Why Not PRS? (I think I know)

[Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everybody that was smooth this is so un like five world uh this five world is five wat live this five wat live is brought to you with the support of TruFire more about our good friends of truefire later on in the Stream B is here today I tried to mess him up with the weird USA time change and was you can't you can't fool b b is the best musing the intro of course was John Cy playing a PRS silver sky SE I got another clip of him playing a PRS dgt SE with more gain on it for the outro today uh John texted me to say that he was looking for some insight into why he feels like he has to own a Les Paul that says Gibson on the headstock and I I think he's psychic I think he knows that I'm going to touch on well knowing me that might have something to do with history right um so uh there's a link for John's Channel excellent YouTube channel in the description so go check it out there I'm working on um getting ready to go away and I'm going to take a break from live streams actually I have to build a schedule I'll post that um if you're subscribed to the channel you should all be subscribed to the channel of course and I'll post that as a a community post what my schedule's going to be I am actually gonna take a week off I have videos uh with the help of my good new editor buddy Bronson Wagner is working with me on um pulling videos together that's a new thing so I'm very um very excited because Bronson's a musician and um a video editor and so that seems like a good match he's down in Maryland so it's a little challenging but we're working on it um we have finished the guitars of John Lennon which is going to come out late in April and we're working on the top top 10 Fender Jazz based players that changed the world hoping for an early release you guys are partly to blame for that one because somebody asked I think it was just last week somebody asked what the best live guitar performance I'd ever seen was and that actually was on a Fender Jazz base I think I said it at the time so you either go back there were you you were there anyway uh you can see the description in the link um and where B's got it up there for t-shirts hats hoodies Etc um the merch company saw that I was going to do a sale and they messed up the link trashed it over the weekend nobody could get in you guys couldn't get logged in during I don't know if you if your overwhelming love for five wart World brought their server down I don't know they didn't explain it uh but I can tell you that it's back up now the link I just posted the link there and the sale has been extended the 20% off has been extended another week so a week from today so between now and actually when I leave town uh the thing will be up and this the the sale is this twice a year sale that I do is pretty rare uh so go in there um also the link for patreon is in the description of course uh and uh if you wanted to get one of the five wat World Barber buses David tells me he's got about five left and then we actually have a supply chain uh haven't heard that term in a while right um issue and we're we're waiting for more enclosures so there's going to be a gap so if you want to get one you can't you can't wait then you better jump over on reverb and grab one uh the Link's in the description as well uh remember if you have a comment put a question mark and leave a space and I'll try to see it uh and um today we're going to talk about uh why I I I think about this a lot and and I'll tell you why it came up but this whole idea of why PRS um feels so loved or hated um and why I have so many of them here when I'm I wouldn't even tell you that I'm I'm not even a PRS Fanboy per se but I'm going to talk about the pros and cons of that here so okay so to kick this off you guys were doing a little bit of this in the in the Preamble um let's get a show of hands who owns a PRS and if you own a PRS if you own an SE as well put that it's an SE maybe go ahead and put the model of your PRS in the chat there um and then we'll see it um if you've never owned one that's cool put that this is a survey of the population here and if you never own one I would never you know that kind of thing um then put that in there too uh it's related to what I'm going to talk about I think in a way PRS is sort of a bipolar distribution of a company the core line and the history of the core line and the history of the SE guitars it's almost two companies and I'm gonna talk about that uh as we go along uh pay attention you I'm gonna be doing this stuff so you guys should pay attention to what each other are saying because I think it's really important for us all to always understand the context of um of you know what who who's answering and why uh Etc I think that's always really interesting uh so I said this this sort of started the other day when I was on a FaceTime call with David Barber from you know Barber Electronics my buddy down there H we were talking about our Mira X guitars there's one right there I just have the one and um uh I have two mirrors at this point they're both from 2010 uh I did a video uh a while back about why the PRS mirrors matter um add to me why the PRS mirrors I've done a whole video on them um I play the mirrors a lot so if you want to go there and see that video about why that is the case anyway David sort of looked past me in this room this is where I write and this is where I do FaceTime meetings and stuff as well as the live streams and um and he looked past me and he said hey how many prss do you have there now you know I'll admit that going way back to like the 2010s and before when I was married and I owned three dozen guitars the question of how many guitars do you have is always so still a little bit of a trigger for me if if if you know what I mean just raise your hands quietly in the back okay um but as the same goes you know I'm feeling much better now I so I did the math um and this is what I have at this point I have two Collings guitars I have my three strandbergs still that I absolutely love those guitars they're completely different and when I need to mix it up I turn to the strandbergs or from feeling achy and old and my hands hurt strandbergs um the recently acquire revstar that I did the live stream on and then I have four prss uh I got a slide of it here there so that's them all behind me earlier today when the when the light was still there um and um so what's there is a uh the red PRS mirror X the guitar next to it is a PRS SE hollow body standard pzo guitar which I I bought thinking about um the perfect two guitar SE collection video that I've been thinking about for a long time there's a 2010 mirror core model with the hollow birds that they had there from 2009 and 2010 and then there's the um piano black PRS SE that I bought at Chris during the Black Friday sale Christmas time last year again looking ahead to doing it and I didn't have any three single coil guitars and I thought it was I think it's always important for me to test things uh with um and if you look in the way corner of that picture you can see a REV G20 that I'm playing and you know kind of getting to know the amp um in advance of talking about that um that's a custom well that's another video uh but anyway I continue to be floored by the the quality of the SE guitars though I have two sc's and two core model guitars there take this back off so in any case um so if it makes any of you nervous um by the way I have a bunch of guitars I have a bunch of gear and I'm going away somebody wrote a DM me and said you shouldn't talk about how many guitars you have I I actually thought of that and um the good Folks at ish guitars my friends at ish guitars are gonna store all of my gear when I'm away um love those guys so they're doing that for me I asked B uh what did he has by way of PRS experience and he told me he has a core dgt with moons he has a single cut t top 594 he has two core silver Skies one with a maple and one with a Rosewood board and also dead I'm reading it from his notes Here a dead spec silver sky and a private stock super eagle that last one's a little sweet um so bab's I don't know how many guitars babbe has or who where he leaves his guitars when he goes out of town but um that's some nice stuff so we got some PRS expertise in the number of guitars I've I've owned a number of prss over the years um and just I want to cover this um like I said earlier I'm not I don't really consider myself a PRS Fanboy um there's a lot things that I don't love about the design elements somebody said in the preview in the in the pre- chat that they liked the the peg head the headstock because it looks like a weapon I'm like I guess I'm not playing enough Roadhouse gigs um I've never liked the look of it to me it feels too much like the weird custom guitars that I saw in the 70s and and early 80s when I was in high school and then College um and I've really never loved the original you know shape of the body the um like the like this that that offset horn and all that kind of stuff but I have to tell you that once this thing is on my lap or even like the dgts and stuff that I've owned um this shape doesn't bother me at all uh it works it's it's ergonomically but I have to say that when when it's sitting on a stand and I walk through it in a room it doesn't it doesn't warm my heart and I've always wondered at that I and I I so that's part of what I'm going to kind of ramble on about today um so what is it that people don't why don't people flock to PRS they're the third largest Guitar Company in the US um or maybe you're gonna say that they do flock to you know PRS it's why they are the third largest now but people have often said you know that you you you don't really see people who are really kind of like they're okay it's either a Love or a hate I probably am on the side of like I mean you got four of them here part of that because of the business and what I do with the channel but I would tell you that that if I David and I were talking about this if I had to go all the way and only had one two humbucker humbucking guitar um it probably would be that mirror that weighs five and a half pounds and it has the Ron Ellis pickups in it um it's the guitar I reach for the most often and again um as Chris from gig with vintage said to me once in in a DM the only thing that matters is that the guitar disappears when you play it that in his experience he gigs a ton um and nice old guitars and stuff too he's like if the guitar disappears that's what you're always looking for so I'm gonna run through five things that I came up with that are all kind of related to this first thing um that really kind of are why I think PRS doesn't isn't as deeply embedded in our psyche as Gibson and Fender are uh so the first thing is that it has a shallower history than the others Gibson was founded in 1902 and Fender was started they started building guitars in 1946 with lap steel guitars then broadcasters in 1950 um I'm old but I was born in 1960 so that's a long time ago this guy this guy Paul Reed Smith who who looks like every skinny kid I ran track with in high school I have to say um that guy started a factory a Guitar Factory in 1985 and I should tell tell if you didn't know this that David Barbara actually is from that corner of the world and knew um Paul was actually a person that would go by David was sort of a wouldbe rock star at the time and he would go by and play the new guitars for Paul and Paul would check him out um so that's Paul Reed Smith from around the time of the factory I I took that right off their web page today um love the hair um so you know you might go well how's that relevant what's that got to do with anything uh I think for number of us this meant that with either and I know the distribution of people on the channel actually is pretty even from about 18 years old to 65 years old everybody's about each of those groups in my YouTube analytics is about 20% some videos like the Beatles videos obviously skewed to the older end of it um but I'm actually always impressed by the fun the number of younger people who are interested in Guitar History or interested in the musings about minimalism essentialism kind of stuff that I do here uh and I was I was love that VAR um but for a number of us I'm just going to speak for folks my age is um for a number of us this meant that we were either in college or about to be out of college when PRS was really just at the very beginning of their Factory years Paul was building custom guitars before that but that was a very very local thing and if you want to go see how the company grew go look at my short history video on the history of the Custom 24 because I really do a history of the entire company and there's a the original how they launched the factory on the orders that they got at a particular Nam show it's a great great story um so I would argue that more importantly none of the guitar players that we looked up to growing up as players played PRS guitars so that whole 1985 thing is May most relevant because at the Crux of this the number of um players of the brand um they just weren't there uh they're not a part of our they weren't a part of our individual music history you know that they say that our musical tastes are cemented between high school and college that it's not uncommon at all for people to keep listening to the same music they listen to you know for their whole lives I talked to my college roommate God must be like 10 or 15 years ago now and I hadn't talked to him in a long time and uh he was running a landscaping businesses before he retired and it was sort of his semi-retirement job uh after working in printing for a long time and Mike I said so what are you listening to man because he had turned me onto so much music in college and Mike says oh there's nothing in the 10 disk CD player in my truck that you wouldn't recognize from when we were in college together and we only lived together for a year so this meant you know like Dire Straits and Genesis and yes and camel and Return to Forever and weather report that was the stuff he was still listening to and I this this idea that we get our musical taste cemented then made me think that I probably our guitar taste are sort of cemented in those years as well or maybe a little before that maybe I started playing guitar when I was 13 14 years old so the players and I started reading Guitar Player magazine every I get my hands on it at that time I think we all sort of have our tastes kind of cemented around that time I'd be curious to know what you think about that I'll put it in the comments about what you think are you still listening to the same are your golden players the same ones that were your your favorites like when you left high school or if you're in high school um who are you listening to now because I just don't think of a lot of a lot of guitar music right now um so that's the first thing and I think that really is at the heart of a lot of what I'm going to talk about after this um I'd put forward the idea that you know people say that prss are soulless for me I think that this idea is a lack of personal history might be that their SE is soulless because when we you know when we play a Stratocaster I don't know I I I've argued before that anybody who's holding a Stratocaster is um has Jimmy Hendricks in the room if if you're of a certain age or if you've I mean it's it's sort of completely unavoidable um so if you're holding a strat you're part of the culture that was Hendrix Stevie Ron David Gilmore you know pick your favorite Strat player if it's uh ales Paul it's got to be at least partly this guy and that picture should be way bigger because I always thought the guy looked huge um that's Jimmy Paige of course from s Remains the Same um Alex lion Eric Clapton Peter Green Robin Ford you know it's sort of an endless list of people who were playing before and and after you know not clapped in on Al Paul but um and after playing those guitars um you can kind of do this with any model from Gibson or Fender you know if your thing was shoe gaze then maybe it's Jazzmaster players or Jaguar players you know it these companies have been building those guitars for 20 years or more before Paul ever started building guitars at PRS um PRS has Santana and then I would say that a lot of the other players that use them even guys like Alex lion you know he's back at Gibson now and the reality is I don't really think of lifeon in my mind playing a PRS but he played them for over a decade or more why is that I always think of him even playing like his axis Les Pauls or that white three 35 is it a 330 345 I think um that white or the double neck you know that's what I think of um so I think this idea that things are soulless kind of implies that they lack the history as well and we don't have an association we don't have a uh a commitment to the players that we loved and then we don't see them with a PRS in their hands because they didn't have if they're older players or maybe they're younger ones so I would also say this is sort of overlaps with the third thing for me which is um they kind of got painted with a metal or even new metal brush at some point you know so if the artists that you associate with PRS they kind of PRS sort of took off during the time of um I got a picture of this guy at the time of Lincoln Park Brad Delson from Lincoln Park or Clint Lowry from sendust or mark holom from periphery or Zack Meers um you know all of these guys were playing PR us sort of like they went along they went hand inand with the use of dual rectifiers and triple rectifiers Maes you know this was in 80s 90s you know the early 2000s things when folks started going back to Marshalls and uh they sort of left their custom 24s on the rack as well and and I've always wondered at that there are lots of people that continue to use them of course um but the thing that I always run into when I'm making a video about the history of PRS is the lack of History the lack of how many people have played these and made a big impact um and I think this is still happening but again you know you got to really look into the 90s and after see who it was that you were yearning to be like um when you were growing up and playing guitar you know who who were your PRS guitar Heroes that you were trying to emulate I think that's that's not that many of them so um all right I'm already through three of my five things I'm not sure how far we're going to go today um you guys are talking to each other I'm looking for question marks and just want to take a quick look here Jeff mckline is here hey Jeff Craig Donovan thank you for the Hop chat my friend Rob says he he's surprised that people don't have stars on their pants I know the the dragon suits Rob is H the dragon suits are a real thing looking for questions yeah you guys are talking among yourself that's great okay okay good you guys are like I said you guys are together all right this might be a short stream today it's good short rants is is a good thing um the next group I would say is an interesting thing because I think it relates to this thing I was talking about it being two companies um if they were got painted with the metal and and metal new metal brush I would also say that the thing that I most hear associated with PRS is the whole let me get Brad off here is the whole uh is the whole um Blues lawyer thing I I really dislike the term Blues lawyer in in the same way I dislike the term Boomer uh it reduces I think it reduces people to a category in my experience people rarely fit into neat little boxes we're all too messy for that to work uh we're just not that simple um but I think this is more has to do with the cost of guitars from the American PRS Factory relative to the other brands early on really early in in the history of the brand Paul realized that fancy wood would sell guitar he said something that affect in an interview I read that people were more he realized people were interested more interested in buying a guitar with a fancy top rather than a plain one and if he could build one or the other he was going to use the nicer wood and then the the pricing was going along along with it he did this early in the company and we he was sort of at the front of the custom shop wave I've actually heard people argue that the quality of Paris guitars coming out of the early Factory in 1985 was one of the things that spurred the other companies to launch their own custom shop operations as a way to differentiate their their own product line because they had broad product lines PRS had a product line which was just Custom Shop level guitars like I said go back and watch my custom 24 video um to see kind of what they were doing and just to do a quick little quick review here the Gibson Custom Shop was established in 1986 though they became much more active about five years after that the Fender Custom Shop was formerly begun in 1987 when uh Bill Schultz was the CEO right after they uh the group under Bill Schultz bought it away from CBS again and got it back on its feet uh and when the Fender Custom Shop was founded I love this statistic I looked it up today they were just two Builders two that's a custom shop that's handbuilt guitars um PRS was integrating this level of quality across their whole line and their prices reflected it so if you think about PRS early PRS pricing as being Custom Shop level then the prices are sort of a shrug of the shoulders they still are really if you compare like core model PRS not wood library and Private Stock I'm G to talk about what you'd compare those two but if you if you look core prices against core prices for Gibson and Fender American bill then it's it's sort of okay but for from 1985 until 2001 you might say that it was at the time when even the earliest of us were paying attention to who's building guitars was getting done um PRS only Built expensive guitars they only Built Custom Shop level guitars so I think this idea that only lawyers could afford them only dentists or whoever you know people with money YouTubers I'm kidding could afford PRS guitars back from 85 till 2001 when they started the SE was pretty accurate and I think that it has um those uh 15 years have kind of spilt over into the next 20 years because the as I just said um they launched the SE line in 2001 uh they didn't start building those guitars till 2001 this is something I got again off of the PRS website this is one of the first PRS SE Santana guitars Santana pushed really hard they wanted to do they were doing their custom you know his signature guitar with them and he really wanted a student Level Guitar that was available um through and more reasonably priced um and so he Santana pushed really hard so the first 15 years as I was saying of of PRS they didn't have anything like this there was no sort of just just americanmade PRS for a long time um and the SE was the beginning of that um along all of those years both Gibson and Fender were building their own sort of uh less expensive lines all across that you know all for all those years at the beginning of PRS those companies were doing that all along 2001 was the beginning of them doing it and it's funny because I um I came across this it's kind of a bit of it explains historically seems higher price it was a higher price guit guitar company for 20 years really almost 20 years um before they kind of branched out and had this uh this guitar uh I I pop I'm keeping popping over from my script over to the um the chat and I see that Jeff is here Jeff has been having some hand issues and um he he told me that he's been playing as dgt a lot and I you know they just play easily to me and um anyway I think that's very interesting because Jeff has all those amazing guitarists down there uh we had another top chat Joshua boo we love talking to you too thanks Joshua thanks for the top chat man we're gonna I'm going to come back because I'm I'm already up to my fifth thing oh it's half past let me do my true fire ad and we'll come back uh I reached out to tr fire to be my sponsor um as you've heard me say many many times because I've used them for years I used them for many years before I was ever in touch with them Jeff put me in touch with them and I pitched the idea of sponsoring the channel because I've always been very strong in the you know take some more lessons because that's what's meant been more meaningful for me instead of buying new gear now I I the ultimate excuse to buy gear now although I don't have many guitars compared to what I used to have and that's the essentialism part of my life um but I've always thought they were very on brand so uh that's a good match for me there's over 45,000 lessons in the library covering all styles and levels tab notation Jam track slow motion I need the slow motion uh looping help you tailor the course to fit your learning style Grammy awarded being an artists top session players world renowned instructors like my buddy Jeff and the content at true fire is the best in the business I just started going through Greg Cox's exotic Blues working on some outside notes into my jazz jazzer blues playing something I'm working on um and I decided to do the all access pass because it takes lets me do anything from the catalog and I have I have sort of wandering what's the word I'm looking for uh kind of my interest kind of moves around in different kinds of stuff and I'll take lessons in all kinds of different genres I'll take a flatpicking Bluegrass lesson every once in a while um so that's all access has always worked as you guys have seen my photographs before or like here in this picture there's a music stand right there there's a real book on it but often there's an iPad sitting there too so uh that's a that's a real thing um you can get a discount on courses using the code 5 w35 to get 35% off and if you use the link in the description uh you'll be saying to tr fire that um you got there from here and that you like five wat world and you love the the connection that I have with TruFire and that that makes a difference to you and that works for me you get some good lessons I get some I get a little tiny piece of that and uh that keeps me going so you know learn practice and play with true fire I love that it's it's the summation of sort of how the simplest things are the things that make the biggest difference all right so let me before I do my fifth thing here uh go back and see oh another top chat ruminant melanoid says in the 60s through the 90s massive bands often bought out a of favor guitars from pawn shops and second hand music stores yeah that's true what are the chances of that happening for PRS that's a very interesting question because if they're quality instruments the reason the Jaguars and Jazz Masters got picked up was they weren't popular at the time they were launched but they were really solid instruments and in those cases built often with vintage woods and those kinds of things and I would say that one of the things that PRS works really hard at because Paul is kind of a nut when it comes to the every little detail is the quality of the wood that they use um so I wouldn't be surprised if that'll end up happening I think it's interesting the the whole question um we did a video Once when we were at Rhett Sha's house it very very graciously had um Dave anado and Rick and I over when I was visiting down there and he has over for barbecue and then we kind of all just turned the cameras on we were debating whether or not Les Pauls are going to be valuable when the people who listen grew up listening to Jimmy pagee are gone it's interesting because I don't think the that music breaks down into tidy little decades like it did when we were kids you can only get the music that was current um but now that's really changed so it'll be really interesting to see what you know music always gets listened to well people always listen to lead Zeppelin and so people will always um be interested in Les Paul's that's I think that's a huge huge question so uh thanks for that top chat okay I you guys are you guys you guys are doing well by yourselves I appreciate it there I did see a question go by though where is it uh Victor our friend in Hawaii Victor says what was the name of the guy in Hart Howard lease you're thinking of he was an early PRS player that's absolutely true Howard lease played a um I think what's referred to as a West Street guitar um Howard had a guitar I think maybe before Santana or around the same time and these were all cases where um it uh it gets captured there so uh see my super chat I didn't see it stupid guitar uh I apologize put the question again in the Stream and I will come back to it I was rambling and missed it it seems okay okay all right so five and this is really kind of a a rant stream on its own let me see you take this off here we go um I think that as expensive guitars I would argue with that probably my colleagues might fall in this category except they're sort of not known um as you guys have listened to me talk a little bit about I've kind of gone down a rabbit hole about collecting and I'm fascinated with all the different kinds of collecting and lately I've been looking at videos about collecting watches and I saw a fascinating live a podcast by there's a podcast called um about effing time uh Adrien Barker and two other guys I can't remember the two other guys and they were debating what it is what is something that is luxury what is a luxury item and they said if you have a Rolex watch on your wrist it's assumed that you've succeeded in life if you have a Rolex watch on your wrist it assumes that you're succeeded in life that it's a symbol of success so let's just ignore the fact that they're using financial success clearly as the indicator of success and I don't think if you're here watching five art world you're probably don't take it that simply uh success probably has a lot more to do with how connected you feel to your friends and your family and things that matter a lot more than what's on your wrist or I'm going to say what's sitting in your lap was at ish guitars the other day and uh and they had one of these this is the John mcglaughlin signature PRS um they actually got two of these in and I think they're both sold now uh and I will say that I had a chance to play it briefly and it's an incredible was an incredible guitar great sounds really wonderful and different um I thought they were really really interesting um this is a $15,000 guitar now the amount of hand workk you can see that I tell you that the tops are all this incredibly tight Birds um flame Maple fiddleback whatever you want to say but I'd argue that for many players um a private stock PRS or a wood Library PRS might say something kind of similar um to like a um a wood Library if you could afford one of these it says you've made it it says you're in the club you're a success you've done well again assuming kind of like in the watch World Rolex maybe is one of the most recognizable brands worldwide like Pepsi or Coke but um guitars are not that way but the longer a symbol exists in society the deeper that symbol goes and so more people would recognize a Les Paul sitting on your lap and recognize that it might be an expensive guitar or especially if it looks like an old Les Paul you know Murphy lab um it might be a symbol of success where even that fanciest of PRS is is not uh it sort of runs against PRS on the side that Fender and Gibson have been doing this so much longer and the depth and power of the symbol you know has to do with how much it's shared how long it's been out there um so the older the symbols of success than the Murphy labs and the Masterbuilt fenders are going to win out in the success Club even to that $15,000 mclocklin guitar because people just aren't going to recognize it and if somebody is buying trying to buy their way into the recognize me as success Club that's going to run against those high-end guitars all right okay the bonus one so you know where does that leave PRS SE as a Guitar Company um I've actually been flirting with the idea of doing a uh Short history of the SE guitars because I think that they have been a disruptor in the industry in a way that not many other guitars have been really and I love that it started with an artist and then it was picked up picked up by David Hickenbottom somebody at PRS who's the CEO there now um and actually I've been in negotiation me to have him on the show and talk about the history of the SE guitar line um because I think in a way it's more interesting than the history of PRS in general um I'd argue that they should have given up the SE branding a long time ago SE being student Edition that they should have given that up uh if a current made made in Mexico Fender guitar is referred to as a fender standard Stratocaster so it's clearly feels like it's part of the same line but to say something as a student level when frankly you you could and David gri is out there gigging his dgts and it's more than making a point he basically said you know he just can't believe how playable they were able to make these guitars at the price points that they are around $ thousand dollar um and again like I said I'm not a fanboy I'm just saying that these things are happening in players that I really respect and I think that the branding that they've done with it has run against them and I think that you have these like people who think well that's too low a level guitar and the money I'm not going to spend three grand on a Gib on a PRS but I'll spend three grand on a Gibson you know because it's part of history in a way that PRS isn't uh and I think that's really interesting you know while there were mid-price Gibs um I'm not sure there are mid-price Gibsons that you would want to play anymore the same way you would want to play in SE um but the PRS guitar company that I mostly interact these days with these days is the one building sees and those guitars are being built in in Indonesia um and like I said I thinking about doing a short history because it's been 23 years now that since they've been building the earliest ones and if you think of 25 years as vintage that red guitar um this guitar is about to become a vintage guitar and that just cracks me up so anyway that's my thinking on this uh you know share what I wonder about when it comes to the guitar playing and it's just me thinking out loud about things that I think about through the week and then try to build into a live stream that is remotely interesting so what do you think love them hate them no soul what do you think that is why do you think that is why do you think you think that I'm always looking at why is it where did I get these ideas why do I assume that these things are true and and put that down in the comments all right let me go back over here and uh see what we've got for comments here here's a long one stupid guitar says I see all these people hating on PRS and I don't see people doing the same for Ernie Ball ESP ianz why is that PRS seems to have uniquely captured the Internet Hate yeah I think that's fascinating you know because um there are other brands that are much smaller uh somebody put in the early chat that there's um that Paul himself Paul Reed Smith himself is a very polarizing sort of opinion um he is he's absolutely obsessed with building guitars um Tim Pierce who's a friend of mine through Rick um has been friends with Paul for many many decades and he would tell you that you know over dinner conversation Paul will talk about you or your family and everything but probably in like 5 to 10 minutes it's the guitar conversations conversation is going to come back to building guitars um and and that's a very interesting thing this is a guy who you know thinks about every detail and he keeps changing it somebody was talking about that they didn't they didn't um gel with the neck and I'm like well which one the next change all the time across the history of these guitars um so you know you got to find the years that work for you um this is an interesting question how much does John Mayor have to do with ps's success um I don't know if you've heard this story this was actually a mayor actually called PRS himself because he wanted a guitar built that would work with the Grateful Dead gig that he was going to do the um yeah anyway I'm not gonna come up with it but the the really uh the thing is that he was the one that went there uh absolutely but if you you you could really say that the SE was the number one selling guitar not the original silver sky I don't think the original silver Sky you know was the number one selling guitar in any of the first years that it came out um so uh I got a top chat here from Craig Donovan hey Keith have you seen how much a PRS core loses value when they aren't new I bought my 2022 mccardy for $29.99 they don't hold their value Craig I would I agree I absolutely would agree but I would also say that all guitars when you walk out the door are losing going to lose 20 to 30% um buying new guitars boy it's got to be really really special to buy a new guitar because you are going to Lo lose a tremendous loss um uh Joe Joe's asking a similar question Joe glassie curious what used PRS typically go for relative to new I think that there's we're seeing a re what do they like to say in the stock market when numbers are falling we're seeing a market adjustment it's like or things are just going down in price we're having that right now I I noticed that Phil mcnight did a a stream a live stream on um on the used gear apocalypse I think you what you called it it's a good good thumbnail Phil anyway um I think that things are sort of readjusting post covid we saw some really high prices um David and I talk a lot about you know when we when we launched the bus pedal it's been very successful people really love it um it's actually starting to get some traffic on the forums which usually has something to do with sales for pedals and stuff but he will tell you that there's ups and downs of the year in pedal buying and here we are coming into tax season usually a little flura buying or on tax season um I'll tell you that when I go looking for things like my mirror interest when I'm I'm looking for another 2010 mirror um that I might you do a project with the PRS tech center on um because I never love the colors that they did them in um those those actually are are worth more than they cost originally I mean those guitars really have held their value and they were good prices in the first place that and I didn't even talk about the whole S2 line and how that morphed over time looking for questions how are this is a good Jason connard says how are prsp 90s depends on what era um I found the early I owned a 200 2010 they did a short run of three pickup custom 22 soap bar guitars this is when I was really playing PRS dgts and I owned three two dgts in that guitar they all had the same neck those that short run were Maple dgt shaped necks and the pickups were way too hot and my understanding was that they were done by the seamour dunan custom shop for them so I think for a long time the P90s in my opinion were too hot I've known a lot of people that swapped them out and loved them um I don't have any prss with P90s I got to look um uh I don't think I ever have had besides that custom 22 I I will say that that custom 22 was a guitar that I wish I held on to but I sold it because I didn't love the shape and actually I switched away from the ggts because I did have shape and I'll tell you it's embarrassing when you actually have one of your Heroes like David Gom on the show and you have to admit to him that you sold the guitars with his name on the headstock that was a little difficult uh digging for questions here yeah a lot of bands used to play PRS I think that's true if you came up um in the uh in that certain decade that's really true baby says I'm having trouble keeping up because I disabled slow mode I because I took Lyle's advice Lyall from cionic audio nice top chat here you get a chance to see the new Yamaha pacificas they're pretty sweet I have not um they said they would lend me one and they haven't gotten it to me yet so what about what Buddha would say about a Rolex yeah that's a that's an interesting question I think Buddha would the Buddha would I don't want to speak for the Buddha you know he's 600 BC um but I think that anybody that studied Buddhism would tell you that desire is at the core of all this satisfaction um I read a a guy recently a guy named nval rant who actually sort of thought of as a financial Guru and a and an entrepreneur and he basically said that to the extent um that we oh i s both those we um to the extent that we let ourselves want things is the extent that we let ourselves be unhappy which I think that's really fascinating because I kind of look at I kind of look at the way I'm looking for some somebody asked me recently if I'm always shopping or researching something if I'm always looking to learn more and then why is that that's a really good question uh Victor I would tell you that a Seiko in the watch world is I understand and he's sort of a OG kind of thing and as a white guy in a tie you know once upon a time I would tell you that using the term OG is a bit of a risk for me but I would say that Seiko is right in there so PRS is the new Coke I like the new Coke that's funny okay here we got a question oh big question do you feel that part of the issue with PRS is that somewhat poorly defined identity they seem to have adopted to taste like chicken approach to styling and sound that's a very good point I mean you know if if you go to that Custom 24 video you'll see Paul said that basically he stirred together a strat and a Les Paul Jr and I actually I think in that video I overlaid um a PRS and then kind of had the the two the guitars kind of morph over each other um yeah it's neither it's the old expression it's a Shakespeare thing I think neither fish nor fowl um I think that's true I I also though would argue that if you haven't found the variety of tones you haven't played enough of them um they all sound different um and um I think that's I think that's absolutely a a thing they're they're all made out of wood they're all different uh Chad port wine says which is your go-to Ps and which one would you least often pick up uh the go-to for me here is the uh is the mirror and the one I pick up the least actually I had to go get out of the case is the SE hollow body though I think that that's an amazing guitar for somebody who was trying to cover some acousti pseudoacoustic like a songwriter that's doing sort of a crossover electric acoustic thing I think that's an amazing guitar for the money and and I guess they didn't sell that well and I think it's actually beautiful to boot so I think it's really interesting Alex 241 says someone in a guitar chat mentioned that he bought a new professional two Strat as an investment I don't think that's going to work out your thoughts I don't think any guitar is ever an investment it's like you you're um it's more dependable than the stock market because the market overall has been a historically counted on except for the like the late thir you know late 20s um although it still came back from that and the years after that people made fortunes um so um guitars dependably as Victor was saying earlier guitars dependably lose value dramatically when you walk out of the showroom with a new guitar um so uh the only ones that really gain value are ones that have historical I'd say this depth of symbolism um and end up being uh culturally significant over time to the extent that they're seen as desirable and become symbols of success I'm going to go back to what I was saying earlier I think that's absolutely true Kevin casmi says that he thinks you know I I've always thought it was standard edition but it could be I mean student Edition but it could be standard edition I'm gonna ask the guy who came up with it getar grandpa says I think the main Mex offenders are referred to as players not standards I think that's changed over time I'm could be dated I'm as you guys know I'm not um I always feel like I'm a recovering guitar Shopper u i don't shop uh for guitars very often so um I think that it could be the ventas are what I'm thinking of as sort of the level now this is a really interesting question Keith roochi says will PRS suffer when Paul is no longer at the helm anymore what about their value then um I would say that the big question mark that was answered around this so far has been Collings um Collings guitars has both not increased their production but they have increased the number of models um I I have somebody that follows the channel Kane Miller it's a friend of the channel for a long time and Kane did the tour right before bill passed Bill Collings and uh the factory tour and he said that everywhere you went in the factory there were pictures of Bill this is before the guy passed away so his influence his culture that he had created is still there um and um and and I I'd like to think that that would happen uh at PRS as well um because you know Paul's a couple years older than me we're not getting any younger as they say I'd rather buy a top tier SE than an S2 PRS what are your thoughts um I would definitely lean towards an se but I've sold all my higher priced prss at this point so maybe I'm not the guy ask I've really become much more interested in mid price guitars because well for two reasons one it kind of Suits My Lifestyle I as I've said here jokingly before I'd rather spend the $5,000 on a week in Paris than I would on a guitar um I'm I'm at a point where experience matters more to me than having stuff and I don't mean to get all like holier than now it's not it at all it's just a it's just a focus thing for me um that's just working for me right now um so I probably am leaning into the thing very much I've really enjoyed the expensive ones that I've had and I have two really beautiful Collings guitars now that are probably at about the wood Library level of PRS so um yeah I would say the topend SE guitars are really good BGE says as they say a full in of money soon parted all depends on how it sounds totally agree it's really how's it how do you react to it other guitar players notice but it's not but the people in the crowd don't I've played many highend guitars but most of the audience doesn't care I I always tell the story about playing my my Parker on a straight ahead Jazz gig with um 10 Flats on it Diario chromes and I did that for four years and no one ever asked me why I was playing a Parker on straight Ahad Jazz gig maybe maybe they're embarrassed at my playing I don't know um but nope that never happened yeah actually had uh Victor is reminding us Indonesia is now the place for building companies and I did a recent video when I did the video about Yamaha I pointed out that Yamaha was really ahead of the game and built their own Factory in Indonesia in the early 90s so kind of way ahead of everybody else getting to Indonesia to to build guitars um in the same way that Yamaha was smart enough to build guitars in Taiwan really early a decade before that um so as a company that've been really kind of Clairvoyant when it came to where it is but Indonesia has had this history of craftsmanship now and court with their model of building Wings on the factory where people basically have their own mini factories in these places whether it's strandberg or um PRS I think that's been an amazing thing Kevin Axel yeah I mean players players players if you will guitarists guitars um are these guys that are playing prss and they're they're pretty happy with them right vist cycling tuskin he hits it right on the head there says not many of his idols are associated with PRS and I like I said I think that has to do with how old you are and you know when your players came up somebody else said in here um that uh they remember they got a PRS because lifeon was playing one uh I said earlier I don't love the headstock but some people do some people love it okay we're coming up on the hour here uh just planning base any merge of the merch so uh no that's a great topic for me uh I mentioned earlier in the Stream right at the beginning of the stream that um they got the link back together uh I can put the link in the description again I think there you go um that um the got it back up and running we've extended the sale for a week I'll put up an announcement tomorrow in the community post and uh and that'll be a thing Larry Cheryl says Dave's Guitar Shop in Wisconsin love love Dave Rogers and the guys at Dave's Guitar Shop um they have a ton of everything um but they also have amazing current ones um but they do seem to have a little community of PRS up there and I think that they to blame for it you know they they have been selling really nice PRS guitars for a long time so I'm sure that whole area the whole lacrosse area there where I think Dave has three stores or four stores that whole area is really something at this point okay's put this there in a couple times a triple pickup Les Paul there's an old wood Allen joke that said he was cast in a play as he was to part of God and he said it was typ casting and he wore blue suits and he took cabs everywhere in Manhattan and tipped big because he would so hope I didn't offend anybody with that I just thought that was funny back in the day hey Mike any experience with a steel strength singer from Amplified Nation pawn shop has one I haven't played the steel string singer go watch um I think though when I made the dumble video I used um RJ's recording uh demo of him playing a steel string singer and he really lik liked his the one he got to play and I think that's the I think that's the amp that Rhett has that R show R shell has an amplified Nation amp and so go look go look and see what he made so well comberti says I think that there's a good comparison that could be made between carbon they're now Kel they have a model that focuses on a lot of choices they never took off though um yeah I think that I think that's always been a less or no brand but they've been around forever I would actually argue that because they were always direct marketed and they didn't have a dealer Network they never grew in the way that the other companies grew they had a they didn't have the presence in music stores you know we are always going into uh music stores and um uh the you know UGL uh things Rick and I to talk about going into the house of guitars in Rochester and trying to get them to let us play the guitars that we couldn't afford which is always the way okay I am scrolling for final questions here Mr Rickenbacker is dead and gone but the factory is still behind uh Rick and Becker is a company that decided to not ever deviate from making handmade guitars um and Francis Halland then his son John who runs the company now has never really changed that um they they got big in the 60s and in the late 60s with everybody else and then when they fell back they stayed there and um and that has always kind of been part of who they are I think Collings is the same way when I put out the video um you know great guitars that suck to own I'm sitting on the front with my Collings and so I wrote to the guys at Collings and I'm like I say nice things I'm just talking about my own stuff you know and they were like hey it's cool that you had a guitar that is so nice that you're afraid to play it out it's not that I'm playing out anyway so that's interesting um stupid guitar says I've always wondered if the low price of PRS resale is partly due to the fact that guitars continue to be improved and iterated over the years and that can't that can't be said for others um I don't actually find their used prices to be low compared to other companies you can buy a use Les Paul classic pretty cheaply um and and you know they weren't real cheap guitars to start with were lesser Price Less puls um I don't think PRS is particularly lower that might be a myth I that's interesting that would be a nice research project that'd be interesting um but I will say that the changes in the neck and the neck naming conventions over the years have been confusing to me and I've paid close attention because I really love the neck on those 2010s and those seem to be influenced by David gom's input in the factory at the time so Kane W you hear when when I was talking about it or or did I do it after you posted this so well I think we're gonna have to go back to uh to slow mode because I can't keep up David I missed your question write to me and I'll tell you my answer I wouldn't be surprised alad Dolson says I wouldn't just an old guy I wouldn't be surprised if the S2 line is discontinued and they end up with a more specifically split company but I'm not close to that I couldn't tell you okay I got a dinner date waiting for me I'm gonna get going as I said I'm going to post where I am G to be when I'm going to be doing lives I want to thank Bay for being here I want to remind everybody to go ahead and hit the uh the links in the description and especially the true fire one use the link in the description if you can get some trueu fire lessons and then they'll know uh that I sent you and that's always good for me and you'll enjoy the lessons hopefully and um I appreciate everybody I'm GNA give you some John Cy to listen to on your way out John wanted me to know dinner at five uh it's actually six oh five yeah I'm an old man I have to drive across town I have an errand to do and yeah don't tease me Okay Kevin give me a break so uh I'm gonna give let you play out John is on his phone and he's not logged in but he's watching the baby I think or something and so he wanted everybody to know that he was going to be here um I appreciate it I always appreciate John and I appreciate let him him letting borrow all is playing AKA steal it all right thanks again everybody and I will talk to you soon be good [Music] byebye [Music] n [Music] a

Channel: five watt world

Views: 66,986

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Id: M4X2QYcDyQ4

Length: 63min 24sec (3804 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024