King Of The Mods

With the release of PRS’s Paul’s Guitar, evaluated elsewhere in this issue, Dave Burrluck wonders if Paul Reed Smith is actually the ultimate modder…

Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a bench in a shed, but more than likely when you want to set to work on your latest crazy modding project, like me, you clear the biggest table in your house, plug in the soldering iron and open your toolbox. The majority of the time, unless we’re perhaps swapping the body or neck of a bolt-on, we’re actually fine-tuning an already constructed guitar.

It might seem that Paul Reed Smith had sorted his construction by 1991 with the first Dragon guitar. This model introduced a shorter, fatter 22-fret neck and newdesign Stoptail bridge, which led directly to the Custom 22 and, via the considerable input of David Grissom, the thickerbodied, more vintage-aimed McCarty. In reality, he’d only just begun.

Via Paul’s 21 Rules Of Tone document, a manifesto was born that still informs the recipe of the PRS guitar today. Now, while some of that document details the direct construction of the guitar itself, there’s a lot that puts focus on the guitar’s hardware to maximise its primary acoustic voice. When the final piece of the jigsaw was put in place with a new metal-infused nut material on the 408 (in 2012), Paul commented that, “It’s the last piece of the puzzle. It’s all done.”

So, it’s off to the golf course, then, or a spot of fly fishing? No. Paul dives into all sorts of music-related projects. Talk to him about amplifiers or acoustic guitars and within seconds you feel out of your depth. Vintage microphones? Complex digital algorithms for a new method of EQ? Trust someone who has interviewed him countless times: just when you think you have the measure of the man, he’s off somewhere else. Talk to him about any aspect of the guitar and you’d better do your homework. He certainly has.