PRS - Fashionable again?

raulduke

Whenever I look at PRS they make me think of NuMetal and John Mayer.

Both more than justifiable reasons in my mind for never even picking one up to try.

imalrightjack

raulduke said:

Whenever I look at PRS they make me think of NuMetal and John Mayer.

Both more than justifiable reasons in my mind for never even picking one up to try.

PRS make great guitars.  That right there is potentially missing out on a guitar much better than a Fender or Gibson.

I couldn't less about cool or fashionable and I don't imagine many PRS players do, given the 'dentist' comments, etc.

However, I've stopped buying PRS, sold the ones I had, and have ordered one custom build, bought another unique build, and ordered another custom build from HJ Williams.  And I don't one bit regret it - and, price-wise, I'm no worse off.  Resale value aside, I'm very happy with that decision.

StefB

dazzajl said:

StefB said:

It's a perennial debate.  Tom Anderson, Suhr, Knaggs etc, even Fender Custom Shop, are no more fashionable in mainstream modern music than PRS due largely to their purchase cost and non-1950s styling.  I don't see may Fano, Asher or Echopark guitars on TV either.

They are all 'better' in pretty much every modern way then every other brand and model they seek to improve upon, but young, trendy, 'fashionable' bands can't afford them for starters and the visual message of these bands is usually based around a vintage look so Fender, Gibson, Gretsch and, more often than not, '70s style Teles with at least one Wide Range humbucker and the '70s Deluxe type scratchplate.

The guitarists stood at the back in their touring bands that can actually play probably do use guitars from one the US boutique brands though for the same reason that I do in my function band - they work without fail, stay in tune, are impeccably built, usually quite light in weight and can cover 99% of top 40s covers styles with the flick of a switch or the twist of a pot.

See you again with the same answer next time this old chestnut crops up..

All you’ve done there is elaborate on why they’re not cool. Cool can’t be defined, it’s not in the specs or the quality. 

There are many superlatives that can be applied to PRS but the further this thread goes, Cool becomes further from them. 

I guess in a roundabout way I was seeking an answer to a different question - why is it PRSii are usually singled out as uncool rather than any of the other boutique/bling brands, that are seen in famous hands far more infrequently even than PRS.

richardhomer

As a balding, 55 year old man, I’m not cool. To be fair - I probably wasn’t cool when I was 18....

Happily this frees me from needing to buy things which maintain my coolness.

My DGT is a great guitar. I enjoy playing uncool music on it very much indeed....

crunchman

Getting seriously into guitar in the early 90s, the magazines were full of how wonderful PRS was, so I always wanted one. Got my first one in 1999, and have had 8 in total (6 full fat US, 2 S2s, and 1 SE).  My brother-in-law "borrowed" the SE years ago and I never got it back.  I've sold all the others.  I just prefer the sounds I get from Fender and Gibson.

Some of it is the PRS pickups.  The older pickups weren't very good, but I don't think it's just the pickups.  I think a lot of the problem is that the maple cap is too thick.  They have a much deeper carve in the top of the body than something like a Les Paul, so where the bridge anchors, it is anchored in a very thick piece of maple compared with a Les Paul.  I think that adversely affects the tone.  The all mahogany Standard sounds a lot better than the maple topped guitars. The last one I got rid of was an S2 Singlecut Satin that was all mahogany.  With better pickups I think that would have been a really good sounding guitar.  Unfortunately it came stock with their #7 pickups.  I had too many guitars and it just wasn't worth messing around swapping pickups when I already had a great sounding Les Paul.

They are very well made, and I like a lot of the refinements like the locking tuners, but I've come to the conclusion that their humbucker guitars aren't for me.  I do like the look of the Silver Sky, but I already have a really good Strat so I'm not planning on buying one.

TeleMaster

I don’t think they’ll ever be fashionable or cool. They’re too gaudy for me. 

Doesn't mean they’re not excellent instruments though. 

Philly_Q

Whitecat said:

professorben said:

guitarfishbay said:

BloodEagle said:

timhulio said:

Admittedly I don't work in guitar marketing, so I may be missing something, but can't PRS just give some of their guitars to cool bands? Then they photograph said bands using the gear and the brand will become fashionable through magical advertising osmosis. Did they ever try this? 

The problem with that scheme, I am going to speculate, is that no cool (either genuinelly cool, or NME not really cool at all level) band would be seen dead using any PRS guitars

Mark Holcomb seems cool.  Periphery have a huge following among people who buy musical equipment in modern metal/prog/djent genres, across the board (guitars, bass, drums, any recording equipment)

No indi band would play PRS, but there’s a whole genre of technical metal and prog bands out there using PRS, Periphery as mentioned, SIKTH, Intervals, Opeth, Karnivool etc.  

These guys are way cool. 

Dave Knudson from Minus The Bear was a pretty heavy PRS endorser (MTB broke up end of last year iirc). That's pretty proper indie cred, early millennium Seattle scene and everything...

Wasn't Dave Navarro cool at one point, before he was an overly-groomed, shirt-dodging TV presenter and dater of minor-league actresses?

Chris Haskett of the Rollins Band was a PRS player, he was definitely cool.

Musicwolf

wrinkleygit said:

I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve owned, now l have remembered how good Eggles can be & the world seems a much better place.

I've just packed mine into the car ready from prac tonight.  Mine had been 'retired' for about 10 years until earlier this year.

Haych

I never understood why PRS never capitalised on their connection with Alex Lifeson, he used PRS for 14+ years and AL makes anything cool.  A signature PRS CE Lifeson model would have been awesome.

crunchman

Haych said:

I never understood why PRS never capitalised on their connection with Alex Lifeson, he used PRS for 14+ years and AL makes anything cool.  A signature PRS CE Lifeson model would have been awesome.

Not sure how many people under 40 are into Rush.

They did do a signature Alex Lifeson acoustic.

StefB

Haych said:

I never understood why PRS never capitalised on their connection with Alex Lifeson, he used PRS for 14+ years and AL makes anything cool.  A signature PRS CE Lifeson model would have been awesome.

This in itself may have been part of the problem - PRS guitar mag adverts flaunting Alex as an ambassador were largely during Rush's late '80s/early '90s 'Armani' years.

Haych

crunchman said:

Haych said:

I never understood why PRS never capitalised on their connection with Alex Lifeson, he used PRS for 14+ years and AL makes anything cool.  A signature PRS CE Lifeson model would have been awesome.

Not sure how many people under 40 are into Rush.

They did do a signature Alex Lifeson acoustic.

Surprisingly quite a lot.  They did, I was momentarily excited about it when I heard PRS were doing a Lifeson signature model but majorly disappointed it had nothing to do with the black CE he'd played for years.

professorben

Haych said:

crunchman said:

Haych said:

I never understood why PRS never capitalised on their connection with Alex Lifeson, he used PRS for 14+ years and AL makes anything cool.  A signature PRS CE Lifeson model would have been awesome.

Not sure how many people under 40 are into Rush.

They did do a signature Alex Lifeson acoustic.

Surprisingly quite a lot.  They did, I was momentarily excited about it when I heard PRS were doing a Lifeson signature model but majorly disappointed it had nothing to do with the black CE he'd played for years.

I got a plain top CE purely because of the AL connection. 
I my early 90’s hero’s all seemed to play PRS. 

SimpleSimon

Haych said:

I never understood why PRS never capitalised on their connection with Alex Lifeson, he used PRS for 14+ years and AL makes anything cool.  A signature PRS CE Lifeson model would have been awesome.

Alex Lifeson had his own SE Acoustic out surely that's capitalising on the PRS connection? Hes gone back to Gibson for his electrics - I presume they need him more than Paul does......

Haych

professorben said:

Haych said:

crunchman said:

Haych said:

I never understood why PRS never capitalised on their connection with Alex Lifeson, he used PRS for 14+ years and AL makes anything cool.  A signature PRS CE Lifeson model would have been awesome.

Not sure how many people under 40 are into Rush.

They did do a signature Alex Lifeson acoustic.

Surprisingly quite a lot.  They did, I was momentarily excited about it when I heard PRS were doing a Lifeson signature model but majorly disappointed it had nothing to do with the black CE he'd played for years.

I got a plain top CE purely because of the AL connection. 
I my early 90’s hero’s all seemed to play PRS. 

I had one identical to his black CE - it even had a 174 serial number so must have been made relatively close to his.  Unfortunately it sounded shite!  I did everything to that guitar, changed pickups many times, had it set up more times than should be legal and experimented with different strings but I could not make it sound remotely nice!

I sold it and then discovered afterwards that AL used one identical!  D'oh!  

Skipped

impmann said:

Or is it that folks are finally waking up to the fact that they probably are the world's best made production guitars?

If the question was "Best quality control (at the price point) in a guitar made by the worlds greatest Gibson Fanboy" I would nominate PRS.

Skipped

richardhomer said:

As a balding, 55 year old man, I’m not cool. To be fair - I probably wasn’t cool when I was 18....

Happily this frees me from needing to buy things which maintain my coolness.

My DGT is a great guitar. I enjoy playing uncool music on it very much indeed....

I watched Dave Grissom talking about basing his signature guitar on a vintage guitar that he has owned for a long time.

At the end of the clip I was 100% convinced that this was a guitar that everbody wanted, that everybody dreams about, that everybody would kill their grandma to get their hands on.

And his PRS is not a bad guitar either.

Haych

The one biggest thing I dislike about PRS is their scale length.  I find 25.5" has a nice feel to it and 24.5 - 24.75 has a nice feel to it, but 25" just feels wrong.

The nicest PRS I owned was a Stripped 58 with a 24.5" scale.  That did work very well.  I've also always wanted a Mira Anniversary - they hardly ever come up for sale though.

cpcompany

PRS are the Birkenstock sandal of the guitar world. 

stickyfiddle

Every single name mentioned in this thread is deeply uncool, except for Jack White and Keef. 

PRS make great musical instruments, but they're not cool and never will be.