Paul Reed Smith

[Enzo]

Hey, anyone in the Lansing, Michigan area August 14th (a Wednesday), PRS himself will be visiting Elderly Instruments here in town. 4PM to 6PM. He'll be there to chat.

- Elderly Instruments

[Steve A.]

I always thought that Elderly Music was in Minnesota! I guess I need to study the state abbreviations- in particular all of the ones that start with M...

I consider Mr. Smith to be a genius as took the basic LP design and turned it around, inside and out, with some pretty fancy wiring tricks. The PRS SE line was the first Asian import in recent times that came out of the box practically perfect. Each year's batches seemed to be a little better than the year before's- I got the impression that they were fine-tuning the CNC templates or programs to compensate for any discrepancies between the design and the manufactured product- like zeroing the test probes on your DMM. I found that the biggest improvement was in action, with the frets leveled very well and smooth as butter.

I was reading about this on the PRS site- the Korean manufacturer said that PRS was the first American vendor to come with exact specs for their models. For other companies it was more like ordering from a catalog- we'll take 2000 of these fake strats and 1000 of these fake LP's.

As manufacturing spread throughout China and South East Asia other companies started bringing in guitars that were set up perfectly right out of the box. I got the Squire Classic Vibe 50's and 60's teles and they came with a hang tag showing the measured clearances at the 1st and 6th string, at the 1st and 12th frets. Amazing action- much better than the American teles I bought in the 80's and 90's. My guess is that they are using CNC machines and CAD programs to get their necks cut perfectly.

Steve Ahola

[Tom Phillips]

Interesting. Actually I'm going to be traveling near there in MI soon but I'll miss that date by just 2 days!

[Enzo]

If you have never been there, and it is not too far out of your way, you should visit the store. It is a really cool place. Always some extreme top end stuff to look at, as well as all manner of stringed stuff at all levels. And you can play them. Maybe not the '59 Les Paul locked in the vault, but you can play most stuff. No synths or PA systems, just stringed instruments and related stuff.

We used to have a fun little music neighborhood there. My shop was directly across the street in the building with a PA company/retailer and a lighting company/retailer. You could pretty much cover the entire needs of the band - except the drummer - in one block. Then the building we were in was sold, and out we went. Place is still empty.

Elderly Instruments - Welcome - Elderly Instruments

No, I don't work there or get any advertising income from them.

[DrGonz78]

I always remember stories from around 2005 when my cousin came out to live with me while he was attending Roberto Venn School of Luthiery. He was building some cool guitars!! Anyway he informed me that when PRS made any mistakes with one of their high end guitars they would saw it in half!! One of those halves would be sent over to school so they could observe how the guitar was put together. I have a great PRS custom 24LE and it is my pride an joy!! What great precision they have in building these axes!!

[soundguruman]

He made my L6s into a double cutaway...but I still got rid of it.

[Dan Mc]

Mr. Smith and Co. just visited our store a week ago in Austin. I was extremely impressed at how nice he was. I think he makes a great product but he was very down to earth and fun to talk with. He was demoing a few of his amplifiers and the crowd really liked the sounds / explanations of them.