Paul Reed Smith In Person - The PRS Guitar Success Story

however when I'm Rafi a toe as you can see I'm holding a brand new PRS this is a McCarty 594 that they were kind enough to loan me to check out now I visited the factory up in Maryland a couple weeks ago and I interviewed Paul Reed Smith himself now before I interviewed Paul I was fortunate enough to have a tour of the factory by CEO Jack Higginbotham this is Jack and I walking through the plant going to all the different stations and seeing exactly what goes into building a guitar I mean you realize that when you see this you've got the inlays you of the frets you have the signature here you have this flame maple top and the my agony back you have the strap buttons you have the pickups they wind the pickups they they put all these parts together they build all these things I mean it's really a work of art when it's done but the process takes a long time they have over 300 people employed and Jack told me I said how many guitars are in this building right now and he said Oh probably about 4,000 which is pretty amazing so here is my interview with Paul Reed Smith hey everybody I'm Rick Beato I'm here with the legendary Paul Reed Smith he is actually a person and it's a pleasure to meet you Paul I have unless you shake your hand you're making me uncomfortable people used to come in my shop and card me they'd say oh they a pair to see Paul Reed Smith I said that's me they go no no no I need to get with the big stomach in the in the apron that that's the guitar maker I'm let that's me they went mmm no any card me okay so this is your guitar your signature guitar your personal guitar right it's one of the models they call Paul's guitar worst name in for guitar but that's alright okay it was not it's not a guitar I played before but it does exactly what I wanted to do it sounds beautiful what do you look for in a guitar personally like the way the chords sad you like the way the guitar sounds he'll it works it's like an old t-shirt you put it on it works do you have certain specs though that you like do you like particular types of next pickups anything yeah I keep gravitating towards these slightly narrow or uncovered pickups that have single coil switches on and I gravitate towards these what we call brushstroke birds but it's basically a modified McCarty and we've been selling McCarty's for really a long time and yeah there are specific things I look for and you know we had our open house we have this big event in June every other year and literally the entire French dealer base was standing in front of me for reasons I didn't understand and I was testing out you know different amps and different guitars to make sure that it was the best time I could get that night and they all became the judge and jury which to amp they liked which cable they liked which guitar they liked that had three of these there and they picked which one they liked and I'd you know they all agreed which was kind of interesting but look one time David Grissom had a instrument that he had gotten wonderful Bret Mason - DGT and Bret Mason I said oh I'm gonna lose did you like that so why do you use these as I don't know it just works for me which is a really sophisticated statement he wasn't analyzing it just worked for him he plugged it in a ditch job so for me this plugs in it does its job you started your company there weren't two predominant guitar manufacturers and you've been able to break in and become this huge entity one of the most important guitar manufacturers and amplifiers of all time now and you say you you told me 330 people you're not telling me you're the company okay good that's better your company how did that happen well when we first started we would advertise full-page as if we were the same size as everybody else and for ten years people could say he'd never heard of it even 20 years in people go never I would say huh and but if you said you know if you ever see Carla sent out played guitar with birds they go yeah seen that because he's you know worldwide household name yeah but I remember one year we were at summer nan in Nashville and people were saying you know over the years you would hear Fender Gibson Fender Gibson Ibanez Fender Ibanez Gibson Fender Martin Gibson fender Taylor of Martin Gibson whatever was you know Gibson Fender Gibson Fender eivin's one year you start to hear people saying Gibson Fender PRS or they'd say Fender PRS Gibson where they say you know it was in the three and the other ones were left out and I went oh wow it started this shift right that felt good but that was hundreds of people over decades busting their ass we kind of make magic guitars so that that people loved and held on to that would translate into that so it's not like overnight success it's all done and thousands and thousands of baby steps I think that you have the most consistent guitars that I've played when I go to any music store and I take a PRS off they always are set up well they play well tell me about that I call that a window so if this is the worst guitar ever made and this is the best guitar ever made there's a window about where the instruments are you know and it's somewhere around here it goes from guitar to musical instruments somewhere along the line it becomes something that somebody could make their living on for the rest of the lives heroin is pretty narrow whereas other companies the windows much wider you know it can be really nice or in the semi junk range or whatever the ranges and our job is to move the window up and so the consistency has been always really good for us we started selling guitars on the internet with McCarty's because people trusted that they would get a really good guitar and they were interested in only Outlook but we've been trying to move the window up and move it up and move it up and up but I think this guitar that I'm holding is indicative of that guitar sounds good and loud loud the store is not going to be like an ice pick in your head it's not going to terrier off and it's gonna sound beautiful musical and sound good yeah it sound good in the band and every note the person plays you'll hear when you go home do you play the guitar sometimes depends when you know I'm in a mood right now or I'm working at night non-stop on one of our products okay then it takes a lot of research I'm working on something that's common and I have been a busy bee listening to every different kind of capacitor made and I want to know because it capacitors a coil and it they had you know some people say it doesn't make any difference at all and some people do all difference in the world and what do you say they all sound different do you like the way they sound different do you like it that came from Ted Jensen the great master engine sure is all gear changes the sound questions do you like it and you know and it's a few one other very experienced person or industry since did you listen to it in other words did you interview it did you did you as you listen to it so I've been on a tear to understand that piece but it's always done pieces whether it be the pickups for John Mayer's guitar or the pickups we just finished for our carlos intent Piper making a new piece of gear it's a sum of its parts and if you you know you can't just throw a party nervous into it works I'm the John Mayer guitar yeah the I'm not typically to plug it in i'm not typically one for aesthetics necessarily on looks of guitars but the white pickguard and the white guitar yeah are perfectly matched they look it's very hard to get a white pickguard and one finished totally good together oh why did that take was that difficult no what was difficult was getting this lower scoop to have a different color than his and have it have a different contrast that was really hard but this is that sounds good and I've never played this guitar before right I said I mean that's part of our pride there was a guy at a clinic slagging me really bad in the back he was going after I don't know well I'm here I never liked them and I sound good and there was an admiral of Admiral the Navy in the back listen at all this so I'm doing my clinic room and I was didn't know what's going on and the guy was just slagging me desperate he says I don't know why I'm here I can't even believe I'm staying here and I said well this you know these things sound like 63 strats and a guy goes and it's somebody else in this well plug one in so I just grabbed one off so I grabbed one and I pulled it off the wall and plugged it in and way [Music] in the back because they shouldn't he bought it the thing that's interesting is he knew what a what a mid 60 stress is I like and he knew from what he'd heard that he there wasn't he couldn't get that sound any other way and I just was like when I heard the story the end I was just beaming because all that work on those pickups and all the work on the bridge and all the work on the the neck and how we try it and the way that nut is in the tuning pegs and god knows how many other things on this guitar I mean just even this pot it's not a 250k pot it is got a resistor on it that makes it exactly the value we want so that was fun I mean to me that's just a hoot when when did you see the turning point as far as your company was concerned I can't say one turning point yeah I've raised a half a million dollars and I called everybody and I ordered all the parts all the machines and I was all here comes and it's coming in we're setting it up and the account went from I raised a half a million dollars went from 500 then went to 400 then we started shipping Attar's around 300 then people started paying their bills I had about 250 you know and then we had some worse expenses and about around 185 grand the account stopped who's done this is stopped I stopped doing that direction and started to go the other way it started to move a little bit the other direction that that was such a relief because people reordered have they had not reordered it was over what if they had got him sold the first one and not reordered dead but they enthusiastically reward so that was a that was a turning point um but a lot of turning points I remember wearing real trolls Paul Jackson jr. walked into my booth because I'm gonna help you I want pardon me yes I'm gonna help you you get me a few guitars you watch next day American Idol was a Paris campaign Wow Wow Wow did that help you have no idea that how much that helped I got a chance to go see Carlos play at in Las Vegas recently and I was just like a kid in the candy store watching a concert and I enjoyed that even though I had a relationship night we made the guitars instill all these hits after hits you know sure watch and John Mayer be successful and the Grateful Dead was who watching everybody except it when you know there were big questions on the internet beforehand that was all fun I saw him do something I believe what song released this guitar and his little Instagram was getting a thousand likes a minute mm-hmm y'all need to shut up now I got schooled late 90s when the new metal movement happened everyone played brss all the bands little rectifiers and triple rectifiers doing that was the sound that was that was the sound and then that got when new metal started to die off a PRS got branded with that but then you overcame it and and people then not in the day no 50 years it was tough right really tough I can't think of another analogy wasn't know much about there was he know it was another time there was a time when all the women were singing hits jewel and all these when were singing hits on the radio and you couldn't give an electric guitar away right man I guess and and there was it and it was an electric guitar reception yeah awful there were times at the tradeshow that martin booth was empty the whole show that is no longer the way it is so yeah it goes and ebbs and flows and moves and we never intended for the PRS custom triple rec thing to happen that was not the goal the goal was to make really good guitars and they just have to and then when they weren't picking them up then it you know within a turn the other way but it goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth this thing was a real risk but it went well so there were all these videos done after the mean that we got slag so bad John called me up because don't worry about it we get slag before the dead thing happened but we've been to reversals we've been to rehearsals around this guitar we know with the guitar is right and I thought that that was intelligent and a good way to look at it and then all these videos started to happen that we had nothing to do with mm-hmm and this one guy compared it on the Internet to his favourite 64 strat and when he was playing all the the licks on the on the silver sky and going back before the fact where they ain't picked his guitar oh like a torch choir he had no idea and that was cool and then Tim Pierce comes out with a video 2000 verses 20 thousands do you see that video and he got a brand new it was a 65 in perfect condition strat and appear us and he calls me up he's elected a video it's hidden the internet said what's the difference is I can hear it you should watch it's called two thousand dollars versus twenty thousand dollars you know everybody who had a real problem with until all of a sudden the guys slagging me in the back of the room didn't have a problem with anyone I actually played the guitar because I was curious and I went to righteous guitars in Atlanta yeah which has quite a lot of PR SS and I store a news or it's a great great place and they said hey ever got the source guy and we have one that's been sold what you want to try it out I said try now so I picked it up and I thought and I'd heard that the neck radius is it seven or something like that every quarter and I thought oh I'm not gonna like this guitar like flat or fingerboards and I start playing I said it feels great how's that possible how is that possible well the whole internet says you can't play solos on seven and quarter and trades I thought machine guns Center pretty good songs a swing sound pretty good I'm the blue child sounds pretty good to me I you know I can name you tune after tune after that the first solo in LaGrange so bad you know I it's good and now I can't even think of it with a flyer fretboard it feels so natural to me and we made a bunch a ten inch radius once and we made all these different ones and we decided this was the best feeling one that's why we did it and we were willing to take the hit that the internet thought was a bad idea and my big argument in this place was it we're not going to let the internet tell us how to make guitars we're going to talk to our artists and ourselves and our own experience and history and look at it from that point of view now if you have a ten inch and a seven inch core radius and the frets are low you got real problem because you'll stretch up when you ship your guitars you ship one with ten say what do you like I used tens I made the conversion right nine and asked for a minute but I made the conversion the original scale infinity Russ was 25 inches because with a 4209 set if you hit it hard on on a shorter scale than that it used to go sharp and I and so when you got to 25 quit doing that so it wasn't it was intended to make sure that the strings played in tune when you hit him hard but a lot of guys were when they were using 25 and a half inch skill stuff they were tuning down you know turning down a b-flat to invented B I'm the first hundreds records in e yeah I the time-machine not happened he was tuning the D yeah so I don't know I look when you wrap your right hand around the guitar you were like oh god this plays really good I wouldn't want any other way right but the Internet has said well it's got to be tennis reach good well eleven and a quarter nine three eight Wow well I always notice the guitars it depends on the guitar there's so many elements out of 10 yes and I like it yeah I like this guitar too when people started tuning to way down when new metal happened oh god what a wonderful thing they were doing talk to me about that what do you think about that was that was that what did people did people come to you saying oh man we're tuning down to drop drop a drop b-flat first time I made a guitar for Mick Mars he said put tens on it tune it to D okay and I did it my jaw drop so let me just start doing what I heard all right [Music] I love old-school tuning this is how we used when I was growing up [Music] [Music] [Music] some bigger and bigger and they were a bigger bear no I would put Elevens on mm-hmm but I am really light we're 12 I really like 2500 scale guitar to tune down when the internet tells us that it has to be a longer scale and I knew that that Mark Tremonti baritone that we came out a twenty five and a half year scale was unbelievable sounding and you know the whole internet you couldn't do that mark said work good for me so we were at this vintage show in Dallas and we had one of these Mark Tremonti baritones it was twenty five and a half year scale tuned down this floor ring and there was his kid and his buddy there at the show and I plugged the guitar in and they were like I don't know and it's not a good idea and I plugged the nested listen to this and I played it and his guy this buddy she takes his elbow he slams into his buddies rips it you got a guitar was gone so fast and a crowd started to come most people don't even plug them in anymore I mean telling me tuned with harmonics most people are buying with their internet advice as you're going and plug in the guitar and that's just crazy to me you know I mean [Music] [Music] this is sharp doesn't us is doing be too big on the c2c ready with a with a custom 22 you know and it's been doing it forever and it sounds immense you know and then Hendrix's day the there was not a 5-way switch for the in between sites and they would take a file out and they they knew that they could put an extra bump in ever they could hold it up in the middle to get those sounds you know it was just that was the beginning our industry well this has been an illuminating experience to say the least why because you are is interesting of a person and its really pleasure for you doing this today and you thank you so much I'm gonna be a man so once you combine is it my way stranger absolutely so there's a bunch of new bands Planet damn you should go see Bosco's plan magnolias boulevards plane actually my band gets to play again after a 10-year hiatus which is kind of cool nice but there's a lot of press there you should come and be a part of it a definitely I think that we combine things you come to see my studio I'd love to see your studio I said it done Lobby sixes year here this yeah I have sixes there's only well I've only seen one pair of my life and that came up for sale I bought I didn't have the money I borrowed everybody yeah well I'm just I'm waiting for you to invite me to take out me so right at the studio in my studio there you can then oh thank you so much I appreciate it thank you everybody for thanks appreciate it alright perfect cut from the same cloth that was great there was so many guitar tones I left out Texas times I thought oh my god I thought that given something I thought about I like to thank Paul Jack Jean and everybody that I met at PRS they were all incredibly great people and I look forward to checking out this guitar that's all for now please subscribe here to my everything music YouTube channel if you're interested in might be out of book you know what to do thank you for watching

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 384,553

Keywords: paul reed smith, prs guitars, paul reed smith (organization founder), guitar (musical instrument), electric guitar, Silver Sky, John Mayer, Carlos Santana, mark tremonti, mccarty 594 vs les paul, mccarty 594, PRS Custom 22, prs custom 24, john mayer super eagle, prs mccarty, Alex Lifeson, David Grissom, Mark Holcomb, martin simpson guitar, silver sky vs stratocaster, silver sky vs strat, prs custom 24 vs gibson les paul

Id: HOCdj9__QW4

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 11 2019