Paul Reed Smith made in Korea

Today I had a day off and was rovering through the musicshops in town - we have quite a lot here, around 10-15 that I know. anyway ...

usually I pass the jap/asian corner to take a closer look at the newcomers from fender gibson or prs respective ebmm.

than i saw two prs for a price below 500 US$. light like balsa wood with the prs signature and made by a korean company under license of ... yo, and off the shop i went.

The PRS SE line has been around for years now.

Where have you been?

He's been working and finally got a day off!

ya the se line has been around for a while, and from the onse i have played they are pretty good guitars.

yes in Hong Kong where i am located right now we have "some" music shops, actually shopping and trading runs the beat of the city. good for me to have all the choice at hand directly.

PRS se line exists long? my picture of this high class luthier is gone. i really don't think they are good guitars. i even have problems to accept this PRS modells for more than 3k US$ which come along with a two piece top (most of them do)

No offense but....do you actually know anything about guitars?

you have issues with 2 piece maple tops? You think they are inferior?

You are either trolling or are ignorant of 50+ years of guitar making

maybe ignorant or did you mean arrogant?

some many years ago i made my own ones on my fathers workbench in the cellar, evh came up and we all wanted to have the floyd rose, so the sqier strat needed some cutting. this was the beginning, later after some others the ebony fretboard with birdseye neck, jumbo frets and an african walnut body (solid means one piece) was done. lineoil finished. and after that a strat type with gibson scale.

i think the more glue (even if its bone glue) and more plastic the less quality and sound. for a solidbody a SOLID body should be a must. the rest is just optics unless the construction (see les paul) demands it.

why pay so much money for the name? for a two piece top with a big cut in the middle (this body has at least three pieces then) i can not see any value. i have seen some prs here with one piece top, they were sold in seconds. no wonder, cause they are good quality instruments. and sorry, this SE line is like a texmex strat - really cheap. have you seen the frets on them? the other hardware quality?

for me a good guitar has a unique sound and appearance and at least the hardware quality of wood and metal should be OK. all others are massproduction, machine made. I am really happy if you like them.

so long :!:

I mean ignorant. You have no idea what you are talking about...you just THINK you do.

piss off...go troll a Madonna or Britney board.



p.s. I dont like PRS guitars

hey rocky, sorry I did not recognise earlier, I know you!
you are the guy who won guitar hero right?

serious, i love you too.

I hate to say it man but you got to get off your high horse. If a two piece top pisses you off, you got serious issues. Let me not even mention the character of Paul Smith himself.

His high horse is actually a shetland pony.

have you seen the frets on them?

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I dont know if you know this but frets might get sharp or wavey during shipping.

evh came up and we all wanted to have the floyd rose

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When and where was this? Times have changed and if you are so experienced with guitars, why are you trying to prove so by saying how you modified a SQUIRE? :?

It's one thing to get pissed about a 2-piece body but bookmatched tops are the standard and have been since, well, forever. Bookmatched means two-pieces. This is truly a strange thread. I guess all of those guys with '59 Les Pauls should just chuck 'em cause they're garbage. Same goes for $10,000 jazz boxes with bookmatched flamed backs. Wow. By the way, acoustics are made with bookmatched tops; even the most expensive ones. Again, this is an odd thread.

Firstly, Dean. You haven't taken a close look at the Korean PRS's, quite obviously. I sell both the US and the Far East ones, and own three US ones, and I can honestly say that I have never seen a badly built Korean PRS, and the frets and fingerboards are all exemplary, truly. As for two peice tops, you are way out on your own here. Guitars with maple tops have always had a vast predominance of tops like this. Rarely you see one peice, but for all that they are that, they tend to be inconsistent. People like symmetry. And the Korean ones have maple tops with bookmatched veneers. What do you expect for that money???

Let's keep it friendly though lads, hey?

rabies said:

don't argue. practice.

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Exactly, :wink: and practice hard!

I ride alone 8) yeah

good to know that you have different quality aspects to go for. certainly don't want to destroy anyones business and in a way am convinced now to say: I admire how the high end world class luthier PRS has managed to make his products also available in the budget guitar sector.

peace!

so what is a great guitar to you dean?

Commander Coo1 said:

so what is a great guitar to you dean?

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Modded Squier Strat, obviously.

You guys think he rides alone? You'd hate to hear my theories on all the 'wood' and "dont cut holes in the body"... lol I think that when people go for tune-o-matics and set necks they are forgetting that the neck never touches the body on those guitars because of the glue. Bolt necks are the only one with a true contact patch other than neckthru (obviously) and to top it off wood is absorbing the string vibration in a tune-o-matic setup. My belief is.. if you isolate the strings from the body it will sing. Floyd rose and locknut. Metal clamping both sides of the string making it one entity mostly avoidant of the body except the 2 pivot posts and the nut being bolted down. I feel that this would contribute to purity of the sound of the string and possibly increase sustain. This whole "more wood is better" theory is backwards to me. I view the wood as a vibration sponge.

I can't wait to see how many people attack me to death lol.
But the ones i really want to see are the ones who might consider my theory to be true... And if they dont and want to rebute me I'd be glad to listen to the other things I am not realizing in my simple self-theory. lol

If i missed something about the whole wood is tone thing share with me. I'm not trying to start an argument. Just offering a way to think about the system a little different than most.

mikeymike said:

You guys think he rides alone? You'd hate to hear my theories on all the 'wood' and "dont cut holes in the body"... lol I think that when people go for tune-o-matics and set necks they are forgetting that the neck never touches the body on those guitars because of the glue. Bolt necks are the only one with a true contact patch other than neckthru (obviously) and to top it off wood is absorbing the string vibration in a tune-o-matic setup. My belief is.. if you isolate the strings from the body it will sing. Floyd rose and locknut. Metal clamping both sides of the string making it one entity mostly avoidant of the body except the 2 pivot posts and the nut being bolted down. I feel that this would contribute to purity of the sound of the string and possibly increase sustain. This whole "more wood is better" theory is backwards to me. I view the wood as a vibration sponge.

I can't wait to see how many people attack me to death lol.
But the ones i really want to see are the ones who might consider my theory to be true... And if they dont and want to rebute me I'd be glad to listen to the other things I am not realizing in my simple self-theory. lol

If i missed something about the whole wood is tone thing share with me. I'm not trying to start an argument. Just offering a way to think about the system a little different than most.

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The problem with your 'simple theory' is that it doesnt have any backup in the real world...which in this instance is the real data set.

I am not going to attack you but your 'theory' doesnt hold up in the real world. Floyd Rose guitars have decent sustain but set neck guitars have more sustain than a Floyd loaded instrument. Locking trems are known sustain soakers....which is why clean tone guys avoid them while high gain guys make up for the shortcomings of a Floyd with gain and controlled feedback. Those simple facts alone blow your theory out of the water. Remember that in order for a theory to stand it must stand up to testing and scrutiny. Yours fails.

As for wood being a vibration sponge....that is true. BUT that is what you want....the energy from the strings works with the wood to produce an instrument's fundamental tone. You WANT the wood to vibrate in order to capture the tone of the INSTRUMENT...a string alone has pitch but little along the way of a pleasing tone. Mahogany sounds different from Ash which sounds different from Maple which sounds different from Alder because of the way the wood vibrates when a string is struck....the vibration of the wood interacts with the string and they feed off each other in a properly made guitar (sorry folks but your plywood Cort IS killing your sound) that actually gives you a pleasing sustain AND a smooth decay.

Now for Glue: I think the anti glue camp needs to see some guitars being made an learn a little about how glue works in guitar making. The bead of glue is SUPER thin. The bond is as tight b/w the pieces being glued as the original wood fibers. In fact it is stronger.

I have fixed snapped headstocks on guitars...then had them come back later with another break. The glue joint is as strong as the wood and the new break is n early always in a different spot. Proper glues bond on a level that is SO thin that there is no vibration loss at all.

In a properly designed neck joint there should be VERY little sustain difference b/w bolt on, Set neck and neck thru guitars.