What's inside the PRS Factory?

I'm gonna hold the door thank you a lot of women here I'm very excited that's great the beginning this is your beginning it's where what comes into your shop tell us all about it yeah this is this is where the magic begins so it's our rough cut area we store all the wood the mahogany the maple rosewood it all comes in here will grade it you can see Rob over here he's stacking some maple tops yes everything gets graded cuts down to size the mahogany here comes to us from South and Central America we get some from Africa as well rosewood from all over the world I believe these are Indian rosewood blanks who feel that they're pretty dense oh my god nice tone they ring like a bell - can't believe I do know you can put this near my mic you hold it about a third of the way down lightly we go upstairs where the it's not as noisy oh my god anyway so that's South and Central America Africa for the mahogany the maple comes to us from Great Lakes Pacific Northwest on through Canada the Rosewood a lot of Indian rosewood but we use Brazilian still Wow some other South America so does all the wood come through here first before goes into like Paul's Private Selection - or absolutely everything starts here okay and like I said it'll be cut down the size and graded will grade the figurine in the tops okay I have a non tent top a tent top our dry package private stock obviously the more figured the wood the higher price the guitar Gosei about this awesome you can see these with the red and the blue together those are private stock tops are they're being sorted for that yeah you can see the flying on it that's nuts we can we'll go into the vault later and I show you some really that's the fun part of this we're excited about the wall yeah all the top start off is five quarter what they call five quarter and the wood industry it's an inch and a quarter thick that's for the nice violin carve well much of that gets carved away but stale stays nice and thick of the center take some of this home with us there's some cool limba yep but yeah like black stuff I think is particularly be is really cool look at that figure in there yeah once it gets planed down you can really see the gradient coming through yeah good god mahogany neck flakes the best to neck legs against all the wood coming in being sorted being grated being cut so how many guys are working in this section right here usually thankfully we have two guys run worked in this section this department but we have a wood buying crew of two other guys that travel all over the world source in the workforce guy opinion we have the best wood crew in the industry they've got great relationships with sawmills all over the world we have better selections well because of the relationships if the mill gets a tree and they'll call Mike Reed is our main guy's been with Paul since day one they'll call Mike and go man I got this amazing maple drew must have it you want it yes so we'll take the whole thing we'll build it all up feel great go through it we'll pick out cherry pick what we want what we don't want we'll sell to other manufacturer so you actually think the whole tree then you sell the other pieces also happen that's awesome so when that wood comes to us it's about 15 to 20 percent moisture content and will dry the necks and the bodies down to six percent moisture and will drive the fretboard down to two percent moisture Wow the idea is to get the movement out of the wood and it also crystallizes the resins that are in the wood same reason a vintage guitar sounds so good it's had 60 70 years to dry out we want to make sure the wood is nice and dry we don't want to ship it filled with while how long you keep it in here usually there's no set time we have a little probe we stick it when it's ready to move forward we move it forward typically though it's about four weeks for a neck or body Rosewood neck can be eight weeks or more okay so you know we have over a million dollars in wood inventory drying at any given moment so it's a big investment that is a big investment but it's one of Paul's kind of cornerstones of guitar building you know dry the wood okay in this black box over here is a that for the fretboard different board yeah so the the roll-up doors I should have mentioned the roll-up doors are all the the hot rooms where all the wood is is in there dry I'd be very uncomfortable yeah I would not like this grandma's attic and that's kind of where that that whole concept came from Paul is like if you have a hundred-year-old house the woods in the Attic it's exposed to the that's the guitar archers drastic you know heating and cooling over the years he says it settles around 6% 7% what's this becoming that's Paul that'll end up in a private spot Pryor style yeah yeah I think that's yeah that's crazy that's not an se is it particulars pretty beautiful touch it yeah it's pretty lightweight this light it's actually diseased wood is it some of this yeah yeah 20 okay whatever it's a good story the only money weird huh there's anything you think you need their tutors like interrupt after the woods been graded and dried it'll come out here we'll just start stacking it these guys can grab they get a list every day of saying I need to build you know ten custom 2410 tops you know six artists packages etc so they'll start hitting the wood the tops and the backs together and start moving well anything since you said that about how many guitars do you guys bill of the day we do about forty five core and about 45s - okay what about these well it's best to see e cell phones yeah kind of all off so we're about 90 guitars a day it's not as many people think probably where I think like you're building thousands of guitars a day or something way but yeah we're work it's still impressive we're number three us guitar manufacturer but compared to the other guys who are still fairly small that's awesome yeah so it's really cool you know and it's it's cool because it is still a small company and Paul still every day and you know there's interaction with Paul it's like I can just bust in there and go hey man in 92 when you were doing but what did you do there Bevers it's nice you know he's got a memory like mahogany after gets plane down that's pretty yes what is this means there's a code I'm not really sure I think it's probably like 10 top or so just like a west coast 10 top east coast tent cool west east coast or you have a West Coast and these go said Tom so when we start the process we take the top and we'll run them through the planer make sure they're nice and flat and then we'll run that centerline make sure it's nice and flat and so we can start joining them together glue up up we'll glue them up over here so we use a normal wood glue but it has a chemical additive in it this little handheld thing with the green handle that'll shoot a radiofrequency into the woods takes about 15 seconds on the other side secure out the wood watching so what was she hitting at you sitting her foot on the pedal to the pedal releases the clamps step on it'll it'll open the clamp awesome yes yes both sides us 15 seconds that flips over about 15 more seconds the top and the back together so this one is will get a toggle switch up here so we have to do a little internal routing on that mahogany first then we'll just use a normal wood blue or blue this up we put all these guitars in the clamp here the press has four tons of pressure per square inch a tremendous amount of pressure we'll leave them overnight following day we'll come in take them out we'll do a rough cut on the bandsaw and it prepares them for the CNC machine we typically start with the backs in the CNC machine got the electronics cavity the trim if it has it the outline of the guitar the belly curve takes about a half hour so to do two guitars all of the wood chips get sucked up into these big pipes above us they get dumped into a bat and then they make pellets for pellet stoves so recycle the problem yeah people from the West Coast often don't know what pellet stoves are but people in Northeast understand but yeah we you know amazing how just ship it over yeah it's a it's pretty handy little machine before we had these we used what was called a duplicate it's kind of like a key cutting machine in the hardware store yes take a carved body and you're on a stylus over it and it had a router head that would carve the same thing so the the Duke of Carver was was very user dependent the guy was doing a sloppy job you get a sloppy product okay with the CNC machines we get very accurate reproduction every time that is amazing to watch yeah it's kind of hypnotic it's it's relaxing yeah I'm enjoying this it's your moment of Zen I think what you saw that how how old-fashioned like three more bucks to these machines actually this one in particular is his old we started using these in late 95 that has ever in the factory note all those codes being on top of it hey they know what they're for portion of the code you know the body guys know their section and the finish guys know their section so those guys like those guys and girls they stay in that section they don't they don't skip around thank you I mean they don't beginning of an fo let's go the violin cars that pick up cavity the divots for the electronics flat faster it's about 1/3 faster than the other machines we do our biggest sellers on this custom 24 silver skies 594 etc I wish it was running the way it changes kids it's really cool dollar top sellers silver sky candy store yeah yeah so this drumroll like I said it's a locker aircraft yeah it's a lot quicker than the other you can want their silver skies and they want them now if you want their so this guy I want my soul this guy yeah they've got a long way we call on all that's really good about a year ago or so we started a second shift trying to keep up with the demand so how how long is the factory for money six 16 hours a day and to ships so once the guitars come off the seats a machine everything else is done by hand we use that CNC machine just for a very consistent product that we can start with it's kind of a blank canvas so as I mentioned it takes about six and nine months to train people how to do any of these jobs this is right for a start of a body sandy I'd work on one guitar for eight hours and that was with the help of a trainer you know with a pencil saying yeah you're missing a scratch here you're not keeping the the violin cards getting blocked out there so it takes a long time to really build that critical eye we have a person that does the job and then we have a person that looks over that person's work okay so we don't rarely do we get to the end of the line be like oh we've got a screwed up guitar and your powerful manners they are yeah pneumatic Sanders we start with like 80 grit totally heavy it removes all the clutter marks and scratches for a C&C we go up to 150 grit 220 end up in 320 you see everyone has an overhead the light yeah all about maintaining the shadows especially on a violin carpets PRS has a very distinct harp to it you've got a really trained eye - this guy's working harder yeah follow me they're going to next deeds for the next they go in and out of the machine about a half a dozen times before they're completed so we'll take a neck we saw in the the rough cut area this starts off at about a three and a quarter inch piece of mahogany we'll drive down to six percent moisture content we'll bring it out here we'll cut this out we'll save it will number the neck you can see the number and then this piece of wood that we've removed we give it the same number so we'll save that for later we'll come back and we'll use that same piece of wood glue the ears on the ears don't really have any function except for the headstock shape but they don't take any force from the tuners or anything like that at this stage we've carved a channel down the center we've installed the truss rod truss rod is basically a turnbuckle - steel rod it has a threaded nut here and a threaded nut there the hex nut is welded into place so as you turn it it spins the entire rod it bows or flexes the neck holds it really stable will clamp that in with a piece of mahogany flatten it out we put a couple guide pin holes for the the fretboard and then the fretboard will lock into place we use epoxy to glue that on so when did we get to the part where you carve the neck on the back after this is done then we'll go in and we'll carve the the actual carve is if I hand and we'll do they know it's on the show I think it gets sanded by hand once it's done and they do that by hand again that consistency here it's flattening out the heel I'm gonna grab a truss rod I'll be right back so this is an example of our truss rod as I mentioned it's steel rod threaded nut yep just like that this sticks out and again you can turn that the entire rod spins we live on the Chesapeake Bay a lot of sailing it's a turnbuckle that you see on a lot of sailboats funny how important this whole thing is it is very important yeah that's crazy yep we've got a little pin router here how we can cut shell inlay on this we could cut headstock veneers that's what it's cutting right now we start off with a piece of rosewood what it's doing right now it's cutting Paul's signature it's cutting the outline to the headstock the the tuner holes etc and then we'll run it through a thickness sander and it becomes so thin that this just falls away this is what we have left to mine and that's what we will put on the face of the headstock crazy I like it impressive and on this machine we also cut the bird inlay so it starts off as a piece of shell we put a little backer board on it just for some strength because it's pretty fragile and we'll just put it in the Machine and we'll cut the birds out trying to maximize it as much as we possibly can we use some power shell for artists packages abalone mother-of-pearl different material ordnance material yeah it's pretty neat this the FBI powers our secret a colorful headstock veneer we'll get the signature clamp that in nice and tight we glue it up and then we run it through the thickness sander so Paul's mother was a birdwatcher so we heard and so they had a lot of you know Autobahn books and stuff like that around the house so he said it was just kind of a natural inspiration when he needed it so we have these billets of aluminum that match the radius he's working on a silver sky right now which has a seven and a quarter inch radius so he'll take the neck and put a straight edge on it make sure the the Fred quartz completely flat so there's no lead lead for the neck at all Kaleo piece of sandpaper down on that billet of aluminum he'll go ahead and he'll just finish off that radius he'll go back and check it when he's happy with it we'll move it on to the next stage which is the fret area yeah he's our manger yeah who's the fret guy there blew up four five slots he'll go in and he'll plant them in there nice and tight couple more clamp those in takes about 45 minutes to sand a neck before it can go into the body okay her like the o-ring they have the lights is good it's all about making sure the shadows are right they're doing it they can see it better funny everybody's got light multi stage so he'll stain in apply this brown stain he lets that dry out he'll come back he'll send that out and now he's just cleaning up the mind a little bit but he's already sanded it out yeah under-promise and over-deliver always the best policy what's so pretty it's a maple neck ash body maple top it's barely got some beautiful piece of wood yeah we can get like put up brown or black green foolery that's like a reversible or yeah it's post it one on this gram the other day okay that's a pretty qatar it's really Italy they're super thin that's Paul's big thing so our I love that our entire Fitness build announced with the base coat color coat and top coat the entire build is thinner than what our base coat used to be ten years ago so as I mentioned before most of the time maple surfaces are stained mahogany surfaces are painted so this guitar for example we stain the maple we applied the base coat saying that base coat flat will come back will spray the burst on and spray the toner on the backs and then put a top coat on it just makes me hungry for guitar so I'm in that's your health they're so close to being done yeah so yeah these could be wet yeah my guitar this one for example doesn't have a top coat on it you could try a clash you're all looking lunch yeah try to capture as much debris as possible because if you know you get a fleck of white in a gold top you're screwed because you know you guys don't have like the system where the guitars run on the ceiling or anything but they kind of come in here so if you're running full capacity you're gonna have a guy on each one of these stations yeah the the well they're different wheels about built they'll do the medium Thank You finer grit attention and if you look on the rack over to your right you can see some that have grease pencil on them please panic that's just a basic look batch there you go almost there yeah thank you wire up the electronics do the wack spotting over here on the red pots lots of fingers touch every little part it's a cool thing like you you know we were talking about earlier like people just kind of up to 5,000 but yeah you're stamping anything did you yeah another good aren't you like loot scream at the talk what's cool about earlier it's like a lot of times we do this so different different pickups get different waxes different tone yeah or not hello everyone it's sleepytime and Paul Reed Smith now so everyone's gone home so they're letting me finish the guitar so I'm gonna do the final assembly here I got my hammer I've got my tweezers and we get to work on this guitar so we have to edit away for a minute after they turn the lights on and I'll get to work in just a second thanks guys for watching we'll be right back I'll be done in a sec so this is the part we talked about one of our previous videos where they actually take all the essays out and inspect them and make sure they're ready and good to go this guy's in charge at the end of the day so give me the rest of it yeah so the guys will pull out every se they'll look it over for the neck relief make sure the nuts cut properly the bridges intimated all the electronics work properly there's no finish issues they'll sign off on it so everything has a hang tag every guitar you guys receive has a hang tag that these guys have signed go box it up and ship it back out to you and the real people they are genuine you it's strange and scary you

Channel: Casino Guitars

Views: 257,891

Keywords: PRS, Paul Reed Smith, PRS Factory, Guitar Center, PRS Private Stock, Casino Guitars, Fender, Gibson, Silver Sky, John Mayer, prs factory tour, prs guitars, prs factory, paul reed smith, guitar factory tour, guitar center, guitar (musical instrument), electric guitar, factory tour, private stock

Id: 5v92Yb0IMM4

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019