It's In The Numbers

Do you know your 305 from your 408? We break down the code of PRS’s number-based model names

The PRS mantra has always been ‘more sounds’ and over 30 years we’ve seen numerous pickup/control set-ups that offer both humbucking and single coil sounds achieved in very different ways, with the 24-08, based on the multi-tap switching of the current 408, the latest. “We work on this everyday,” laughs Paul Reed Smith. “It’s a non-stop quest. Every time we learn we try to adjust it to the guitars. We learn, we apply. If I was the guy that got it exactly the way it was going to be for 50 years on day one… but that’s not us. We’re the baby-step company.”

The original PRS recipe from 1985 featured two humbuckers, a five-way rotary pickup selector switch and a sweet switch (a preset tone roll-off). That five-way switch divided opinion and PRS took until 1989 to settle on: treble humbucker, both outer screw coils in parallel, both inner coils in series, both inner coils in parallel and, finally, neck humbucker. The sweet switch (still an unlisted option) began to be phased out in favour of a standard tone control on the ’87 Special then the Studio, Classic Electric and original Limited Edition before becoming standard by late 1991.

When the McCarty Model appeared in 1994 it swapped the five-way rotary for a three-way toggle pickup selector. A little later a pull-push switch on the tone control was added that applied a coil-split to both pickups simultaneously. This ‘McCarty electronics’ set-up has been used on numerous subsequent models.