PRS Guitars Factory Tour

[Music] hey i'm uh john bolinger with premier guitar and i'm with paul reed smith at uh at the paul reed smith factory and paul i can't thank you enough for uh letting us come here and see behind the uh behind the curtain see how it's all done we've shown you things we've not shown anybody i know let's go right yeah it's amazing it's amazing it's at least if you like it you're smiling yeah i am i am giddy i am legitimately legitimately giddy about being here just uh just meeting you seeing what you're doing and and thinking about like when did this all start for you this when did you start to answer the question but there's 425 people here it's not just me okay but it started with you absolutely okay a great team okay but it's always been teamwork so what's the question exactly when did this start and it was it was fair enough when did the thing with you and guitar start what year oh me yeah uh in eighth grade got the bug and what year was that that was um 78 i guess yeah i mean it started a little earlier yeah so when i was probably 15 my brother took me to at the time which was now then a kmart kind of but when the beatles records came out there would literally be a stack of beatles records as big as this room because they had done enough enough advanced ordering and they and people came from everywhere to buy him right it was no internet sure and he showed me a record it was at the time it wasn't a cd or or a you know stick it was a you know big piece of cardboard right yeah and there was a guy a black guy on the cover with a big fro and two eyes on his shirt and two white guys next to him with froze on there on their heads and because these guys are huge in england and they're going to be huge here and i went yeah i think no nissa so seriously right now now when the things came they came with a cellophane on them right yeah so my brother come we go home and and he says i got some errands to do so he leaves and i see this picture this guy with his two eyes on his shirt and i went and i i took the cellophane off and i put it on it starts with fire ends with are you experienced i was not the same i couldn't deal with what i just heard people were playing guitar so they get dates i didn't care about that i wanted to play the guitar i like the sound of it you know so for me my mother bringing home meet the beatles or us being at a at the time of jukebox and playing she loves you 100 times you know or um you know sam the sham and the pharaohs in a restaurant going little red riding hood or whatever it was right right all this extr jordan music james brown was theme song was w-a-n-n that's w annapolis oh yeah yeah so i would walk in the house and popcorn would be on or you know cold sweat would be on or it was just unbelievable what was going on how would you not get addicted to that and the thing that was making all these sounds was an electric guitar in people's voices obviously drums and bass stuff but i remember you know i was one of the first people to ever get my hands on the led zeppelin record with stairway to heaven i didn't care about the first part i liked it when the band kicked and so i would like lower the needle or the band kicker i got i got the bug a little earlier than you but not much yeah it was it was wonderful i loved it and you just been chasing the tone ever since look i wanted to be a guitar player but if i played guitar at washington music everyone would run away like oil and water but if i opened a case of something i made it would draw a crowd and i was like that ain't right but i had to pay attention to the feedback of the world they were interested in the guitars they weren't interested in the way i played so when did you build your first guitar well that's an interesting definition if you build a body for a neck somebody else's maid is that building a guitar in my world is when you make your first neck oh sure so to me putting the truss rod in gluing the fretboard on slotting the fingerboard putting the inlays in all that that was the beginning of making guitars and i did it in my um the end of my first year in college so you want to see something fun yes boy all right so let's do something see this piece of wood right here can we take a close-up of this sure all right so we're in the vault and this is where people come to get the woods for the guitars if i wet this you start to get a beginning of what it's going to look like with finish on it that's outrageous that's the way god grew that piece of wood god it's unbelievable right i just i mean that's just scary look at this curl that's going this way it really looks three-dimensional it is three-dimensional the wood's going in and going out and you're cutting off a 3d thing in 2d that's what you're doing so i mean what fun now this has probably already been sold and you can't have it which is the best thing to tell somebody and it's a guitar player that they can't have it and then they want the next one so look let's just do another one just for fun okay it doesn't look that curly but if i take and wet it i mean it's just that's just beautiful it's like an old violin look at that thing yeah well and that's it's it you know prs you're it really starts with the wood and i think that's what's what attracts all this that was the initial attraction i think for for everyone we saw your guitars just the way that i didn't want it that way i want it to be the way they sounded the way they felt but if we didn't have something beautiful on it yeah 80 of information is brought in with people's eyeballs sure but in the end how it sounds and how it feels is a big deal oh yeah yeah so you know i didn't even want all the good guitars when i was a kid didn't have trust right covers so i didn't put trust right covers on the guitar you know all the good all the good strides that came in had no back plate over the the trim cavity so i didn't want to put that on you know i it was just i don't know look john if you steal from 10 place in one place steal from one place it's stealing you steal from 10 places if you search don't worry it's true it's true but you know it's it's a it's amazing that that all this time later you're coming in every day and and building guitars and you're constantly making tweaks and changes to to your line and improving them trying yeah trying to no we never change the jack plate because it works right but if there's something about the way the nuts cut so that it can stay a little better in tune with the tremolo we'll do the job it will do it you know there's a way that um we can make the pickup have a little bit more of a beautiful note to it we'll do it whatever it is that makes a difference i don't want to change things just for change sake we change things because we think we can make a better guitar so what are you going to do you're going to want to tour yeah well we kind of want to see it's it's uh we want we want to see the whole process we're starting with the wood here we want to take it all the way through the way you're building guitars here look we're an interesting company we start literally with logging these trees all the way through marketing the guitars yeah um it's a inter it's called an integrated line you know we're not an assembly house we're doing it from scratch we've had other guitar making companies here we don't do what you do i said what are you talking about he says we ordered the neck blanks and we ordered the fretboard's cut and we ordered this we i he said we never made this stuff from scratch yeah and i was like my mind was blown i was like i don't know how to do it any other way that's the only way we know yeah in fact you just showed me like a tool you made you know you just you just don't make every step of the guitar you make some of the tools that go into making them it's great so for us the tools weren't available so we had to make them what we showed you was a machine that we built it says how a pickup sounds before we ever plug the pickup in yeah but you can't buy that yeah so an engineer made it for us you know electrical engineer he says i can make you a tool that'll show you the sound before you ever plug it in yet right sure it took us 20 years to learn how to use that thing now we live now we live by it yeah that's great so uh come on y'all join us as we uh as we walk through the prs factory i hope you have a good time oh yeah i'm already having a great time that's good all right okay now we're with rob carhart who is the director of new products engineering and you've been at prs for 30 years i have my 30-year anniversary will come up this october i started with paul in 1992 and have worked in a variety of different positions here and looking forward to giving premier guitar a factory tour today yeah we and we're we're starting in the wood room and really i think most of us when we think about prs we really think about it starts with the wood i mean with those amazing tops it does john it's a key element and we obviously try to source the highest quality best materials from all over the world these two gentlemen in rough cut behind us process up to five six thousand board feet of wood in any given week a lot of material that comes through here and a lot of the wood is purchased seasonally some of it's stored off-site at our mills and you try to procure that stuff when it's available in this area is where all the first operations start on prs guitars a variety of different operations we handle back here including the quality assessment of the wood sorting sizing to a workable shape for our manufacturing operations and then the initial drying processes all the wood that comes in really goes through a quality control process where we're checking for any aesthetic defects of course checks cracks that type of stuff and the moisture level of all the wood that comes in here depending upon the mill that we get it from what time of year it is or what type of wood it at it is it may have a different water content sure we want to monitor that for us it's a very important part of building the instrument is how we dry that wood before the manufacturing process and that all starts back here wow okay great well i can't wait to see what's next okay okay so this is the this is the one of the drying areas it sure is john it's just part of our rough cut operations and one of the things that goes on back here as well as our processing grading quality is the beginning parts of our drying process so all the different types of wood where we had talked about you know five or six major different types of wood that are used within our manufacturing process and then a whole host of exotic pieces all those woods be it maple for neck blanks or fingerboards rosewood mahogany backs maple tops they all come in varying different levels of water content in the wood and one of the things we want to do to ensure that we're building a stable instrument for the for many lifetimes to come is to dry that wood out properly before the manufacturing process starting back in here in rough cut some of the people you met earlier will take a sample size of the water content of the wood using an electric hydrometer they'll determine how um that and then how long the wood needs to be processed in one of these drying rooms that you see behind us they're all standard insulated rooms bay door front with a resistance heater in them we will monitor the water content of the wood before it goes in depending on how wood it wet it is will determine how long it's going to stay in one of these rooms and as you can see next to each one of these rooms there's an indicator giving relative humidity of the room excuse me and temperature so wood that may come in here at 9 10 12 14 may spend a week in here maybe longer as the heat increases the water content will be driven out of the wood it's a slow process rob will record all that information during the drying process we'll check again the water content of the wood we bring it below the threshold of what we want to actually hit from for a drying number or a water content and then this stuff as it goes back out on the shop floor we'll get a chance to come back up and adjust to the conditions that we have out in our wood shop we use an equilibrium water content moisture content of wood meaning that most woods will seek an equilibrium based on the environment that they are in and that doesn't happen overnight and it's different for different species of woods so as this wood is driven to say you know four percent water content here then in our conditions on the floor it's a 72 degrees and 45 relative humidity the wood will take several weeks to come back up and stabilize between seven and nine percent water content later on as you'll see all these different batches of wood that go through here have date associated and a date code on them that will let the different operators and employees here know how long they've gone through the drying process and whether or not they are ready to use uh for processing and making a guitar we can take a look in one of these hot rooms right now yeah sure look at some fingerboards and neck blanks that we have well the uh the drying process is so time consuming that there's some i know some manufacturers i had a cheap guitar as a kid that was not it was very green and it just disintegrated you're absolutely right john and it's a big part of achieving the overall stability uh with the guitar is you don't want to have the pieces of wood that you use at dissimilar uh different moisture contents because as that process stabilizes then you'll see movement and stress relief as well if you have a guitar that's built in very wet conditions and then as you go through a seasonal change even with finish over the guitar um you will see sometimes where that where the moisture is trying to leave the guitar and then leads to instability in the instrument yeah so uh we really shoot for you know specific number in here based on our conditions that we're going to make the instrument in um so that we minimalize any of that gaining or uh or or losing a moisture you know taken care of properly these guitars are going to be around a lot longer than you and i have that's really our that's our intent we want to deliver a product to the customer um that they can it's going to be an heirloom they can pass on to a loved one family member and it's it's uh going to get the opportunity to tell many stories of life the guitar and the drying process is really very important to that okay so rob what process are we in right now so john we took a look at the wood drying and and getting all that stuff acclimatized to our factory conditions and now we're in the first part of the bodybuild operation here right now this gentleman is taking a maple top and is going through an edge joining process this particular uh book match top has already been milled down uh to thickness through a variety of different planing operations and he's preparing to match up the book joint and prepare this edge for gluing which is what he's doing right now we're shooting for a perfect edge joint on there you don't want any gaps to show up obviously in the book match now we're gonna he as he prepares these he'll match them up and obviously with a book match um you have the corresponding kind of mirrored grain and figure um on each piece of wood so when what he'll do is uh match these pieces up and put a hash mark on it that uh really shows where the best location for these pieces to be matched together is we're gonna see that right now if he's happy with the glue beautiful you can see that's a highly figured beautiful piece of maple and so originally that was that's cut in half and then split open that's right john that was one billet of wood um that was resawed and then opened up you know to form a book match well just beautiful right and he just put a little indicator mark on there so as the guys go to glue the tops up they'll have a reference and and um to glue up so it has a correct book match and do they grade them like these are these are all tan tops right or you got a variety of different tops as you can see um we have a color coding system that that determines the the species of wood and the grate of it as well and what product line it's going to be used on so these guys will get a schedule in here and it'll cover a variety there may be custom tops tent tops wood library artist package and uh they all correspond to a individual order that we have running through here and they're all different that's what you're seeing all different they're really amazing yeah and and again you can you know these are highly figured they're beautiful at this point as we go through the tour you'll you'll really get to see is that that enhancement through staining and finish as these get further down the line so the next operation would be glue up for these tops over here and we're going to take that book match edge joint surface and glue those two pieces of wood together okay john so after we've milled the top down glued together it gets it will get laminated to a mahogany back in the case of this guitar they've performed just kind of a rough band saw cut on the perimeter of this top these two pieces will then get glued together they'll go into these hydraulic presses over here under a significant amount of force for probably six or seven hours this will then get popped out we'll clean this up once again as a hand operation on the bandsaw and then it'll go into our milling area and ready for cnc operations for the back and top of the guitar john so we took a look at how the bodies the different components were laminated together this is our machining area for bodies for prs and what the operations we'll do over here um really include all the top and back carbs holes for the potentiometers neck joints pickups electronics and trim cavities over here and uh with prs we are in a constant state of improvement here whether it's processes components or anything else one of the things we've been working on the last few years is a changeover and some of our machines in here towards the end of the line you see some newer doosans here's an example of one of our older fidal vertical milling center 40 20s and i wanted to show you really the difference in surface finish that these newer machines are able to process and cut at so here's an older model where it's pretty obvious you can see and it's a very good resolution yeah beautiful but we can see the step over carbs and the step over lines in here as the ball mill tracks across this guitar and removes wood sure and here's an example from one cut on our newer machine um just recently where it's a much higher i guess like resolution than you could say really a beautiful cut it makes the guitar a little bit easier to sand and shape and keeps the the integrity of the car program uh as well these machines are able to hold really a plus or minus tolerance of five thousandths of an inch and as we have them set up they're able to hold a little bit tighter with a few of the precise operations we do in regards to the neck joint and i think probably our through holes are plus or minus 2000s and all that technology um has really helped us with reproducing on a regular basis a consistent quality right that consistency they all come out of the line and just really has and this is a great example of this technology has been around for a long time but back in the day you know we would use pin routers hand routers duplicate machines and you know although it was a lot more hand work they certainly weren't as consistent as these parts are today and it's i think it it represents a uh refined product really over the years all right john so we've taken a look at the bodybuild and machining aspect of what happens in here the next process is as to body sand and you can see a couple people over here working every element of the guitar then really has to be sanded by hand so although we have that wonderful resolution from our machining there is still a lot of rough that needs to be taken out every really hard line and surface has to be blended over on this guitar so the operations over here include sanding the top back sides all of our divots out here they're going to blend this line in on the belly carve this round over has to be blended in on both sides as you can feel from this one it's a lot different than the one that we sure got over in the roughing area so it's also an important part where we're looking out for any defects or or issues that may have been revealed during the milling process you'll get a better view of the finished product here from a quality assurance standpoint as well so if you discover a defect at this point what what do you do so if it's not a structural problem you there's an opportunity to perhaps match that guitar up with a different color that would be more suitable so if it was heavy mineral stain in a maple top and it was originally pegged to be a vintage yellow it maybe is changed to a darker green or blue guitar where that would still be acceptable and look beautiful sure and then again if there's any issue of you know structural crack check or anything else then the guitar will most likely be cut up at that point if it's not repairable right so i started off working in this area um you know 29 years ago sanding bodies and i can tell you this crew people over here they do a great job we've got a first and second shift working in these operations for sanding bodies and they're probably spending on average about 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes on each body currently we have it broken down so different people depending on their skill level will do different parts of the guitar so you may have one guy who's you know working on the sides of the guitar and the cutaway another person who's standing backs and tops okay after the guitar is sanded it's going to cue up and wait for a neck and or actually the neck's probably done first so after the guitar is sanded um it'll get matched up with the neck and we're going to take a look at the next manufacturing process next john you have a core neck plank that's gone through the drying process i have an example of a s2 neck plank this is a five quarter piece it's a much smaller uh stock thickness obviously than this neck blank we kind of call the four ones a one piece neck where the head stock and heel is going to come out of the same piece of neck and on our s2 line uh we glue on an additional piece to achieve the thickness of the heel and the head stock angle behind us is kind of a representation of several key stages um that represent the different operations for both these neck planks so first we have a core model where we've gone from your neck bike over here to a drying cut at this point this neck after this operation is gonna sit for another two two and a half weeks at this stage wow before we do any other operation is that just to make it more solid to really make it hunker in certainly part of the process and in a similar vein to what we talked about with drying the the wood out um there is there are certain amount as you start to mill a piece of wood particularly in this application where you're removing a tremendous amount of piece of wood from one side there's sometimes a natural stress relief that can happen with with that sure when it's predominantly been taken off on one side this neck may want to bow a little bit and have a slight twist to it now instead of having that we want to give the neck time to let it make those micro adjustments and then kind of stabilize then we're going to re-level it again before we take the next operation you don't really want to run a neck with any inherent tension in it and then carve it within a within a quick period of time so we what you're seeing here probably represents um you know 30 days of manufacturing time two weeks alone for this and then another couple weeks to go through the various stages those main stages as they're represented here really from this stage after drying we'll do a rough perimeter cut we'll cut the insert for the truss rod and the retaining nuts for the truss rod the rod will be installed what we call ears will be glued onto the neck the truss rod insert will be installed the neck then gets another side profile and profile cut to get closer to that finished uh headstock shape at that point a fingernail fingerboard will get laminated to the neck it goes through a carving process then fingerboard leveling operations and threading and veneering as well we're going to take a look at some of those operations next john it's amazing how labor-intensive the neck is it really is and and again it the the you know we have found really over the last 35 36 years of manufacturing guitars that it's been key for us in between these machining stages to kind of let the neck do its thing and have a period you'll notice there's going to be racks of necks over here where we've got built-in cue times between these operations to allow for that that stress relief and changes that happen within the neck uh you know what you don't want to do is have a bowed piece of wood force it down on a jig carve it take it off the jig and it and it springs back shape so we've all seen that over the years with uh with various guitars and we try to eliminate that by allowing for some of those micro movements between manufacturing stages to deliver a flat true neck at the end of the process okay rob where are we now okay so we've gone through the major machining operations for our neck construction so now we've got a neck with a partially rounded fingerboard on it and at this point it moves into this area we do another series of operations we do the final radius to the fingerboard over here uh be it a seven and a quarter for a jm silver sky or our standard 10 inch radius on most of our other guitars after that's done the neck will be threaded over here which you can see back in this area and we do really kind of a standard fretting operation with an arbor press and various carriages there's a huge different variety of front wires over there depending on what the model is and the type of wire we use on it once the neck is threaded it goes into manual sanding operation i think we probably hit this area at lunchtime so it's a little quiet over here but essentially similar to the bodies they are going to sand every surface of the neck so all the sharp lines along the headstock any hard transitions that we see around the heel obviously all those have got to smooth over as you can see again you know the resolution is pretty tight on this part right and the and certainly more than just the general shape is there um for the sanders so they really take trying to take out any of those machine marks and blend the hard lines there's a variety of quality control aspects that go over here everything to um inspecting the inlay work that was done to a variety of different dimensional checks in this area so we've got specifications that need to be checked after sanding in regards to the headstock thickness the thickness at first third fifth seventh ninth fret uh the width of the heel the width of the the nut slot in particular to make sure we've maintained a tight tolerance through our sanding operations and we know we came in with a very tight part off our cnc operations we want to maintain those shape and critical dimensions as the neck goes through our hand operations and sanded over here after the sanding they'll go through a final qc work um and if they're bolt on neck they move may move on to the finish hall if it's a set neck guitar it's going to head over to our neck body assembly area and meet up with a body and we took a look at those operations earlier and we can see how those two parts come together now great so john we're in the neck and body assembly area here at prs guitars and we've just taken a look at all the various operations that went into building and sanding the body and then the same thing on the neck side of things and this area is where the two components come together so you have all those hours and hours of work on to a point where we're really going to put these things together to make an instrument so at prs guitars on our set neck guitars we use kind of a large dovetail so where you can see the heel is is certainly wider at one end than it is at the other end and a corresponding neck joint cut in the body as these machines uh as these parts come off machines uh the neck is cut with an interference fit versus the neck joint meaning that this part is intentionally cut probably five or six thousands over the size of the neck joint and will not fit in here at this stage and the way that's achieved is by hand someone with a significant amount of experience uh will then sand off a little bit of wood on each side of this dovetail and then check the fit again that usually takes a couple swipes as they check the fit you want to have it tight enough so that there's excellent contact area between the sides of the neck joint and the neck and if it's too tight you force it in it squeezes all the glue glue out if it's too loose and you're depending on too much glue to form a strong joint so um it's really a finesse operation these guys do a great job at it as they are setting that neck they are also verifying and in some case making small adjustments to the back of the heel by sanding that um as well on this block to finalize the neck angle for the guitar wow so depending upon the type of bridge the guitar is going to get whether it's a prs tram a floyd a two-piece one-piece bridge we have a different what we call neck angle or it's called rake sometimes it all has to do with the overall height that the bridge is going to set up and it really is determined by how this neck angle is set the way we do that after we put these two parts as we're as we're fitting these two parts is as we'll have a straight edge down the neck that hangs over the bridge area and we kind of take a simple measurement between that straight edge and the top of the guitar body which are all a little different depending on you know how they're sanded and then we'll meet that specification during the assembly process after neck and body assembly the guitar goes through another series of uh it gets clamped up it's going to stay in here for several hours of course the neck joints you know cleaned up of residual glue and everything else during the clamp up process then this entire unit is going to get finished sanded again so they'll use a higher grit remove any scratches or slight imperfections that may have incurred during the assembly process and it'll move on through through a qc area and then eventually move out in the finish okay so rob at this point we've uh we've seen what goes into the neck a lot into that a lot putting the body together neck and body are now together after a ton of sanding and drying etc where are we now right so we are now in the base coat finish operations for paul reed smith guitars as you said we've got the neck and body assembly together we've got things that actually look like full guitars and this is where we begin really the finish process of all the guitars that come through here there's as you pan around here we've got set neck guitars we've got bolt-on guitars we've got necks but essentially what happens in this area in the first part would be our staining our grain filling our coats after grain fill and preparation for our base coat spray and then other preparation work done to the guitar in terms of taping off areas that are not going to get finished on them preparation for spray so the first thing i'd like to take a closer look at are some of the staining operations and so we offer a wide variety of different color combinations and options i know on your site it is it is so cool to see all those options and you can yeah it's really amazing and and from our private stock team they're coming up with new stains uh you know on a monthly basis this is an example of a guitar uh after it's gone through the wood shop where the top has been stained and this is going to go through some other operations which we'll take a look at in a second before it goes in for spray so a lot of our stains are achieved using a variety of different techniques and sometimes multiple colors so this is an example where there's still you can see in the trim cavity um that the orig the initial stain coat was one color and then it gets stained again with another color in some cases the guitars will get lightly sanded out between those staining coats to achieve the color i think we've called them sand outs depending on the on the color all that happens in this area in this particular model with a curly maple neck and you could see the kind of greenish bluish stain undercoat now that it's being hit with the uh the red to pink stain there and it's wow yeah really bringing out the curl in this particular neck and and uh this is the process to achieve the purple iris color that we offer wow yeah and as we had talked about earlier john you know there's this the natural beauty in all these pieces of wood and then and hopefully i think it's kind of on display in this case we're really we're adding and enhancing to that natural figure this curly maple neck really popped once it's once it's hit and goes through our staining process um and you can really see the contrast between the uh the light and dark figuring there and uh it's gonna be a beautiful guitar isn't that amazing that's just found in nature i'm not unbelievable yeah and so pleasing to us too oh yeah so is this okay with a flaming zebra-esque neck like that is this a private stock so this is probably a wood library guitar is that right so essentially we've got program um that our dealers allow they order limited runs of guitars that have a combination of either materials and electronics configurations that aren't normally offered through our regular line so in this case we see a this is a single cut trim with a curly maple neck and it almost looks it's got the trem up route in it as well so it's a kind of a unique unique piece there not something we normally carry and and dealers can do runs i think in probably quantities or ten maybe even five of a unique item um you know to offer their customers that's a really cool thing that prs does is some of their with some of their dealers that you can order something specific for your shop yes and have a run out of your and i'll tell you i think it's a great program a head of sales jim collin you know worked on developing this and today's you know where we are now with internet sales and you can check available products right in hundreds of stores in just minutes and really all over the world yeah the fact that you're able to with this program we can offer a dealer maybe a smaller dealer something unique that they have yeah uh and it's kind of a nice program yeah what a thrill so john we take a look at the staining and grain filling processes right now we're in one of our spray holding rooms so we have guitars in various stages out here depending upon whether you see some with color on them some with clear coat others that are on deck to get their first coat of finish which is what i wanted to talk about now next to us we have a spray room where we're doing our initial base coat spray operations and what they'll do is five individual passes with a slight try time in between there to build up the the base coat before color coats and clear uh typically that coat needs to dry for two or three days after spraying and then we'll go to a sanding operation which levels out the finish and then the guitar will go through a prep operation before color coats and top coats and you said five coats so it's five individual passes that they'll do to spray on and these are just just they're very papers as like right so our goal and believe me we check our percentage of guitars at every spray batch is to have between four and six mills or four and six thousandths of an inch of finish after those five passes that is just right and that's after spray and sandaling sanding so we want to keep that finish really as thin as possible just like paul was talking to us earlier and we're really trying to develop a very hard thin finish and the base coat is obviously a big part of that and we'll move on to some of the other operations now so john now we're in the our base coat sanding area and we've got two samples here we just looked at some of these guitars getting sprayed so this one has a layer of the cab acrylic on it and it's probably about eight thousandths nine thousands thick behind us they're gonna sand this entire guitar down using a series probably starting with 300 and ending with 400 grit and get this guitar prep for color coats uh and clear coat so as you can see and if i don't know whether the camera will pick this up this one's nice and shiny but if we look close at it there's orange peel on it and imperfections from how it lays out um during the finish process but we want this to be absolutely smooth so this one you can feel now that it's been sanded right um it's perfectly flat there's no orange peel and it's ready to get color coats and and clear coats applied to it okay yeah so will this one get a for instance will this get color over it or is this going to be a clear right so in this case this guitar is going to be most likely completely opaque it may be a metallic finish or or a flat color finish so the entire guitar will get color-coded and then get a clear coat over that on some of the other instruments that are getting worked on behind us that have a stained top the binding may get masked off and it'll get a color code on the back and the neck and then the entire guitar will get uh color-coded so it depends on the model and the color requirement for you know every guitar that we have running so where are we now so john where in one of the base coat color coat holding rooms a different one adjacent to our spray room here where we do color coats before clear coats i have this guitar as an example of one we looked at a 300 sanded guitar where the base coat was sanded nice and flat the next stage would be to apply color to that guitar in this case the top is stained so it's been taped off and masked off where we didn't want to get any color and the back of this guitar has been sprayed this translucent color here the next step for this guitar will be to move on to clear coats now this is maybe jumping out of turn a little bit but you always paint on your serial numbers and when does that happen in the process uh that typically happens right before clear coat so if the guitar is going to get um any type of of like in this case where we have paint sprayed on the actual base coat the signa the uh serial number and then ten top designation if it needs one will go on at this point before clear coats okay and is that is that what this indicates there this one is marked as a ten in the corner yeah so that's that's where they put the magic 10 right you have the year and then a sequential serial number somewhat and then a 10 on there we can't see the top because this one's taped off when we don't want to get any of that uh neck and back spray on the top of the guitar you know it's flaming oh it's a good one yeah so does it that's always kind of amazed me to see that that hand-drawn serial number and uh right yeah there's somebody very specific to prf uh it is and there's been you know a company's done a variety of things over the years i i remember starting here and thinking the same thing like well that's that's kind of unique it's not like a stamped number or anything else and uh i i kind of like the hand touch on i did too i think it's just it's just it's just cool it's like the next one yeah right okay john so we took a look at some of the color code applications the next part of the process would be clear coats so you have it an example of guitar this one's gone through all the previous steps of stain color coats and also has a clear coat applied to it and most of these guitars behind us here are nitrocellulose uh top coat on the guitar this particular one if you were to look closely at it even though it looks nice and shiny and reasonably flat finish it's an off the gun finish so the next step is going to be sanding that that clear coat down before polishing so they go through a variety of grits here i think starting off with a 1 500 very very high grit and then moving to a 3000 and you can kind of feel the tackiness on this versus this guitar right so any again any of that orange peel again what we're trying to achieve here is a very hard thin finish again i think the total mill build after sand on top coat is probably about four four to five mils you know you consider human hairs about three so it's not much thicker than that and then this guitar is going to go through a uh buffing and polishing process and then it will move into final assembly for for uh parts and final setup so rob you guys have been making pickups like from very early on like prs makes things that makes the whole guitar so tell me about what what goes into this so we do wind our own pickups here um we there are our bobbins are designed by prs we have other manufacturers that produce those plastic parts for us but they're all under our design they're all proprietary at this point and essentially we've developed a variety of different humbucker and single coil pickups over the years as you can see right next to us we have a multitude of wires that we use for different applications and it's really been you know a 25 30 year research project and as we were talking about earlier uh some of it designed off of reverse engineering kind of iconic designs and some that we've learned through our own discovery of pickups as they apply to our particular models and they're all wound in house this is where the winding's done and then we can take a look at where some of the other cover assembly and wax potting is done wow yeah it was really interesting just talking to paul a few minutes ago he was before we started this and he was he's talking about working with mayor about these pickups now i mean it just never stops it really it really does and you know the it's i mean it is continual refinement so we are currently making that model we we but we are also i know chuck had a had a uh tray of new pickups that we're sending john that's going on an ongoing basis the more that we learn so and as paul said if we feel like we can make an improvement um and add value to our product and and as an end result give a better value to our customer that's kind of the mode that we operate in so we've got a whole variety of steps just as with anything else that go on with pickup manufacture right now i think we're taking a look at some of the shrouds are getting applied to these humbuckers right here but essentially after after the coils are wound they're going to come into this room they'll get leads attached to those wires a humbucker pickup two coils will get attached to a base plate with a lead wire they may or may not get a pickup cover depending upon the what pickup model it is and then some of our most of our pickups go through a wax potting operation as well and the pickups also go through qc check as we look around this room you can see at a variety of different stages there's multimeters on the bench top so that we can check the integrity of the coils throughout the process as we just took a look at how fine all that pickup wire is and anyone who's dealt with or built pickups realizes that they are susceptible to breaking so as throughout that process we're going to check continuity to make sure that we don't have an open coil within the surface and that we're not putting any more labor or processes into a to an open coil and it does it does happen on occasion it's so that's oh these are quality checks they're so fragile yeah they really are yeah the other part of the operations in this room are are um it is our electronics area so we have all of our sub-assemblies for guitars in the form of drop-ins and electronics are also assembled in this area where we'll take assemblies for potentiometers and switches and a combination of those as they're going to be put together for various models also get pre-assembled in this room before they're kitted and then eventually assembled on a guitar in our final assembly area so john we're in the final assembly area and this is where we put install all that various hardware on the guitars pickups bridges electronics components tuning pegs the nut we string the guitar up make sure the setup is correct and all the electronics function and work before the guitars go on the final check so we have a variety of different those operations taking place in different locations we typically will have a team of people who will install items like tuning pegs and strap buttons and bridges and sometimes pickups and then there'll be another group of people that complete the assembly of the guitar and do a final final check to it we brought a couple examples out here finished guitars i have a an s2 uh 594 double cut and you have a santana model right there that's completely strung up i think it's kind of neat and it's when you look around this room um you know what you don't see is 50 guitars that are all the same style and color right now it really covers the whole full rainbow and spectrum of products that we do in here with a variety of different scale lengths finishes electronics packages available different pickups and different finishes whether and fingerboards materials everything it all comes together in this this room and uh it's interesting as we walk through the factory you kind of see that throughout our manufacturing facility where we have all these different guitars running through somewhat similar processes and break off into different cells depending on on what the application is required for the guitar and it all comes together here it's it's interesting too because okay the mccarty and the santana different pickups different bridge different tuners now do so i i i guess somebody has to kind of assemble the different parts for different guitars and then they're do they put together like a package is that right exactly so what we do now is as these guitars come through and you know we have a material resource planning system that we use that tracks the sub assemblies and parts of the guitars as they go through different areas and we attach labor and operations materials to them as they come into this room as this guitar goes through a qc check before any parts are put on it the information essentially gets translated to people back in our electronics area to where we build a kit for the guitar that will have all those associated electronics pickups potentiometers and tone pots correct wiring tuning pegs and we'll kit that in the guitar you can see behind us we have a rack of guitars with some kits on top that correspond to each one sure so then the assembler is going to go over there grab the guitar and there'll be a a sequential number that matches on the kit that he's going to grab and they'll go assemble the guitar and have the right parts pulled for them and to keep it as an efficient process as possible if there is a custom order can they change at this point do they i mean like they or would that happen through the general assembly here like say you want a different pickup say you wanted paul's guitar pickups on a santana right so typically that information would be contained into the guitar very soon after it started okay so if it was requiring um if it was requiring a different set of pickups let's say it's a wood library run yeah basically within the guitar we have an identifier that calls out the model and category of the guitar and within that long skew with all these different letters and numbers um does call out what type of pickups it gets what type of bridge what's the finish on the bridge is it nickel is it gold are they vintage tuners are they you know phase 3.2 tuners you know it's a bone nut synthetic nut all those things are all that information's all called out um within a model identification system on the guitar keep that on file like kind of a birth certificate that talks about all the ingredients yeah there is there is kind of a we call it a mod cat but it's the model category identifier that that information is is then contained into it and i think now recently it switched over to just a numerical uh number that calls out all those different entities and and you know type everything from the type of finish that it gets to the type of material that's used on the guitar body neck fingerboard and of course all the stuff we're looking at in this area which is uh all the hardware and electronics appointments so rob where we're in a different part of the factory we are where are we now okay so physically we are upstairs above the wood shop area that we were in a little while ago and this is our essie inspection area so we have a variety of our sc line guitars behind us and in this area we have a whole team 15 or 16 people in here their job is as we receive overseas guitars in from our sc line we unbox all those guitars and essentially go through a full inspection very similar that we would do downstairs in our final assembly area so these guys are going to unbox the guitar they're going to do a visual inspection on the fit and finish of the guitar and then they're going to get into the functionality of the electronics make sure everything's operating okay they're also going to go through all the setup specifications that we have and we have certain requirements for the ses just like we do with electrics in regards to string height um truss rod adjustments and you know bridge adjustments and everything else they have a specific um elements that they're reviewing in here and making sure that they meet our specifications so every guitar that gets distributed to um a dealer in domestic in the usa or to canada goes through an inspection process here before it goes into a dealer or customer's hands and then we have a similar operation where this is handled overseas and prsgi through european and asian distribution yeah i heard some of your texts literally playing every note all the way up and down that so one of the checks that they're going to do along with making sure you know like general stuff like the pickups are working is is part of that setup do we have any high threats do we have any you know buzzing issues or anything else and that's part of the play check operation is to go through there if they find an issue do they do they fix it here or they bring it down to excellent questions so it's it they are able to handle um quite a few repairs here if it's a simple setup adjustment obviously that's handled right at the bench yeah we do have the opportunities if they are small finish issues um to address those here and then anything major with these guitars it's kind of a different uh system to where we wouldn't probably dive into anything you know fixing a structural issue or major finish repair sure um we would work with our partner cortec to address those type of issues and then you know as an as another really general step we didn't get a chance to talk about in our core guitars um but i've talked about it on tours before where we take guitars that essentially are ready to ship both through our sc line and our core line i'm involved in the sc line where we have a meeting with a group of managers from this area and some other people in the company will unbox guitars that have gone through this inspection process and we pass them around the room down to one of our conference rooms and go over all the quality aspects again so we're really getting a snapshot of what the dealer or customer would see out of the box out of the case and and we're reviewing the work that coretech is doing along with um our associates up here and and you know i've the the the development of these guitars and i think the the quality and really value to the customer i'm personally very proud of how this whole project has developed over the last 20 years these are awesome guitars that that are being made by with really with our our partners uh through and and just like with any other aspects of prs that relationship um is built on a lot of communication back and forth and i i can't speak for how other manufacturers handle it we have a pretty intimate relationship with that manufacturer on quality control but also you know component design plating stuff electronics design anytime we're releasing a new model they go through the similar prototype and stuff we'll send us versions of new pickups that we're going to then test here and approve and uh it's has really been a great back and forth with with core tech they've been an excellent partner they're a big part of the growth obviously with this project and i think that they feel strongly about the relationship and the things that are important to that which is really value to our customer you know a level of trust between us and quality and attention to detail so although this may not be an ex as an expensive as a core usa model we want to deliver the same value to our customers we want people to open up the case and be very pleased with their purchase and uh it's why we're going over 100 of these and i think our our um our partners at cortech have have really bought into that and i i think it's a different relationship than um than other companies have had in the in the past and it's really been a great thing it's led to development of some beautiful guitars and really a very solid what i feel is affordable and value for your money properly i've got an sc1 that i think i paid 300 for and i've literally toured the world with that it's so great on sessions played tv shows played with played everywhere yours and it's i mean it's just a great guitar regardless of the price it's a great guitar yeah that's awesome to hear and and like i said to maintain that um you know our our chief executive officer he meets with these guys daily and and certainly weekly and then we'll have the whole engineering team involved in in zoom and teams meetings with representatives and engineers from their company so that we can work on these projects together it is not just putting in a purchase order and leaving it at that right and and that never works it doesn't work and i'll tell you it's been great how they kind of have embraced who doesn't want to be part of making the best product you can possibly make at any given price point and delivering that to a customer so i i think they it's been a great relationship up to this point things are working really well and and um i'm very proud of this product line we can take a look at some of the quality checks let's see it okay so we've been through it from the drying room to the whole enchilada and this is the last the last step that's right john we've gone all the way from rough cut right through to final assembly and we really are at the end of the line um really from an operational standpoint so this is our casing area um and as we had talked about now we've got a completed guitar in here it really does receive the last qc check um for the most part at this point and as well as putting all the case candy in and and preparing the guitar for shipment the people back here will do one last quality check on the guitar mostly for any uh finish issues as really the setup stuff has been gone through they'll record the serial number and then some other administrative work based on you know what warehouse it's going to go into what uh and what dealer may be going to behind us we can see a pallet of guitars that were cased up today and are ready to move back to our shipping area to go out to dealers and some hopefully some happily happy customers all right definitely receiving these pretty soon how could you not be happy yeah opening up that case i'll tell you and it's and i hope you know it's funny with as we were taking a look at these things it's it's a big thing that paul always talks about in that moment when you're either driving home from the store or receive a shipment in the mail and the guitar shows up uh hopefully when people open these things up they'll be really happy and pleased and will have made a purchase on instrument that's going to last them a lifetime and serve them well and they'll they'll really bond and be happy with yeah that's definitely like a heritage guitar you that that will uh yeah that'll be around for generations yeah absolutely so it's great giving you guys a tour here i got to tell you i want to thank all three of you uh and certainly john and perry and chris you guys are top shelf as well it's been been a pleasure to have you in here and take a look at our little factory and how we make prs guitars in here and i hope you guys enjoyed yourself and oh it's amazing it's amazing yeah i can't thank you enough and uh please uh take a minute to subscribe below we'll keep you up to date on all this great gear coming your way and prs can't thank you enough for having us till next time take care

Channel: Premier Guitar

Views: 237,680

Keywords: guitar, guitars, guitarist, guitar player, electric guitar, fender, fender guitar, gibson, gibson guitar, gibson les paul, guitar gear, pedalboard, pedals, guitar effects, guitar pedals, premier guitar, how it's built, factory tour, guitar factory, prs, prs guitars, paul reed smith, paul reed smith guitars, santana, carlos santana, mark tremonti, shinedown, how to build a guitar, building a guitar, electric guitars, luthier, how it's made, guitar building, silver sky, john mayer

Id: Zen2S9RaSbQ

Length: 62min 39sec (3759 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022