What You Need To Know

1 509: where does it get its name? ‘509’ refers to the guitar’s five single-coil pickups – the outer pairs grouped as humbuckers – creating nine sounds via the five-way way lever switch and two mini-toggle coil-splitlike switches.

2 Haven’t we seen this before? You’re probably thinking of its predecessor, the 513, which used the same style pickups but via a five-way lever pickup selector and a three-way lever mode selector to produce 13 sounds.

3 So this is an updated model with fewer sounds? That’s odd… “We sold a lot of 513s, but almost universally people don’t use the ‘heavy’ humbucking tone,” says Paul Reed Smith today.“They use the ‘clear’ humbucking and the singlecoil [tones]. That’s kinda normal, right? Somebody buys a Fairchild compressor and they only use the ‘1’ and the ‘2’ positions on the attack and release and they don’t use the ‘3’, ‘4’ or ‘5’ positions. So we figured out a way to make it simpler: we’ve not only changed the wiring but the pickups a little bit, too.”