Choices, Choices
It might centre on that one classic outline, but PRS’s Core range is full of options, particularly when it comes to pickups. We ask Paul Reed Smith for some advice
Back in 1988 when PRS originally introduced the Studio, the company had been in the business of making production guitars for less than three years. But if the new brand was beginning to make waves, it was also starting to illustrate a theme that has underpinned over 35 years of guitar building: choice. Even back then, PRS recognised the desire for something different, second-guessing the market and providing a different sound.
The Studio was the first PRS guitar with three pickups – a Hot Vintage humbucker at the bridge and two regular single coils – and it was an attempt to entice the LA studio musicians into the PRS fraternity in the same way that the Special, with its back-routed vibrato cavity, was designed to attract the whammy brigade when it launched that same year. Although you could order a PRS with that same threepickup Studio package until the mid-90s, the model itself lasted barely two years.
The majority of PRS guitars, from the first Custom, include both humbucking and single-coil sounds, but despite many proprietary attempts PRS didn’t nail the single coil until the John Mayer Silver Sky. You could argue that a couple of those JM635 single coils would be truer to the original Studio design. But, no – today’s Studio came about, Paul Reed Smith tells us, “because we’d got the Narrowfields to sound different in a really good way”.
Paul continues: “Look, here’s the problem. These guys like Jimmy Herring [who uses an original Narrowfield-loaded NF3] play really, really loud. They need really big, fat, powerful-sounding stuff that’s clear sounding. The idea that you can make a humbucker that’s got the character of a single coil is fascinating to us, so the Studio is really an alternative to a Custom – but in a good way, right? If you were PRS and you’d got those Narrowfields sounding like that, would you start making the Studio again?” We reply in the affirmative. “So, why are you asking me?” laughs Paul.
A Pickup Of Its Own
Chatting to Paul back in 2009 on the eve of the company’s 25th anniversary and the launch of numerous Narrowfield-equipped models (originally it was the 57/08 Narrow Field), the new pickup seemed a little unusual, especially visually: a minihumbucker without a cover and stepped bobbins with flush poles that allow it to match the camber of the strings. But that difference – the fact that it was a proprietary model rather than using the benchmark Fender single coil and Gibson humbucker – was a prime driver of the design.
“[The Narrowfield pickup] is somewhere between a P-90 and a Strat, and it’s very full sounding”
“Can I tell you what that’s about?” he asked, pointing at the various parts of the guitar he was holding. “This is a PRS guitar with Gibson parts on it. That’s a Gibson part,” he said, pointing to the control knobs, “and those are Gibson tuning pegs. It’s driving me nuts. Fender didn’t have Gibson parts on their guitars, and Gibson didn’t have Fender parts on theirs. Gretsch didn’t have Fender or Gibson parts… It’s true these have become generic parts,” he said, pointing this time at the pickup bobbins, “but I want out. I have the Narrow Field pickup, I have a Medium Field pickup coming. I want our own pickups. I want never again to be doing this.
“I haven’t heard the Medium Fields yet,” he told us. “But I want to put them all on the Customs. It’ll be halfway between the Narrow Fields and the Standard humbucker… maybe I need to make Narrow Fields, Medium Fields and Wide Fields, that would be cool, but I think that the Narrow Fields look wonderful.”
Back to today and we never got to see those Medium Field pickups, although the concept is pretty close to the slightly narrower aperture units used on the 408 and Paul’s Guitar. The 2021 Narrowfields, meanwhile, benefit from PRS’s relatively new TCI (Tuned Capacitance and Inductance) process.
“So, what’s new? Obviously, the bobbins haven’t changed or the studs, but we’ve learned that pickups are whistles,” he reminds us. “It’s what note they whistle at – they’re resonating at a note. Just like if you play a Strat you can hear that whistle in every note you play. It’s like a port is a whistle for a bass note in a speaker cabinet. So, [on the new Narrowfields] we’ve changed the whistle note: it’s higher in pitch. We liked the original Narrowfields a lot, the old ones sound beautiful, but we’ve raised the note to a musical note that’s higher in pitch. It’s just like on a Neve console as you click through the different frequencies; you’re changing the whistle note of the EQ. We can do that on pickups now. It’s an inductive coil, exactly like what is in a Neve console – it’s a resistor, capacitor and inductor, an RC network.”
“[The Narrowfield pickup] is somewhere between a P-90 and a Strat, and it’s very full sounding because it’s a humbucker. The whistle note is dead in the middle between a P-90 and a Strat single coil.”
The current Core line-up centres on the 58/15 humbuckers, along with the LT, MT and LT+ versions, the more modernsounding 85/15 ’buckers, the TCI pickups of Paul’s Guitar, and the 509 single coils, not to mention the different pickup arrays on the John Mayer Silver Sky and Mark Lettieri’s new Fiore. Still, there are also some different approaches to switching the humbuckers to either partial or true single-coil modes, with the overall pickup selection falling to either a five-way lever or three-way toggle. Did you find your fit? There’s plenty of choice.
Controlling The Changes
“We offer what many others don’t,” Paul agrees, before admitting that, as a very active player himself: “Personally, I like simple guitars. On my own Paul’s Guitar, the one I have it doesn’t have the [two mini-toggle humbucker/single coil] switches, but it sounds gorgeous. I’m so happy with it. All these options are cool and I think they work, but nothing replaces a good guitar part when you’re in the studio. I don’t care how many switches you’ve got!”
Paul Reed Smith remains brutally honest – and is a total gear obsessive, just like the rest of us. He agrees that it can be an expensive pastime: “I have a Dragon that I just got that has the Paul’s Guitar pickups in it. I plugged it in downstairs when I was checking Private Stocks and it did something that I’ve never experienced a guitar do before. I bought that guitar as fast as I could possibly buy it. I didn’t want a Dragon. I mean, they’re beautiful, but I didn’t expect that one to be the best electric guitar I’d ever plugged in. So I bought it. I’m just as susceptible as you are.”
It probably helps, then, that the demand for guitars has risen across price ranges during the pandemic. PRS entered these troubled times with a healthy back order, which has only got healthier. To avoid a long wait for buyers, production has increased.
“We’re now making a 100 guitars a day and we’re going to end up at 140 a day,” says Paul. “Either the market wants more guitars than you have or they want less guitars than you have – so everyone’s mad at us all the time. Right now, we’re in the place that we’re not making enough. One of the [side effects] of the pandemic is that people bought guitars to make them[selves] feel better.”
But, still, aren’t their too many choices? “Yes, but we’re PRS, we’re offering other choices. Mark Lettieri has a big impact on the market – he’s really, really respected, and the Fiore is the guitar he wanted, so we built it. John Mayer, huge impact on the market – the Silver Sky is what he wanted, so we built it. The Super Eagle was what he needed for Dead & Co, so we made it. These are tools to do a job. You’re right, there are too many choices, but if you get your hands on one you love, buy it!”