Paul Reed Smith

Paul Reed Smith Guitars, also known as PRS Guitars or simply PRS, is an American guitar and amplifier manufacturer located in Stevensville, Maryland.

They have an exclusive agreement to use wire drawn from the same machine that made wire for Les Paul and Stratocaster pickups in the 1950s.

Certain models of PRS guitars have also used pickups by Lindy Fralin, notably in the EG II and certain specs of the Custom 22.

Paul Reed Smith (born February 18, 1956) graduated from Bowie High School in 1974 and then briefly attended St. Mary's College of Maryland, where he began his guitar-making career.

Smith left school and contacted Ted McCarty, former president of Gibson and creator of the Explorer, ES-335, and Flying V guitars, and McCarty became his mentor and advisor.

Their collaboration resulted in the early models of Paul Reed Smith Guitars.

Smith then set up a partnership to create a factory in Annapolis, Maryland and began work on producing guitars.

"I saw Adrian Belew on King Crimson's Beat tour in 1982," says Smith, "and the sound he was getting out of his guitar was on another planet somewhere. He let me rebuild his Ibanez Blazer. I put in our whole tuning-peg/bridge system and a new electronic system with an Alembic Stratoblaster pre-amp. It sounded unbelievable. Right then I decided that I wanted to put those sounds on a humbucking guitar, which is when I went back to the rotary switch and redesigned it for humbuckers."

After three years, the company employed 45 people and was producing 15 guitars per day.

The company was founded in 1985 in Annapolis, Maryland by Paul Reed Smith.

Products manufactured by PRS include electric and acoustic guitars, basses, and amplifiers.

The company's first outing was for the 1985 NAMM Show, where they debuted the PRS Custom.

Featuring a mahogany neck set into a mahogany body with a maple cap, a patented vibrato, customized tuning pegs, and custom rotary pickup switching with high quality electronics, the guitar represented influences from both old and new.

In 1985, Paul Reed Smith started producing factory made guitars, which later became known as PRS Standard.

From August 1986 to June 27, it was a celebration for the company as they hit a production count of 1000 serial-numbered guitars.

In 1988, Paul Reed Smith introduced its more affordable Bolt-On series known as classic electric (CE models) which were discontinued in 2009.

In 1990, PRS EG was introduced as company's first 22-fret guitar.

Later on in the more successful 1992 PRS EG II was introduced, which includes PRS's first left-handed guitar.

In 1992, PRS introduced the Dragon 1 model.

Only 50 units were produced.

It featured an intricate dragon inlay which ran down the finger board, a wide 22 fret neck, a non-vibrato Stop-tail bridge, and a new pick up design.

The changes in design from previous models added a noticeable tonal improvement which led the company to use the same characteristics in later models such as the PRS Custom 22.

The Dragon 2 was released in 1993, and the Dragon 3 in 1994.

Later through the years, in 1996, the company moved its base of operations from the original Virginia Avenue building to a new facility in the Chesapeake Bay on Kent Island.

This new manufacturing facility provided the company with 20,000 square feet of space, letting the company thrive.

In 1996, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History officially added the PRS Dragon 1 among other name-brand guitars as a piece of history regarding American popular music.

By 1996, PRS had 100 employees, and has since grown to 300 employees.

Nuts are synthetic and tuners are of PRS's own design, although some models feature Korean-made Kluson-style tuners.

PRS guitars feature three original bridge designs: a one-piece pre-intonated stoptail, a vibrato, and a wrapover tailpiece.

The vibrato was designed with the help of guitar engineer John Mann.

It was an update on the classic Fender vibrato and used cam-locking tuners, which offered wide pitch bending with exceptional tuning stability.

Pickups are designed and wound in-house.

While most of the pickups are humbuckers, some are actually a pair of single coils wound in opposing directions, one intended for the neck and one for the bridge position.

Through the use of a unique rotary pickup selector switch, PRS pickups offer 5 different sounds: a combination of thick humbucking Gibson-like tones, and chimey single-coil Stratocaster-like tones.

The standard treble and standard bass pick ups use magnetic pole pieces in the non-adjustable inner coil, and a rear-placed feeder magnet in order to achieve a more authentic single-coil tone when split by the rotary switch.

PRS developed pickups for the aggressive rock market, offering pick ups such as the chainsaw, and the Hot-Fat-Screams (HFS) initially used on the Special model.

In 1998, an electronic upgrade kit was released for pre-1993 instruments which included lighter-weight tuner buttons, nickel-plated brass screws for saddles and intonation, a simulated tone control, and high-capacitance hookup wire.

In 2012, PRS released the 408 pickups used on the 408 and Paul's Guitar models.

These pickups include innovations that feature no loss of volume when in coil split mode.

In 2016, the CE line was put back in production.