tone. Rosewood fretboards add sparkle and ring, and Indian Rosewood fretboards can help fatten up the midrange. Rosewood is naturally oily, and works well for any surface that sees frequent human contact.

“The original 1956 Les Paul Goldtop featured an
Indian Rosewood fretboard.
The Indian Rosewood was stiffer and denser,
and added more snap to the sound than Brazilian Rosewood”

‘Take It To The Bridge’

I was not all that thrilled with the one-piece PRS wraparound bridge. An adjustable bridge allows for much more precise individual intonation of each string independently. The use of separate saddles for each string not only makes for greater clarity of each individual note, but it reduces the resonance of the adjacent strings as well, which at times could come about as a result of all of the strings being mounted on the same solid bar of metal like on the PRS wraparound Bridge.

“The hardware and construction, specifically the bridge,
will have the most impact on sustain
in a traditional electric guitar design.”

Sustain and resonance are mutually exclusive. In order for a string to sustain longer, it needs to retain as much energy as possible meaning a guitar with the least possible transference of energy from the vibrating string to the bridge, then the body, will sustain the longest.

“A resonant body steals energy from the strings.” ~ Les Paul

Wood which rejects the transfer of energy from strings would aid in increasing sustain. Therefore, solid body guitars were built to reduce the resonant quality of the semi and full body guitars in order to perform at higher volume amplified without feedback.

‘TonePros To The Rescue’

The TonePros - System II, which features the AVT2P nickel, wraparound, fully adjustable bridge and locking studs, prevents the bridge from ever falling off, protecting that 10 top from a sliding tailpiece. Because the bridge locks solidly in place, it also stabilizes intonation!

“Without a TonePros bridge the guitar's tone will be greatly compromised.” ~ Ed Roman

You can really hear and feel the difference! It actually improves the tone with ‘singing’ sustain, ‘bell tone’ harmonics, and greatly enhances the 'liveliness'  and character of this guitar through its direct coupling.

Back In The Saddle Again

String Saver saddles are an essential upgrade to this guitar. The Graph Tech saddles helped to improve tone, intonation, sustain and musical expression. They’re laboratory-proven to enhance harmonic content up to 200% and sustain up to 16% and are engineered for maximum vibration transfer.
 
String Saver saddles are impregnated with Teflon throughout so their lubricating properties reduce the friction between the saddles and the strings virtually eliminating string breakage.

‘Tuning It Up’

The original non-locking tuners have been replaced with a set of Nickel, Les Paul® Vintage Style, 3X3, Plastic Keystone Buttons, 15:1 ratio, locking tuners, which are a very nice upgrade.

You Should Buy This Instrument

The McCarty is considered by many to be the overall best sounding guitar made by PRS and is often compared to the Les Paul Standard. You'll see Paul Reed Smith, himself, playing lots of these. This instrument is a particularly fine sounding example that has received many compliments on its excellent timbre.

The highly sought after, Vintage Yellow finish over the exquisite Flamed Maple 10 Top is breathtaking. The Cherry finish on the Mahogany back is ‘Classic’ and beautifully executed in contrast with the Yellow top and Rosewood neck.

The wide fat neck, made of a solid block of Indian Rosewood, imparts a beautiful oiled wood feel. Because of its strength and longer “heel”, the Wide Fat neck produces warm tones with lots of sustain and a large amount of richness to the tone.

With the addition of the TonePros Locking Bridge System there is no more worrying about scratching the face of your guitar or readjusting the intonation and action after a simple cleaning or changing of strings.

A Few More Reasons

*  The Mahogany body will improve tonally with age
*  Vintage style locking tuners match the original classic keystone tuners
*  McCarty pickups wired with coil tap pull switch for single coil operation
*  25" scale on 10” radius allows ease of string bending with added harmonic range
*  This baby’s got tons of tone!  She's a real show-stopper in the right hands!* FREE Shipping only with 'Buy It Now' option. (Refunded upon purchase)

What You Can Expect

This McCarty Rosewood has had very little play time. The frets are flawless, like new. You can see she’s been played occasionally, but with extreme caution and with great care. No buckle rash, dents, dings, cuts, scrapes, etc. She’s in pristine condition. A real ‘Case Queen’.

The Tone Pros components and Les Paul® Vintage Style tuners required no modification to the McCarty, no drilling, routing, cutting or gutting, simply dropped in and adjusted.
 
What’s Included

Original PRS hard shell case
Luxlogs protective vinyl pickguard (currently applied)
Original (Case Candy) hang tags, stickers, tools, etc.
Original PRS wrap-around bridge and non-locking tuners
Special Ordered, Levi’s Blood Red, 4” Wide Suede Leather guitar strap

Returns and Warranties

No returns available at this time. This instrument is beyond its warranty period.

Payment and Shipping

Paypal Only.
Sorry No International Shipping. Continental US Only!
Shipping will be $45, Fully Insured  

Why It’s Even More Compelling To
Act Now!
GOING, GOING, ....
McCarty Rosewoods are No Longer In Production
They’re Appreciating and Considered Collectible
They’re Just Definitely a Wise Investment

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