Why do so few 'big name' bands/artists use PRS?

thegummy

jeztone2 said:

StuartMac290 said:

if you watch any of the early 2000’s Rush live DVD’s you get to see Alex Lifeson playing some of the same songs through the same rig on a variety of different guitars. When he goes from PRS CE24’s to his Les Pauls. There’s more low end maybe . But a lot less clarity.

Geddy Lee has said many times that he much prefers the sound of the band when Alex is playing Gibsons to when he's playing a PRS.

I do think the issue is pretty simple - they're just not very cool guitars, despite their obvious merits. They are often a bit blingy, and they have a wee bit of a pointy headstock going on. They're just not very rock and roll.

Can you imagine Keef and Ronnie playing one?  Like it or not, that's still pretty much the benchmark for rock and roll cool. Or in later years folk like Johnny Marr, or Bernard Butler, or Graham Coxon, or any number of others who you just can't imagine slinging a PRS around their necks.

PRS owners balk at all of this, but it's essentially what it boils down to.

I've had six of them. I liked the way they played, loved the wide fat neck profile, hated the headstock and the stunted upper horn, and generally didn't like the look, even though mine were strictly non-blingy.

More importantly, I virtually never used one in the studio if there were decent Fenders or Gibsons in there, because not once did they sound as good in direct comparison. I find them pretty characterless tonally.

Also, to return to the "not cool" thing, two specific incidents from my own career spring to mind. I once  did an audition for a European and UK tour for a fairly big act using a McCarty Soapbar gold top, and got the gig - on the strict condition that "on no account" was the PRS ever to appear on stage in my hands.

I also once recorded two different parts for a well-known female artist on the same song, one on an Ocean Turquoise McCarty, and one on a lovely Sonic Blue strat. The part I played on the McCarty was far better for the track in every way, and she herself said so...until she asked me if that was the strat. She was visibly disappointed when I said it was the PRS. When I eventually got my copy of the album when it was released about a year later, I was disappointed but not entirely surprised to hear they'd used the less-good part.

You can consider that as ridiculous as you want, but like it or not image is EVERYTHING for the vast majority of successful acts. 

I’m sorry but I just laughed out loud at that. Not a dig at you, because I’ve heard a similar comment from a guitar tech I know who works for a couple of bigger indie bands. Not all of us want to be Graham Coxon. 

Maybe I’m not superficial enough to be a successful musician. I mean my priorities are tone and intonation & how things sit in a mix. Now imagine if Rankin was told he couldn’t use a Phase One Digital Camera on a shoot because they had to use 1960’s analog cameras like Nikon F’s & Minolta SRT101’s because that’s what the really “cool” 1960’s photographers used? 

No wonder guitar music is in the toilet these days. Chasing iconography rather than making new art.  

To be honest, I'd imagine that most 60s throwback guitars are bought by people who just want to play with a guitar at home or in a pub to be like their heroes from the 60s and 70s.

The next biggest segment might be serious bands but who are very much inspired by those bands and so it also makes sense they would play the same guitars.

I'd guess that someone who is now only interested in making new original music but wants to incorporate the sound of a guitar would either choose his own guitar or more likely to be influenced by Fender's marketing machine than care about copying a particular player from the past.

Philly_Q

skullfunkerry said:

Funny thing about headstocks... I've got a thing and I know it's ridiculous where singlecut guitars should have a 3-a-side headstock and doublecut guitars should have 6-in-line.

See, Danny Spitz was right all along. 

deano

thegummy said:

deano said:

I must admit to being a bit of a headstock "snob", and if the headstock looks wrong it puts me off. Fenders and Gibsons are fine, as are, in my view PRS, but the one I like best of all is the Music Man/Ernie Ball 4+2 arrangement! I love that compact yet elegant shape.

I love that headstock too.

Chapman were wanting to use that style initially but they couldn't because it's patented by MM.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke!

gearaddict

Jonathanthomas83 said:

deano said:

...but the one I like best of all is the Music Man/Ernie Ball 4+2 arrangement! I love that compact yet elegant shape.

Ha, the only thing putting me off a Musicman Petrucci style guitar is the headstock, I think it looks awful. Reminds me of a flacid penis.

Hmm...which other things remind you of flacid penises?

mgaw

/\ my own penis

crunchman

thegummy said:

deano said:

I must admit to being a bit of a headstock "snob", and if the headstock looks wrong it puts me off. Fenders and Gibsons are fine, as are, in my view PRS, but the one I like best of all is the Music Man/Ernie Ball 4+2 arrangement! I love that compact yet elegant shape.

I love that headstock too.

Chapman were wanting to use that style initially but they couldn't because it's patented by MM.

Patented or trademarked?  Patents only last 25 years, so I suspect trademarked.  Just googled.  Trademarked.

I can't find a UK trademark though.  That may be my searching skills but there doesn't seem to be anything on the UK government trademark site to match the US one.  Obviously Chapman want to export to the US, so are stuck not being able to use it.

They should never have been granted a trademark on that.  If you google it, makers like Teisco were doing it before EBMM.

Sporky

StuartMac290 said:

Can you imagine Keef and Ronnie playing one?  Like it or not, that's still pretty much the benchmark for rock and roll cool. Or in later years folk like Johnny Marr, or Bernard Butler, or Graham Coxon, or any number of others who you just can't imagine slinging a PRS around their necks.

PRS owners balk at all of this, but it's essentially what it boils down to.

That's what it boils down to if your priority for the guitar is historical re-enactment, and your definition of "cool" is "stuff that happened over half a century ago".

rossi

crunchman said:

Musicwolf said:

 in pictures, is the Taylor solid body electric.  That one never really caught on at all though.  It's very difficult to break into the market with something new.

  I played one and loved it .I couldnt afford it but its neck and fret board were very good .It felt like someone had taken the time to do it properly .It just suited me but of course probably didnt suit others.Sounded good .

thegummy

gearaddict said:

Jonathanthomas83 said:

deano said:

...but the one I like best of all is the Music Man/Ernie Ball 4+2 arrangement! I love that compact yet elegant shape.

Ha, the only thing putting me off a Musicman Petrucci style guitar is the headstock, I think it looks awful. Reminds me of a flacid penis.

Hmm...which other things remind you of flacid penises?

Is it just me or does that guitar's headstock look so little like a flacid penis that Jonathan might want to speak to his therapist?

thegummy

crunchman said:

thegummy said:

deano said:

I must admit to being a bit of a headstock "snob", and if the headstock looks wrong it puts me off. Fenders and Gibsons are fine, as are, in my view PRS, but the one I like best of all is the Music Man/Ernie Ball 4+2 arrangement! I love that compact yet elegant shape.

I love that headstock too.

Chapman were wanting to use that style initially but they couldn't because it's patented by MM.

Patented or trademarked?  Patents only last 25 years, so I suspect trademarked.  Just googled.  Trademarked.

I can't find a UK trademark though.  That may be my searching skills but there doesn't seem to be anything on the UK government trademark site to match the US one.  Obviously Chapman want to export to the US, so are stuck not being able to use it.

They should never have been granted a trademark on that.  If you google it, makers like Teisco were doing it before EBMM.

Sorry, didn't know there was a difference, I have almost zero knowledge in the legal world.

I watched a very interesting mini documentary on YouTube yesterday that first talks about how the idea we have that creative breakthroughs are made by individual geniuses is actually a myth and then goes on to talk about how intellectual property laws were initially introduced to benefit society but these days they're abused and hinder society.

I'd say stopping other guitar manufacturers from using a headstock design you started using decades ago and weren't even the first to come up with it would come under the latter.

Philly_Q

rossi said:

crunchman said:

Musicwolf said:

 in pictures, is the Taylor solid body electric.  That one never really caught on at all though.  It's very difficult to break into the market with something new.

  I played one and loved it .I couldnt afford it but its neck and fret board were very good .It felt like someone had taken the time to do it properly .It just suited me but of course probably didnt suit others.Sounded good .

I think the new Lowden electric is quite reminiscent of the Taylor solidbodies, at least to look at.  More expensive though.

monquixote

If you watch things like Strictly or The Voice, or festivals where a big name singer has a group of session musicians you see loads of PRS, Anderson, Tyler, etc.

For name bands hardly any this leads me to believe it's more about fashion than anything else.

I used to play a DGT in my covers band because I think it's one of the only guitars I've ever come across that can do a convincing country, or funk single coil sound along with a really thick humbucker sound. If I'd been a famous dude with roadies I might have taken a Les Paul and a Tele, but a jack of all trades guitar is more suited to working musicians.

Jonathanthomas83

gearaddict said:

Jonathanthomas83 said:

deano said:

...but the one I like best of all is the Music Man/Ernie Ball 4+2 arrangement! I love that compact yet elegant shape.

Ha, the only thing putting me off a Musicman Petrucci style guitar is the headstock, I think it looks awful. Reminds me of a flacid penis.

Hmm...which other things remind you of flacid penises?

Theresa May.

Grocer_Jack

I've been playing guitar since the late 70s and I've never even touched, let alone played, a PRS. The shiny high end ones don't fit in with the look of any of the bands I've been in. I am slightly curious about the more recent low end PRS models, as they look considerably less dorkish.

But considering brands I've never owned, I'd rather have a Gretsch, or a Guild, or a Mosrite or.....

Haych

Is there such a thing as the 'PRS sound'?  To me PRS seem to be trying to replicate the Gibson sound but in a more aesthetically and ergonomically pleasing package without going too Parker Fly.  There seem to be certain types of guitar sounds, I don't think PRS really fall into their own.  

Brands like Ibanez don't really either, but they come at it from a different perspective, it's all about speed and playability for them.  Again, while PRS no doubt play very well they don't have the extreme playability that the pointy Ibanez type guitars do.

So without their own defining and distinct sound and without bringing much else other than high end woods, attention to detail and bling to the party they're a bit much-of-a-muchness.

Perhaps that's another reason why maybe big names prefer other brands.  The design may be 50+ years old but it works and does what they need and sounds how they like it.  If you already have all the mojo you want/need why change to something else that, apart from pretty woods, fancy inlays and big price tags, does nothing new? 

Philly_Q

Grocer_Jack said:

I've been playing guitar since the late 70s and I've never even touched, let alone played, a PRS. The shiny high end ones don't fit in with the look of any of the bands I've been in. I am slightly curious about the more recent low end PRS models, as they look considerably less dorkish.

But considering brands I've never owned, I'd rather have a Gretsch, or a Guild, or a Mosrite or.....

Again, not trying to put words in your mouth but is that due to growing up associating those guitars with chaps sporting quiffs or groovy pudding-bowl haircuts who were considered cool at the time?

If PRS had been around in the '50s and '60s there would be famous names from the past associated with them and they would be regarded as cooler than they are now.  The PRS guitars themselves would probably be rather different, but that's a separate issue....

AlexO

I've never played one and have no desire to.

I just see them as bland blues dentist guitars, the guitar to me is a symbol of counter culture and they appear to be the total opposite of that.

guitarfishbay

PRS into a Mesa Dual Rec was pretty much the sound of Nu Metal.

PRS do have a sound, play a bunch of them and they've got a generally balanced if slightly midrange forward tone.  It's more polite than a typical Les Paul but fatter than a Fender with humbuckers.

I put EMGs in my PRS anyway.

Blaendulais

Strat54 said:

The reason I bought a PRS I guess - David Grissom. The dentist thing is a silly myth really, I've never come across one dentist that can even play guitar nevermind one that plays a PRS. Everytime one of you guys tediously  brings it up again, you just make yourselves sound childish.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeGI__MK4y4

OK so you are a dentist 

guitarfishbay

Also speed is a technique.  Any guitar with a decent setup can be played fast on, even an acoustic.