Interesting how many guitarist still hate on PRS guitars...

baimun

baimun

Funkasaurus Rex
... but whenever you're watching the Grammy's, or see a frontman or frontwoman with a band made up of studio or touring musicians, they're often rocking PRS gear.

I see both a DGT and the Mark Letteri Fiore in this vid (which is a KILLER performance as well). :baimun:



I can't believe I haven't spent much time looking at the Fiore.... It's got a ton of my favorite features and they've got some great colors.... I think when the first ones came out, I picked one up at Sweetwater that seemed reeeeaaally heavy and just assumed that none of them are lightweight and deleted the guitar from my brain. :helper:
 
I've never owned a PRS, or even played one outside of a store. They seem pretty nice to me. They appear to have taken over the Tele, or at least come close to it, for a lot of the modern country acts....based on what I see on TV anyway. :shrug:
 
I think the short answer is that they’re dorky. They lack sex appeal. If you know then you know they’re expensive and high quality so there’s some real conspicuous consumption vibes. They make you look like a session musician—or the sort of middle-aged affluent nerd who knows the names of session musicians.

That said, I played a bunch of them when I was big guitar shopping. The Silver Sky models I played were the best non-custom-shop Strats and non-freaky-boutiquey Strats that I messed with (though there are some nice Suhrs). I almost bought an S2 McCarty Singlecut a couple times, but the looks and vibes were an impediment. A guy at a very nice shop was doing the hard sell on a Fiore and it was great. Matched up very nicely with a Musicman that I also dug a lot there. But I decided I wanted a hard tail as I was shopping for a main guitar. One major factor in not going with a PRS when in the realm of higher end all things being equal top of the range type production guitars is that I wouldn’t have wanted to be seen with it.

In short the look and aesthetics weren’t right for me—for setting the mood while writing/recording. And certainly not for the whole overintellectuallized spooky retro, indie dirtbag thing I’m usually doing on stage. It’d be like @Chicken Man showing up to do his Americana troubadour thing with a Dimebag guitar. I suspect the Lawyer/Dentist guitar reputation makes PRS guitars not the right choice for players working in less Lawyer/Dentist-friendly modes.
 
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i bought one of the first 3 PRS Custom 24/10 tops that came into my town, back in 1988.
it was the vintage yellow (amber) clear finish with the dark cherry back and sides and neck.
it had the 5 way rotary switch and the "fat" switch.
the rotary was a little PITA getting from one setting to another quickly, but other than that, i loved the guitar.
would probably still have it, had it not been for an extended layoff from work.

however, these days, i cannot justify the cost of a "good" one.
and i'm not playing any gigs for a while.
so having a $3000+ guitar sitting in a stand to be noodled around with once in a while isn't in the budget.

i'd really like to take one of their Strat/Mayer models for a spin. especially since i'm almost a 100% strat guy these days.
i haven't even played my LP in several years.
 
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I am not a fan of PRS. Could be because my first experience with one that had a V neck on it. Never liked V necks and the assumption is that all of the PRS line has V necks. I am sure this is not true but it was my first impression.

I can say this though, the finishes on some of the PRS's that I saw from NAMM some 7-10 years ago made me reconsidering. However, I already have too many guitars and really don't need one more until I purge a few. Also cost of one makes me turn my head away. And besides, I can't take them all to the grave with me.
 
I don’t hate on them, but they aren’t for me. I’ve owned 1, played dozens of @Guitar Heel ‘s and the only one I’ve actually liked was your gold top with the all rosewood neck. None of the others did anything for me. They weren’t bad, but they didn’t make me think I needed to buy one.
 
Not a fan of PRS guitars myself. They are great guitars obviously...but:
they're way too expensive, especially over here in Euro-land, and I find about 90% of their models are either far too "blingy" (I really don't give a shit about how many A's their maple tops have) or have stupid fucking inlays I can't get past...

And Paul himself just can't shut up about that whole tone wood nonsense. That doessn't help either.

But mainly price. It's pretty much impossible to find a non-SE or S2 guitar for less than 3.5k over here. For that kind of money I'd rather get myself a kickass custom hand built guitar to my exact liking/specs. With no fucking birds on it. :grin:
 
I want to like them but the aesthetic usually doesn't work for me, even with moon inlays instead of birds. But I like this quite a bit and it's funny that it's one of the least expensive US models they offer.

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I have an SE One that's pretty nice. And I'm gassing for the DGT SE goldtop.
OTT, I feel like all the flamey finishes and bird inlays just look kinda douchey.
 
Modern Saint said:
I am not a fan of PRS. Could be because my first experience with one that had a V neck on it. Never liked V necks and the assumption is that all of the PRS line has V necks. I am sure this is not true but it was my first impression.
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That's so weird... I seriously cannot think of what PRS had a V neck... A Vernon Reid Vela maybe? :shrug:

There used to be two different depths and two different widths that would combine to make Standard, Wide Thin, Wide Fat... and then the DGT was it's own carve to Grissom's specs... more strat like than the WideFat but more depth than the standard.

Now it seems that there are many more signature carves... and then the S2 and SE variations of those carves.... there's probaby 15-20 different neck carves now. My 594 is beefier than any of the WideFats I've owned, but it might be a smidge narrower and the shorter scale length makes it very slinky and easy to play.

Every brand has their pros and cons.... I'm not down with some of the crazy tops and matching price tags on some of the core models... but PRS definitely has consistent, repeatable quality, stays in tune better than most other makes out there (honestly even some of my floyds can be a little more fidgety than some of my PRS) and they hold their value.

I get the looks/vibe thing.... I keep trying to move away from the PRS stuff because I like the vibe of some other instruments, but then I run into some of the other issues mentioned above and come crawling back to Paul like I'm a teen that wrecked his car. "Sorry Paul... you were right... I know you need to chaperone my next gig now.." :embarrassed: :helper:
 
I, on the other hand, remain an unapologetic PRS fan. I was smitten when I first saw them in Buddy Roger's music in Cincinnati around 1988...before I even played guitar, I was taking bass lessons there and the early line included basses. Flame tops, birds - absolutely. When I started on guitar around 93, I started with a Strat, but I never forgot PRSes and thus went unto Ed Roman at the East Coast Music Mall and bought my first, a Custom 24. Great guitar, sold it a few years later when I decided I didn't want any trems any longer - before I had learned that I could just deck them.

I have owned 22 different PRSes over the years, from SE to Core, and have enjoyed the vast majority of them. Of course, as anyone who has ever paid attention to my NGD posts knows, my favorite is the Vela - possibly the least PRS-like PRS they have made, but I still love them all. It's also a reminder that, while many hate them for the flame tops and the birds, they make a number of guitars without those features.

In the end, buy what you like, play what you like. I'm not a dentist, or a lawyer, and have saved/scraped/traded and negotiated for my PRSes, because I like PRS, and have since I was a teen.
 
By the by, one of the flat out nicest guitars I played while playing every guitar on the planet when shopping was a used Joe Walsh signature 594 they had at CME.

It was north of my price point by enough that it wasn’t happening. But perhaps the nicest and nicest sounding Les Paul I played over the course of 18 months or so.

If I win the lotto, I’d definitely buy one—and then pay someone to put out all your eyes so no one would see me playing a silly monument to boomer excess.

IMG_6646.jpeg
 
I don't hate them,but the birds kill it for me.
There were a few guitars with dot inlays I didn't mind.
 
dmn23 said:
I want to like them but the aesthetic usually doesn't work for me, even with moon inlays instead of birds. But I like this quite a bit and it's funny that it's one of the least expensive US models they offer.

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I had one of those. It was ok, probably the only PRS I liked other than baimun’s. But I didn’t like it enough to not sell it.
 
I don't hate them, other than the super flamey topped ones. I kinda like the birds myself. That said Ive never played one other than a few SE models in shops that didnt seem all that special to me.
 
I don't hate them and I too have a SE that's comfortable to play. I see them as another tool in my musical toolbox.
 
I don’t hate PRS. PRS just makes me feel sad.

Some midlife crisis guys get it up with Viagra and hideous convertible Corvettes. It’s all the same. Those cars don’t fuck either. :shrug:
 
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