Pitbull Audio Presents: Paul Reed Smith Clinic

[Music] what is going on guys thank you guys so much for coming out we are fortunate enough to have mr. Paul Reed Smith here so I'm gonna have him come on up and leave them to it come on up all so I understand this thing's being live-streamed right so that means Facebook live and people are going to be joining us and if I say anything wrong I'll get shot long term is that basically what's going on wait a minute we're an environment now where you can say the wrong thing and it's okay right I bought something today I bought this pedal over here and the reason I bought it is you don't go to the ice cream store without buying an ice cream cone so it's not okay to come here and not it's just not it doesn't work I mean you come in here and you come and look around he leave if you go home and dream about it and come back that's cool but if you go home and you didn't dream about it I guess that's cool too but you gotta buy something it's not okay it's it's just not okay and for me what I find is that when I could travel the world pretty much you can find what's available for sale that's new although he showed me something today that was a pedal made in Tijuana right and that's not something stores in Chicago have although Chicago music exchange did sell a thousand pedals on Black Friday one year whoa that's a lot of drugs to sell in one day and if you don't think these people are drug dealers you're out of your mind so let me explain this to you if you're on a couch whether something you a guitar you love you're in no pain and when you put it away there's no hangover that makes it the best oxycotin built and I say you don't play guitar so that's your gesture drug addict right there okay I like the way you think lady that's really good you the enabler see in the Facebook lot we need to put a mic on the room so that people can hear the comments back and forth because what she said that makes me an enabler I like that so I'll tell you story than I adore you don't play guitar right okay we're at and this is on YouTube you can watch this on youtube we're at our experience and there's about 800 people in the tent and when the tents full it's maybe 1,500 to 1,800 people and there's this guy in the side and he's not real happy and I said something to him and he said he had like 30 guitars but his wife wouldn't let another one and I'm like put her on the phone he goes okay and he Hank the dials Heather up and hands me the phone and I said I understand that your husband wants to buy I know the guitar but she won't let him she says that's right if he sells one he can buy another one and I said to him look she says if you sell one you can buy another one you've got 30 you can so on she goes what and I said to this guy I go you'll tell 800 people you have 30 guitars but your wife doesn't know oh I like her way more than I like you right so I bought her a plane ticket for her a daughter the next year and I brought her to the experience and I rented a straitjacket and I put him in the straitjacket and sat him on a stage and he's like I said stop it you're scaring your daughter stop it right so he starts struggling and I literally had a straitjacket I'm right and I said I'll give you to her I'll give you the Private Stock prototype that he could never own if you swear to God to me he can never touch it at which point she stared down the pipe for about 45 seconds and now there's 1,800 people in the tent cuz it's at night right and it's the next year and we got more people there and and um she finally agrees and you could see look when you have that much experience focused on such a small area the air starts to crack a little bit it gets pretty Wiggy right and to me when she agreed to do it all the women in the audience that didn't play guitar got up inserted screaming and we're friends now we're all friends I see him I see Hans all the time but the next time we did the experience this couple comes up to me and they're in line to get autographs and this woman is so mad she wants me dead and I said what's wrong she goes he's got six guitars and I never got my wedding ring first couple print and I gave him Paul I gave him the number of Zachary's which is our ring store downtown Annapolis I said go buy a ring I'm not selling you a guitar so in the tent that night I tell the story to everybody in the hopes to bring him up on the stage and embarrass him right but he's not in the tent they've left which I didn't understand cuz John McLoughlin played that night which that didn't make any sense what they're French anyway so uh and he lives in Monaco so maybe they'd seen him play before so the next day she walks up and she goes I got my ring and he goes and I got my guitar at which point I decided that I would start telling everybody all the stories about how the drug addict lies to the enabler all right so here's the gig no no no no this is really not good if you do any of these by the way I've had people scream don't tell or don't tell her this way the first one is all the guitars are black and he says he has to he leaves with the empty case and comes back in with the guitar in the case and she thinks he just went to band practice oh it gets worse how about he comes home she I bought a guitar look I paid $800 for it shows the receipt neglects to tell her about the $2,300 gets already traded in so the saying is if she sells those guitars for what she thinks I paid for him after after I die I'll come back and kill her so how many guitars does he have 18 I have three I just got a third one and I used to have two and I lost one so I'll tell you that story I cut take these guitar so I'm gonna show my wife all the time I said look Paige look how beautiful it is Paul I think one of the private stocks home you know for one of these that Paul's in charge of building all these private stock guitars look how beautiful and have a pin light in the kitchen I put it out of the pin light and I and I brought the one home that was rusted brass color remember that one and she goes I'll have that okay because this one I loved and I had about 15 seconds to calculate a lot of things so about 10 seconds for 15 seconds later said okay you can have it now here's the calculation every time I left the house I was going to borrow my wife's guitar I thought I could deal with that the second thing was if I died I got it back I thought that was cool I mean I if she died I got it back right but if I died she was gonna get it anyway so that seemed okay and maybe I could build a better one maybe maybe Paul and I could build a better one so I just calculated the whole thing in an arcade you can have it which just for whatever reason she just sees all these people getting guitars and she wanted one but she never told me which I thought was really cool that she finally said I'll take it so now I have to borrow my wife's guitar now I don't when I when I take it I don't even ask her anymore but she knows it's hers you know and I tell this story a lot she just beams she just thinks that's just nothing but good fun so if you want one of these how many you got and if she says she wants one you're gonna give it to her yes I said you can have one I'm just giving you permission to take one now yeah he already say as I'll show you which ones you could take or which ones you can take and she wants the gold one in the front every you're not getting that one alright so this is being streamed so let me just try to give a basis for God I love it when kids come I took a young boy four or five years old into my studio and put the guitar in his hands and showed him the collection the dragons that I have in my studio and let him play through the guitar amp and everything he won't stop pounding his mother for electric guitar for Christmas that's me doing my job so when I was young there were probably ten guitar companies and ten factories so I'm 63 so wouldn't you know in my world at the rite of passage was that your father took you to Washington Music Center and you got to buy your first piece of gear you know and I'm sure that that was true in almost any town and now there's probably 22 factories and 350 brands and guitars so how are you supposed to swim through that and so one of the things I want to do today is give everybody an idea about how you can find a guitar that's a magic guitar long term the fireman in our town came to me and they said listen more and more and more when the people are out and the animals are out and they're safe people were screaming for their PRS is not the photographs and that day I felt better that we were doing a good job that felt like I was doing my job we were making heirlooms right and really these private stock said you're building Paul they are heirlooms Tina what you guys are selling at our heirlooms right and I think that that's important but how do you sift through that there's 350 brands and you don't even know what factory they were made in you have no idea they don't really tell you one of the things we started doing with our SES is writing where they were made on the back of the headstock and literally some of our ancestry screamed at me for a half an hour telling me what a huge mistake that was and my point was I wanted these people in that factory would be proud of what they were doing and sign it I didn't want it to be hidden by you know some non understanding what was going on so this is the way I think you should buy guitars now this store does a huge amount of business on the Internet correct so you're going to have to do this theory somewhat through the through the internet but this is basically it you should buy guitars the way women buy shoes I don't know what marriage you're in man you said you said sporadically yeah you don't know what you're talking about all right so so it's periodically alright so so the way women buy shoes in my experiences bring me ten pairs and get away from me and I'll tell you which para one it's the same thing with guitars bring me a bunch of guitars let me play him and if you don't love one of them don't buy it just don't buy it so here's the deal you could if you don't really understand how good the guitar is you can feel how how it feels in your hand you can feel if it's comfortable weight wise you can do all that but in order to how good it's gonna sound you can plug into an amp and you can get an idea of that but you don't know what it's gonna sound like in your studio you know what's gonna sound like live you know but if you get out of stopwatch you can find out pretty pretty quickly how fit how good the guitar is so imagine all the same strings are on all the guitars a guitar that rings for 10 seconds is not as good as a guitar the rings for 45 45 seconds period same strings one of them's being shut down in 10 seconds and the other ones not being shut down for 45 okay a string at it's very very very best goes for about a minute right Paul we that one time we timed one in Japan for a minute and when we knew we were onto something because this thing was ringing for so long all right so why is that well if you can put tuning pegs made out of rubber and a nut made out of rubber and a bridge made out of rubber you're gonna admit it's gonna ring for 10 seconds or less right there for the parts on the guitar are having an impact on how long the string is ringing if the water in the wood is still really it's still there in the woods pretty wet it's gonna have an impact if the finish is really soft it's gonna have impact if the knot is made out of the same thing you hook your toilets your septic tank with which is PVC plastic which is now becoming industry standard it used to be bone that's gonna have an impact and really with a stopwatch you get an idea of you know what that is and I brought a guitar and I'll plug it in and you it goes on and on and on and on and on and that's a really good indication of whether or not it's a good guitar the other thing you can do is you can axe ask an expert somebody who's an expert is somebody in a very complicated area that's solving very complicated problems over and over and over again that's by definition what an expert is this store is full of experts ask somebody ask him he knows what he's talking about boy I'll tell you what means to say no to you when you're trying to sell a pedal which you did I did twice it was not fun I don't really need that was not something I wanted to say to you all right but the truth is that's part of what a destination store is which is what pitbulls trying to do here trying to have a destination store people come and try things right and we started selling guitars on the Internet pretty much before almost before anybody else because people trusted when they bought him a car teeth at the next shape would be right they trusted that it would sound good they were trusted to play good and they just wanted one that was the right color and I didn't like that very much I wanted them to experience how it sound experience how it played this and the other but they were like nah Paul we trust you around that one I just want to get the right color and I've seen people say to me I have this blue one I'm absolutely adore how it sounds I do or the way it plays on a red when I'm like I your mind but in there but 80% of information is brought on with people's eyeballs so so it's important to them right so let me show you the sustain thing [Music] [Laughter] it's like the Energizer buddy bunny is that what you know it's still going as a stop yet [Music] still going it just stopped that's not bad that's pretty good and and what I want is for people to trust their experience so if you can't figure out what's going on with 350 guitar companies and 12 factories trust your experience that it's incredibly powerful and will tell you the truth if the guitars sucking energy away from you it's not something you want if this guitar is giving the energy back to you something you want and I'm sorry no matter what pedal you buy an Engel fixes problem fair enough all right good look most right now the guitar is more of a synthesizer controller than it is a guitar they using these pedals as synth modules and and Hendrix started with his wah-wah pedals and his Octavia's and his fuzz phases and his wah was and univibe Zilla which is fine but I'm sorry when he turned them all off it's still sounded unbelievable right so I don't know I just I just think it's really important that people have an idea that they can trust their experience and I've done this in audiences will you take and take somebody who's never played guitar and play them for acoustics and the person can tell sitting in front which is the best guitar easy it's easy it's not hard and we used to do shootout so we would get other brands of guitars and we would shoot them out against each other I don't really want to do that today for a variety of Facebook live reasons and but I can tell you you should do that and it becomes deeply obvious what the differences are and you should trust your experience now when you get a guitar on the internet and it comes to the door if you don't love it do they have a right to send it back okay so it's the same thing my wife got this is just unbelievable there's a store down the street big store starts with an N sells dresses she could have gone down and tried them all she watered all six of them tried them on her bedroom sent five of them back I'm like oh my god and that's going on more and more and more more and more I've seen people do all their Christmas shopping from their computer I mean things have changed things have really really changed but fundamental guitar making fundamental ant building fundamental speaker building some fundamental pedal building hasn't changed although it is progressing really quickly and you showed me some things today that I didn't know about the progression of pedals right which is very cool so that said I wanted to open the floor to questions and let me explain why you all came here with questions I can get on my soapbox and Yap for an hour and a half and I'm not going to hit your question where I'm like it's much better if you do when I throw myself to the wind and say please ask questions we end up covering all the subjects I'd do it anyway and then it becomes an interactive conversation but I'm gonna warn you if you ask a question you're a target because I've had those phone calls where you get where they say you've got bad news for you Paul and so when I'm having a good time I'm goofing off and playing around all the time so why isn't somebody take a big risk and ask a question now I'll tell you what two questions I got that stick out in my head one was a guy stood up in the middle of a crowd in LA and said why are PRS guitars guitars well the reason he'd said he's is listen I go to war when I'm gone I don't want to get her to fight me I want high action I want it to be struggles I I said I was good you're killing me for having the frets level you're killing me for having the neck that feel right the frets are to stick out the side of the neck and we had this big argument I said why don't you just change to Elevens instead of 10 you know why should raise the action a little bit oh we won't add it it was good for you the other guy stood up in the middle of the back right where the guy at the Hat is in the back stood right right about there and he goes Paul you've been talking about 57 stretch you've been talking about 59 Les apology we tell them that the history of our business we don't know what we've never played a 57 strat we've never played a 59 Les Paul we think they're reissues and I went oh no I've spent my entire career studying all these old guitars and holding them and understanding what these gentlemen that made these instruments these women that made these instruments understood and they haven't been going to these vintage shows and trying them but they were hanging on the wall behind behind me at the clinic I said you can play the ones that are sitting on the wall behind me right and David who runs the story goes now in other words and then they said okay hotshot get out of stop watch and they pulled out a fifty-seven strat a 59 Les Paul in my guitar and he started timing them with their with the stopwatch on their phones and then they started time in new guitars and it was unbelievable what happened in the room scared me to death because I hadn't done the test beforehand the 57 strat ring for 48 seconds my PRS that I brought referring forward 48 seconds the old Les Paul rang for like 42 seconds the other ones are ringing 16 and 17 seconds each and it would prove the point but oh my god they said alright let's test your theories and I think that those kind of questions VOC real understanding I think people learn much more in an argument than they do and somebody just standing on a soapbox yappin so why does it somebody take a risk and ask a question and we'll go for it and I'm gonna have to repeat the questions into the mic right all right so so many all right here Rome Hammond you're gonna get the talk on Facebook live into the microphone so how will a 500-dollar PRS sustained compared to a I don't know 5,000 or 10,000 dollar PRS I've never done the test but I think about two-thirds of the time almost as long and look I know how all these guitars are made we've taken all our competitors guitars apart we know what they use to glue the to a lot of nuts on guitars they don't even glue them on anymore I mean if it's owned almost nothing of the nut is touching the wood it's it's it's like bridged you've got to fill all the gaps in I know if we are gluing the nuts on well on se guitars because I break them off I know we're gluing the frets and I know how we're drying the wood I know how we're finishing them I know how the bridges are made so since I haven't done it but I know exactly what I would do to make it longer if I had to but I would say that we would survive that test beautifully to answer your question as frankly as I can that's a scary question but I answered it honestly by the way when people lie in front of a crowd you ever notice everybody just kind of goes like this and when you tell the truth to a crowd they all go like that yours notice that yeah well you were not and that's good all right somebody else has questions see yes sir there's no next I'm sorry it's more of an idea than a question your laughter than he is yeah the question will come at the end the way guitars are designed now with the high E string you can bend it up of course but you can't really do like a proper vibrato because you run out of fret board at the bottom there at underneath I was if you designed a guitar that had a little bit more space underneath the E string you could get like a wide vibrato and you could black create sounds that people couldn't recreate unless they had the same guitar have you ever thought of that or sir come here is that enough room that is nicer nicer than most yes but I was like it's a little bit more [Laughter] I'm not running off the side well that's a well-managed Akata manettino can order you a private stock right now but we'll make the fretboard 3/32 wider all the way down with the same string spacing and you will never come off and you'll have a one-off prototype and she'll take your credit card right now I mean this thing about the strings falling off the neck is a real concern and one of the reasons that early fenders had this problem I mean people learned that they had to almost Bend the high e up a little bit before they wiggled it I thought you were gonna get into the thing about you can't play solos on a seven and a quarter inch radius I thought you were gonna get into that argument God that one made me crazy I thought Sultans of Swing sounded fine I thought machine gun was good I think it was a problem but the internet told us about how to make guitars which I find stunning yes sir they're gonna get my can I win it did I answer your question that's good you can order it today don't worry about all right since you brought up the silver sky yeah I have a silver sky question so it sounds like it feels like or it looks like on the internet he had a lot of success with the silver sky so I the question is are you going to do other variations of this that model or are you gonna do any type of other maybe a fixed bridge tally type model or kind of go into that area where's that so at the end of them okay so you want to be my new marketing department is that what you just said I'm not telling no no no no no no no no that's good I told you everybody asking questions at Target I just want a minute I've got two silver skies and I I'm just curious cuz okay so what you're asking is are you gonna be coming out with a maple fretboard silver sky are you gonna be coming out with new colors are you gonna make it tele are you gonna make are you gonna do this just HS I can't tell you that I the internet has ruined everything I used to be able to talk in Dallas estate in Dallas if I talking Dallas now that people know what shirt I wore in Germany as I'm talking I'm you think I'm kidding I'm not Howard Leese was with me at Rainbow guitars in Tucson Arizona and as he walked out of the store at the his tech said nice shirt Howard and a guy was from Germany swear to God somebody was filming from underneath the chair like the guy in the back over here filming somebody was over here from I can't tell you because then I haven't told my German rep I haven't told my Italian rep I haven't told my Japanese people the reps I haven't told the English people I haven't told the rep that I have here and I would be telling you ahead everybody what all our plans are I can't do it anymore the the internet has put me in a straitjacket and I can't do it I used to quietly be able to tell people what we were planning on doing that those days are over when John Mayer announced the silver sky he was getting a thousand likes a minute not views a thousand likes a minute 60,000 likes an hour it shut our computer systems down it shut our internet down it shut us completely down and we were giggling the Internet's changed everything to to to the fact that this stores you know you can find it world famous in seconds you know so I can't tell you I want to tell you but then I'd have to kill you I mean you're asking really grounded good questions what are your long-term plans with John Mayer I can't tell you that but I can tell you that the conversations I'm having Carlos Santana or David Grissom or Jimmy Haring or John Mayer or more kokum or Mark Tremonti are intense grounded good decisions about what we're gonna do long term now that MC 15 that Mark design with Doug Sewell is a professional piece of gear in a toy market it is one hell of an amplifier and he used it for a whole record before he would allow us to release it but we didn't tell him buddy sometimes these artists leak the news out just to make sure their stuffs gonna sell long-term but that's for them do not for me to do and now I'm not sure you like my answer but I did answer your question see now hang on a minute if there's a question right here and there's a question right here let me see when you throw yourself to the wind and all these things it's of interest to the whole room it's not just it's almost like the people asking the questions are asking it for the whole room right and it gives me a chance to attack people and be a comedian and do all kinds of wrong things so I'm warning you go good evening Wow good thanks for being here Thanks all right so I imagine you're surrounded by so much gear and probably lose your marbles pretty much on a daily basis gear gear guitars and everything lose my marbles sure I don't know you're guessing your wildly your guess I have a lose my marbles if I lose my marbles well all bosses are supposed to be out of their minds right isn't that right Paul Hey so how many knives do you think of mime in my back at the bar after after work 16 16 okay good okay I said go inside I like good gear I really like nice things I bought something today pay for something today would be in your best interest yes going so that was a no did you hear him say no more if you say work with you I don't know what is anyway as far as the last year what has been the greatest piece of equipment gear guitar related knock guitar related that you purchased that's been under a hundred bucks go I'm here for as long as you really want to know the answer I have an answer to the question sure we found Greg Irwin who plays in a band called Magnolia Boulevard for under $100 found a coricidin bottle which is what Duane Allman used to play slide on with the pills in it with the label on it for under $100 I emptied the pills into the trashcan I soaked the bottle and got the label off and it's sitting in my studio and it cost me considerably less than $100 cos Greg paid for it I was given a real course eden bottle by that duane allman had given to a guy named Dennis Robbins Dennis Robbins played in the Rockets the Rockets were Jim McArthur great jim mccarty played in the rockets and he was the other guitar player he gave me his kursi bow this is the the glass slide that you know started the whole thing right hang on a minute I Derek Trucks was in my studio and I gave it to him as a present I said this was Duane's this was Duane's coricidin bottle the other day I saw it Dennis Robbins in Nashville acid when you come to my house I have a brand new course Seton bottle for you that had the pills in it and everything and I'm gonna return the favor and give it back because I don't play slide but for him it's a huge deal now for up for about $100 you can find a brown one on eBay now nobody's even seen a brown course Eve oh okay the best thing you can do for hundred hours is get a really good guitar teacher to give you a lesson and let me explain why I say that they do the thing in Guitar Player magazine a hunter best ways to get a good tone and my friend Ralph Rucci went berserk when he read it I said what's wrong Ralph he goes they didn't say take a lesson and I called the editor guitar player and I said you forgot to say to take a lesson and Melinda says to me goes yeah you're right we forgot that one if Eric Clapton his plan no matter through what amp what guitar sounds like here Carlos Santana's playing through no matter what amp what guitar sounds like Carlos and I'm sorry Derek Trucks no matter what he's gonna pick ups gonna sound like Derek and Jimmy herrings gonna sound like Jimmy Haring so there's a huge amount available $400 in my time of dying was played on a Sears silvertone guitar that had was made out of fiber board with these lipstick pickups in it ran over a door I'm sorry I saw a page play it on the outrider tour and that guitar cost less than a hundred bucks when it was made now that paid his guitar that played in my time of dying it would probably go on so the bees for some outrageous amount of money so that ain't 100 bucks but there are things to be found for less than a hundred dollars that will do the job there's an industry-standard pair of headphones called Audio Technica m50 s everybody uses them you can find them on eBay for less than 100 bucks and if you listen to Eric Clapton sing T no tears in heaven on the unplugged he was using sm58 which you can get for less than $100 I'll sell you hundred our stuff all day long no problem you're right there should be stuff available at that price but there's also you're not gonna get a private stock guitar for honored bucks I'm sorry the bridge cost us more than that you have to talk in the mic we're a facebook live hold on and I bring that question up not because I'm like hey like I want a guitar he answers your question you did do you I can move on no no we're good keep going just by the looks of it it's it's not a matter of oh I just want like a hundred dollar guitar it's just I feel like we're in an industry now like you said there's thousands of hundreds thousands of factories in hundreds of country yeah and everyone's trying to throw out well by an axe effects or by this pedal or buying a katana oh this new katana marked you is great well you know or now there's a guitar that has a synth pad or you can put it through MIDI that's exactly you're making the point I started with it I'm saying sit in the corner and try them yourself and make your own decision that's what I'm saying you're gonna believe me if everybody on the Internet has 25 years experience including the guy in Waco Texas who's 14 years old in the basement is underwear and somebody said he's not wearing his underwear Paul um so look what I'm saying is that that you're right sifting through it's really difficult and on the point I'm making is you trust your own experience and try the katana or whatever that the product was that you said please try it yeah and you're making my point for me okay you are now done you can hand them like damn I sir is there or will there be a left-handed se 2 4 5 because I can put you in touch with a guy that'll buy one of medleys [Laughter] do we make se left-handed uh C's single cut now we do we make a custom 24 left-handed but if you only had it as a single cut 245 then I would take it oh you're gonna drive me crazy so let's go down this road I got a carve the neck backwards I gotta put the side that's backwards I gotta put the pickup's I actually don't have to put him backwards but the bridge has to be backwards the case has to be backwards the body's got to be backwards everything's got to be backwards and we do it really really well and the market I was told was 5% of the people left hand and markets less than one in 200 people and every time we do it we lose money but we try to take care of people who play left-handed now they don't make left-handed pianos so I don't really understand you I know they do I heard that somebody said no yes you're right they do let me collect any piece what's wrong with the ones we make well I can't turn a single cut upside down and play it yeah by 24 upside down oh I have to custom 24 is already now they left-handed no they're yes their left hand okay so you oh boy yeah that's really interesting you you put your money where your mouth is you've already got to a man you want a single cut now yes can you make them a left hand a single cut and try the stock right there private stock okay there's an issue I see a privates not okay getting this one okay the answer is right now we don't have plans on it now I'm gonna be very direct the first request I've heard for a single cut left hand ever in my life is from you sir really I've never had one that doesn't mean it's a bad idea I request things of my employees all the time that they've never heard before and want me dead for but I'm trying to do my job I will mention it to the person in charge of ESI's I promise you you have my word okay you're it's a little bit of a conundrum is that the right word because we have to be profitable if I'm not probably if I do all this tooling for a single cut right and I don't sell that many of them I'm gonna lose money and for us to tool up a guitar costs what north of 100 grand Paul something like that so I got to make a 100 grand in profit to be even start to make them and we did it for the custom 24s I don't this conversation is not going to end well because because I'm not saying yes and but I am acknowledging your question I'm telling you I'll take it back to the person who's in charge well you have my word what's your name Randall Randall I promise you I will tell Jack yeah he even has this entity as a name okay I appreciate it this the way I got to 24 is the custom 24 is is my buddy's got about 13 PR SS and he would drive up and show me every one he bought I had to wait until those left-handed ones the ones that I could afford so your buddy piss you off proper yeah yeah he was at the top of the need to whip your butt less man so just because he showed me the you have the one I got that you can have that's just me so when they finally came out I traded a few guitars just to get one and then I saw another one was next about it so apparently I'll just have to wait until I can a hit it big and it can afford to have my own single cut left your resume I feel like yeah but thanks there's a lot of things that are thanks for nothing ball right the truth is a lot of people skim and let me tell you where they skimp on left-handed guitars they don't make the pots have the backwards taper they don't put the numbers backwards on the knobs there's a lot of things they don't do that make a huge difference Hendrix would have just drilled a hole on the other side and played it you know that right yeah but Hendrix his fingers were about this much longer than mine so he could reach them upper frets and do them bends on the e-string while this is not gonna end well so someone is there anybody else here plays guitar left-handed see somebody has to strike a blow for us left I did I don't think I've made a dime on all the left-handed guitars we made I did it to take care of people like you and I think it did a pretty good job but it was only in a single cut then I'd be happy well this happened to me with the piezos we did the Paizo on the hollow bodies and they said well if you only did it on the other hollow body and we did it on that and they said well if you only put it on the custom 22 and we did it on that it was only on the 24 it's like the Stone Soup you ever read that book starts up with your kid if we only have a little mean if we only I swear to God when it was all over the guys that was complaining on the internet never did buy one we put piezos on everything yeah now it was I'm complaining but and and complaining is a bad magnet it's just not good but I can tell you it was probably a good decision to put piezos apart Paizo system on all those guitars but I don't know if it's a good financial decision to do what you're doing in your getting into my underwear around management my company and I don't know if it's a good idea but I've made you a real promise I will tell Jack and I've got employees in here that are as dedicated to the company as I am and they're going to make sure I do exactly what I said I do because the worst thing in the world to have a boss says he's gonna do something not do it it's not good so Randall you're gonna give that mic up and we're gonna be done all right yes there's a guy behind you there's a guy in the back thank you I have a couple PR essence and my favorite is the CEO 98 seee 24 yeah I think it's got a white fat neck on it it's got a wide thin neck on it white did yes does that make show up in the new model uh-huh still get the same neck uh-huh why no no no we're gonna go deeper oh I don't know do we have one in stock in this store we have a c24 look on the computer point it out right now which one where to your right paw and that cherry burst come on up you gotta talk on the mic cuz it's not fair Darryl Darryl pull that's the next shape here asking about does that feel like your guitar I think it does I think it's pretty close good you got a credit card you can take it home today arrangement can we do if they don't give you a discount after this conversation I should be shot you you this man right here can help you know you just won that argument that was unbelievable does it have a PI's oh no we don't do sees what we do see is a puzzle Jim he only had a buzz oh there was somebody in the back over here he's gonna put it back on the wall I know it was somebody in the back see isn't it more fun to make it interactive isn't that more fun evening Paul evening you're not gonna ask me a PRS guitars or guitars are you no no cuz you look just like the guy that is well I'm glad to tell you then that I'm going to ask you a much more positive question all right no no that was a positive question because it it immediately enrolled the entire room and got me a format to do what I wanted to do that night so go on all right um I'm not really sure how to word this question so it might come off a little bit convoluted often when guitar players are talking about like what really makes a like a good guitar they often talk about like they they have like that one guitar that just has the Mojo you know that they always go back to display if they have you know just regardless of how many other guitars they have that's not your mom that's normal yeah um but you as a builder when you first started building and all the way up to it today did you have you tried to make every you know have you tried to make every guitar that comes out of the factory just have that mojo or um but like I said I don't know how I don't really know how to word this first of all it's a brilliant questions to let me really answer okay yeah you you cannot pay people to love their work you can pay people to stand there and do what you've taught them to do but the truth is you can't make a beautiful guitar without loving it that's true and you can't do it you can't have that kind of tension to detail without loving it and so many times I have thanked my employees that even though I can't request that they do they do anyway okay and it's not so easy you put 350 people in a room and all kinds of crazy stuff goes on I mean they start getting married all kinds of crazy things but that said you can't do that and when the combination of parts has a magic guitar very often that guitar will find a home now we had a model called a nf3 and we couldn't sell them the we got guitar the year from all the magazines for it but nobody would buy them I don't know if you remember this but we had nf3 Jimi Heron got his hands on one and now it's you can't find one okay it was magic but nobody knew it right and it takes an artist to try to find a tool to do its job to do their job so the truth is you can't require it but you can do everything in your power to make it possible so if you glue the nut on well if you glue the frets in well if you level the neck rate you carve the neck will you have the finish be the right thickness and hardness you you make sure that the frets don't stick out of the side of the neck you've glued the fretboard on well you're making sure the tuning pegs aren't slipping you're making sure that nuts not grabbing the strings you make sure that the bridge is staying in tune you make sure that it you make sure that the pickups don't squeal when you turn them up really loud you make sure you make sure you make sure you make sure you make sure you make sure then you have a chance at the Internet going well it's got mojo and I you know the truth is very very often we get lamb basted for having the things sound really even top-to-bottom now at the highest level when you've got a David Grissom or John McLaughlin they want it to be even from top to bottom they don't want the high E string to go in the low one to go they wanted to have dinner in they were okay and I know that in the end that's what these are is Swan the great John McLaughlin told me thirty years ago one day son you'll be good enough to make me a guitar and then twenty-five years ago he called and said one day and 20 years ago and 15 years ago and ten and five and one day I showed him what we called a violin guitar which is very close to this guitar that are brought here and he goes oh no I said John you're gonna finally order a guitar he goes yeah and he told me everything he wanted and on every time I sent him a picture he waved it off and Paul had to make another guitar three times that you remember and finally finally finally finally finally he comes to Frankfurt and he the guitars in the booth and he goes where's Paul and they said well he's off at the Michael Ward's with a bunch of other musicians and John he said do you want to play the guitar and John said I'm not open in this case without Paul here and he put it over his back and Huff off to come find me he's standing in front of me and David Grissom the great guitar player from Texas goes couldn't believe John McLaughlin was standing there and John took the guitar out of the case after waving off 30 years of guitars and two other guitars and pulls it out because own I love it we were in tears that night at dinner not because John loved the guitar but because the man had told us what the future was going to be for 30 years and we had a real jedi knight on our hands somebody who knew what the future was which was extraordinary I don't know what mojo is Mojo's if you dig it now when when David went to Texas they said you ain't nothing that she plays strat and that was a day he decided he was never gonna play a strat so and recently he's been playing him again but that's a whole nother thing so do you have a guitar that stands out above the rest of them I do um I guess the whole thing the whole I don't know it was just a really decent question yeah go on okay um I guess that that leads me to the second part of my question um did we say you could have two questions I said I could yeah I mean I guess I guess above mojo have you always just tried to make guitars and that you really want to play more than like any of the other brands around the short answer is maybe yes then explain I've always said if another guitar maker brought me a guitar that I liked better than my own I'd play it's true Paul Miles has made me a guitar that's sitting on his wall and I have bugged him every single day for what seven months now give or take I'm gonna get that thing out of him and I hope I love it but I don't know what my experience is gonna be I have no idea certainly has all the makings of an extraordinary instrument I don't know yeah look I'm trying yes I'm trying to please the guitar player in me I'm but in the end I'm trying to make sure that if an artist has a boat of guitars the one he goes for is are when the lights go out don't think these human beings aren't frightened when the lights go out don't think they're not nervous don't think they are they're human beings they just got a lot of courage and they made it to this position to play for 15,000 people that night okay give them that given the nod but they're gonna pick up the guitar that's gonna do the job the best for them some people play the same guitar all night and some people change every tune I'm not one of those changed every tune people I I do a shootout before this has soundcheck pick the best guitar for the night and done with it so you know yes the answer your question on the short orders yes but look when I met Peter Frampton a long long time ago I went I got a chance to make him a guitar I said can I play all your guitars so yeah I played all his guitars and I understood what he liked in all these different brands and I tried to build him something in the middle that he would like more it's the same thing if I play somebody's all their guitars they're trying to make them something that they like more and I think that the mojo question is kind of the you know last-ditch effort to bury or guitars but you know something so many gifted guitar players are using this stuff there are gifted guitar players using our stuff that you don't know about they're using them in a studio but they're on a contract they can't play them live so that's a whole other thing we don't do that tour our artists artists can play anything they want if John Mayer wants to pull something Alice he does if Carlos wants to pull something else out he does if it's Mark Tremonti you name it we don't do that in our contracts that said that guitar sounds good you want more to play it for you so you can hear what it sounds like yes that would be nice thank you by the way [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] is that mojo did I ask you a question I could Tina and Paul can you come up for a minute so everybody this is Tina Sears and blew my house and Tina does sales for private stock and Paul's in charge of our entire project of private stock program you have artists and dealers and customers come to this place called the vault constantly and I want you to both if you can tell the story what happens when somebody comes to the vault but I want to start the story and you have to get fairly close to the mic because it's live but the problem is in 2009 we ran out of orders and we've been hiding wood for 25 years and that we would save for a rainy day and it rained and we built something called a wood library where people can pick out their top and pick out their neck and pick out their fretboard and pick out the back and build guitars and for me it saved our company but it just isn't going to stop people come and and and literally start building a guitar with Tina and Paul and if you could tell the story that maybe Tina you could start and Paul you could finish it'd be great I don't really know but it's fascinating when these people are coming and building guitars in our vault right so how does it work Tina well basically you would come with the dealer and they'd come in and use it starts with an idea you either know what model you want or maybe you just know what kind of woods you want to look for and then we walk you around and start the process of pulling out the woods and squirting them down with water which really brings all the woods to life and then we talk about like what kind of sounds you want to get what kind of tones you want to get we pick out all the right woods and then you sit down and you basically build your dream guitar step by step with Paul right what she said but really I mean like Brian wouldn't know I mean he's been there a bunch of times doing that and it's a it's kind of a unique experience especially with the crew that we have there so do you have one of the guitars here that you guys picked out I what he said further people on Facebook live is they can't but keep them in stock that one you don't have one would library guitar here that's close why it's in so it's a set I so there's two there are two vaults can you go grab can we grab it and you bring it up you just want a wood library a lot yeah sure why not it's so for the people on Facebook life they had to get the key to get it out [Music] it's entomology those are both very different examples of what we can do I'll let you go so they picked out this top and they picked out this fretboard and they picked out this neck it's the same thing with this will ring correct so this is one step below private stock these are all aspects but it's the same process where they picked out the top and then made the guitar the thing that's fascinating about it for you guys as you said I picked this out for you and it's not a lie now you picked it out right so why is it still in stock this is one of our hollow body 594 it was the thing about this it drives me crazy it's got two tops on it that was one of our limited runs when we did the how about he 594 see the curly mahogany neck well just got curly yes it's what we do no paese but I can put a pile on it for you I'll put a privatize the one that C E so let me ask a question Tina how long you been working at Pier us nice and loud secret that making come how long 23 years and how long you been at purist Oh 28 okay so you knew that was coming okay so so Tina you worked in the finish room and you were doing all the touch-ups to get the guitars from the finished room into in the final assembly right yes and how many guitars did you have your hands on before you ever work for private stock oh wow thousands of thousands yeah thousand maybe ten to ten thousand easy okay and how many guitars his private stock made at this point posted 9000 9000 private stocks boy I never thought that was gonna happen I never thought that I could when I sit back and think about I'm like well we've read together I wrote up over 8,000 guitars okay what's wrong with that nothing hang on a minute and how backorder are you now if you order a guitar today it'll come out somewhere around those first quarter of 2021 yeah so one of the things that pitbull has to do is they have to come in order guitars a year and a quarter ahead of time in order to be able to have them which they've been doing you guys got lots of private stocks on order right they were just he they were just there like a couple weeks ago and placed there 2021 holders we're explaining to everybody that you have to have guitars on order a year ahead of time otherwise you're not gonna have them in stock and that you've been traveling to do that which i think is great yeah we still we're what three would library runs in the queue so we're we're still we're waiting on what library runs from yeah so wait what are you saying for Facebook live is they have three runs waiting and there's a bunch of private stocks waiting but you're ahead of it enough that they keep coming right yeah the only way to that's the only way to do it no we'll see that's a very mature way to go about it right that they're looking for that far forward I like this business I think it's beautifully run good job I mean you and your crew should be very congressional everybody give Tina and pulled the camp please how old are you son you and you're here because you love guitar okay would you like to come play my guitar what he said was he didn't want to be responsible for it I can make another one if you ding it it's okay okay tell me that's a very mature comment well said if you willing to risk it after we're done this clinic you're not gonna drop it it'll be alright I'm inviting you to do that okay whose is dead well done pops he loves can he loves guitar he does yeah so you play or I play and he's just started we started messing around he's got like a little three-quarter scaling guitar that work should get him a real full-size one he's allowed to play mine whenever he wants oh I was I say he's a lie play my full-size one's whenever he wants but when he gets really into it then he can get a full-size so we're at work you know he's pulling it out of the case right take it off the wall yeah that's that's good well done all right so one last question and then we're gonna end yes sir say we have a mic hi this is kind of more a personal question like what motivates you to start to build your tars what what makes you say it okay I'm gonna start this business and I'm gonna make the some of the best guitars in the world yes I got the question okay I got I'm gonna answer two ways there's two kinds of people that want to have an impact on the world or not want to have an impact the first person has all this to offer the world and they go kicking and screaming they don't want to do it and there are other people wanna have an impact on the world and everybody says no you will have no impact and they go no please I have something to offer have something offer I was in the second group I was the one screaming I've got something to offer and nobody wanted anything to do with it nothing and so for me it was painful I wanted to I thought I had something to offer and the world was going no we don't have anything go up you don't have anything going for except if I walked in a music store and I play guitar everybody run if I put a case on the counter and opened it up something I made it drew a crowd and I had to pay attention to that all right there's a book that I live by I'm a really answer your question okay and it's the it's the old hippy Bible it was called the teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda and in the book it says I will travel the rows all the roads with heart and I will travel and travel them breath breathlessly all right and so I thought this comment that I saw on a poster was really cool so I bought the book and I read the whole thing and I thought Carlos Castaneda was an idiot and I thought that the old man the old Yaqui Indian was a genius and I Highland every single thing that the Aki Indian wrote and crossed off everything that Carlos said because what the Yaqui Indian was saying was thousands and thousands of years of collective knowledge and he talked about trying to be in his way a man of knowledge someone who's always trying to learn and in that book he says you will face four enemies the first enemy we all know it's a vicious enemy it's called fear and fear just take your legs out from underneath you right and when you finally beat fear you face the second the second enemy that's clarity where you see clearer than the people around you and it has an arrogance to it and it's its own nasty enemy and then you've once you I said you're done fighting clarity you fight the third enemy which is a very odd enemy its power and then when you finish fighting that one you'll face the worst of all old age which tries to suck you into a couch and get you to not move and I'm not gonna let that 4th one get me so in my world right now I'm not as some frightened as I was as a young man I'm fighting the second enemy I'm not even into the third one yet I'm fighting the second one and very often in this meeting that we're having clearly what's going on and I'm trying very hard to empty my cup and be as humble as I possibly can in that fight I haven't experienced real power like Trump or a lot of these other people experienced I don't experience that but I know the old man who wants to get sucked into the couch is common and he basically says you can't beat the fourth enemy you can only fight him you will never beat him so for me it's a combination of the young men who wanted to have an impact who had good ideas about what we could I could do with guitars and nobody wanted any part of it and there was a meeting in my shop in which all the people who wanted to help me came and I said well you can't play music anymore Paul it's over and I cried because I love playing music they said you're gonna start a company you're gonna have to give it everything you possibly have and I called the next week I called all my friends and I said okay I'm gonna take a shot at it I need every penny in your bank accounts and they all gave me every dime they had and I returned the money now that was a powerful thing that happened I called all of them innocent I'm take a shot it's time to take a try and for whatever reason and Paul miles and Tina will testify Jim will testify to this it's fun to be a part of taking nothing and turn it into something and you know Paul miles has a art degree he didn't know that he was going to use his art degree to change the way colors were in our industry he didn't understand that a lot of the things that have happened to us we've not really understood our impact over time although I did know when we started that when when you when I started making guitars Fender guitars had so much polyester on them you couldn't even find the frets there the necks weren't straight anymore they weren't playing in tune they weren't staying in tune they they weren't level things were bad and I knew that that we could bring that back to our industry I had no idea the following the story would happen we were in a room with all these studio guitar players in Nashville and I said now Paul if we don't play your guitar as we get fired and I went what he said their tone in every syllable of every vocal and if the guitars not in tune with the vocal at the end they erase our tracks and we get fired I have to play a PRS on the track because your guitars are playing into now I knew they were playing a tune but I had no idea that it was gonna have that kind of impact and that all started with a guitar player coming into my repair shop said when I'm playing with the keyboard player down low I'm not playing in tune with him I said you're out of your mind I started checking down low with a strobe tuner and all the notes and the first two or three frets were playing sharp and I had to move the nut around which we don't talk about but getting the frets in the right place and getting the bridge in the right place and getting the nut in the right place has a huge impact on whether guitars play in tune or not so I didn't understand it but that kind of impact I didn't know but I did know that maybe we had something to offer right and I studied next shapes and I've studied all these old guitars and all this other stuff but in the end I'm just trying to do that thing that the old man and the book was talking about which is try to follow the roads that are presented to us with as much heart and as Anna's as possible if I had I don't really have any regrets I feel like it's just a constant learning thing that goes on I may have one or two but we needed some alcohol to discuss those and but that said that's an honest answer to your question now that's whether you want to be a guitar maker or whatever you want to do in your life it's the same game for you as it is for me and you know something it's ugly you make a mess it's like throwing up a pot pie it's a mess you got to get the carrots together to get the peas together and the bread and the chicken it's just when you throw up it's bad and that's the way life is just like raising kids it's like nailing jello to a tree it doesn't work real well any parent will tell you that my daughter went and Opare drum my sister's kids in Tucson and she came back she said I'm so sorry I said what's wrong she said if we were like that we were a little I'm so sorry but I love raising kids I enjoyed that part I enjoyed being a part of other people's lives I enjoyed that part did I answer your question yeah it's a powerful question actually where do you live you leave the Tijuana and you drove up here just for this yeah what does that mean you did too yeah all right good so all five you came in the same car no we came two separate cars yeah but you're all friends so this is the Tijuana contingent here it looks like it so from the bottom of my heart from everybody people by the way Bobby praise your hand this is Bobby sarado he's our rep here in this territory and has had a huge impact on what's going on here and I think we're lucky to have him you used to work you used to work for a company timeout you know really our reps are have industry experience and we're lucky to have them we've got people from a lot of other companies that have come to work for us and we're very proud to work with all these people that know what they're doing I don't want to have a rep that doesn't understand guitars I want to have somebody comes here to understand what the stores going through what you're going through can help you with your problems that they can call that's a that's a like the hub in the middle of a wheel that can do the job and that's why we tracked him down to see B come to work with us right and and quite frankly all these other companies are my heroes in a way because they started a business that I was in diapers in you know in 1956 when I was born this thing was starting to rock and roll literally right thank you for being with us appreciate it everybody people great job thank you for having me one last question to anybody bring guitars a one sign ok can we set up a place but give me five minutes please give me five minutes where are you gonna do it right I will do it I find my so we're gonna remove the tijuana contingent and we're gonna do it there everybody from the bottom my heart forever yours thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Pitbull Audio

Views: 8,330

Rating: 4.9347825 out of 5

Keywords: PRS, PRS Guitars, Paul Reed Smith, Live, Clinic, Pitbull Audio

Id: mbwjCDi5UiU

Length: 77min 30sec (4650 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019