PRS Guitar Upgrades

PRS is still a pretty damn good guitar. The fit, finish & basic quality easily surpasses Gibson, and most other corporate guitar brands that are billed, and sold as a top quality, high end, instrument.  The customer service, is usually much better than most other corporate brands also.
However, the original 1985 excellent design, has been modified over the years too much !!    In my opinion, there needs to be pretty major modifications made, to make the present day PRS guitars as good as the originals!   It is easily possible to do that now if you are lucky enough to have selected the right model. 

Originally, 25 years ago when PRS was highly concerned about creating their original excellent reputation, their guitars were far better than they are today. They sounded better, played better, and looked better that what you can buy today. The ones you can buy today leave a lot to be desired.   This speaks to our whole industry today. In fact there are very few companies today, that I can recommend wholeheartedly. These few companies are JET & Quicksilver.

If you are reading this page in it's entirety, it's relative to know that I personally own the Quicksilver brand. Naturally the reader might take this article as self serving.  I of course have to grant you the fact that it is most definitely self serving.

However, I am positive I can convince any relatively intelligent open minded person, that the modifications needed to make a PRS better are effective and very real !!  In fact that these mods are already on the Quicksilver coupled with the fact that the Quicksilver costs less!!!  

Quicksilver's are superior by far. I hope to do it with facts figures and downright common sense. No doubletalk, no mumbo jumbo.

Every company always says that their guitar is the best.  But nobody ever bothers to prove It !!!!

It’s as if they think consumers aren’t too bright, Well maybe they are right about that..

I see a lot of image type advertising that I simply don’t approve of. I believe that if someone says they build a better anything they had better be ready to prove it.  (The ads for Gibson & Taylor make me sick all image no substance)

I have been in the music business for more than 35 years and I am or have been a dealer for over 350 different brands of guitars. In fact I cannot think of any brands that I have never carried except maybe some obscure house brands or something no one has ever heard of.

In almost every case every company says that “Theirs Is The Best” Now anyone with even a pea sized brain can realize that only one can be “The Best”

In my opinion The Best guitars usually come from small boutique builders who build between 50 & 100 guitars a year. (That leaves a lot of people out of the equation including some of my own brands)

Very Important….. Just because someone builds a small amount does not necessarily mean that their guitars are good. In fact I have seen some incredibly poor examples of craftsmanship.

Very few builders are capable of this, PRS for example came onto the scene in 1985 with radical new designs and extremely good execution. No one else even came close at the time. In fact no one came close for more than 12 years.

PRS made the best guitar that I carried between 1985 and 1995 !!! I am ultra positive that no one made a better guitar during those years !! Then horror of horrors they hooked up with one of Gibson's Ex Presidents who became heavily involved with PRS and redesigned their guitars. It seems that this guy, Ted McCarty, was the individual who's name appeared on all the patents & trademarks of the Gibson company during their glory days. To make a very long story short. These design changes made the guitar more Gibson-esque and in my mind they ruined the guitar. For a couple of years I had nothing to recommend to anyone as a really great guitar except for used PRS guitars.

So, I sold my company "East Coast Music Mall,"  I then started "Ed Roman's World Class Guitars" which was a company that would specialize only in used Pre 1995 PRS guitars.

I actually followed the business model of a friend of mine from Florida, Jay Wolfe who at that time had a company that primarily specialized in PRS used guitars.

Paul Reed Smith was & is a far better guitar designer than Ted McCarty but PRS changed all their new cool designs and great ideas over to Ted's antiquated retro designs. Of course many uneducated guitar players immediately went out and bought the McCarty designs thinking that they must be good. After all this Jibroney had been with Gibson for years and everyone knew PRS was a great guitar at that time.

In my opinion Ted McCarty made PRS a household word and PRS became very famous but the instruments themselves took a back seat to the bean counters as usual. They simply don't have the original Mojo.

For example very few people don't even realize that,  Every one of the Original PRS guitars (The Good Ones) were all 24 fret and they either offered a Mil Com tremolo system or a Tune O Matic bridge.

Today you cannot get anything but a lightweight trem or that horrible wraparound bridge that even Gibson abandoned except on their cheapest models. The 24 fret models are now only available on their lesser expensive models unless you special order it on a custom and pay huge additional money.

PRS has taken the stance that their 22 fret guitars sound better. They have also taken the stance that their glued in necks & wraparound non adjustable tailpieces sound better,  I strongly disagree.   And I must remind everyone again that PRS made their stellar reputation building 24 fret models with small heels and no wraparound bridges.  How can they argue with that logic ???   Well don't ask me how or why but they do !!!!

A good design must sound good be very playable and preferably very attractive. It must balance well and it should be comfortable seated or standing.

Ed Roman

Totally Rebuilt From The Ground Up

This is a later model 22 fret PRS and one of the very few 22 fret ones that we have done major modifications on. This guitar still uses the original body. The guitar had sentimental value to our customer who spent more money than a new guitar to have us completely rebuild and reconstruct his instrument.
1, This Guitar has been converted to a bolt in neck

2, We built the customer a new neck we utilized the original fingerboard.

3, We hand inlaid the Eagle in the headstock

4, We removed the poly finish and restained the guitar the exact shade of green the customer wanted

5, We did an oil finish, short heel and 1500G Neck treatment.

6, We switched out the pickups and added hard mounted Seymour Duncan Pickups.

7, We used our trademarked neck mounting insert kit to attach the neck super tightly.

It is rare that we do a job like this and don't dump that wraparound bridge, but this was one of them.

This is another PRS that thinks it's a Quicksilver
(See the bridge we installed)
Retopped Body, with Bird Inlays done at Ed Roman's
Personalized at the 12th fret
PRS does not offer nice tops or bird inlays on their bolt on models !!!!!

Basic upgrades that need to be made in order to improve the sound !!!

1, Remove the pickup mounting springs, hard mount the pickups so that the vibration & resonance of the wood is not compromised by the springs. this will require installing wood into the pickup cavity. The tonal difference will be immediately apparent. You will hear more overtones and it will sustain far better.

2, Remove the 4 wood screws holding the neck on and mount 4 brass inserts into the neck. Re-attach the neck using 4 hardened machine screws and inserts . This will tighten the neck joint more than it was with the wood screws. The tone, especially the high end will be much clearer and crisper.  (Bolt In Models Only)

2a, The above paragraph pre supposes that your PRS has a tight neck fit, About 80% of the PRS guitars have a good tight neck fit. The original handbuilt ones were all excellent, however I have found that on the newer production models tightness of neck fit can be sporadic.

Proper neck fit means that you almost have to force the neck into the neck pocket or mortise. 

If your neck is a loose fit, then you are going to have to build up the sides of the pockets with shims. Do not attach the shims with glue. Glue acts as a deadener and in my opinion it has no place being anywhere near a neck joint.

Exceptions are almost non existent to this rule.
The only exception I have discovered is that when using a single coil soapbar style pickup a glued in neck might complement the fatter single coil tone.  Hence I only use a glued in neck for Jazz style guitars and/or in situations where a soapbar pickup is employed.

3, Converting the glue in neck models to a bolt on is not a job for the weak of heart and not something that your basic guitar tech is going to be able to pull off smoothly. It requires a great deal of work to remove the glued in neck. It makes a fantastic difference tonally when the job is performed correctly.

I am a strong believer that for music from the 60's to present day there should be absolutely nothing in the neck joint but raw wood touching raw wood, No paint, No Glue, No fillers of any kind. This will give you the most resonant tone and allow your notes to bloom effectively.

There are other theories of course but even though I have been flamed and called vile names by a certain group of retro guitarists who own and play glued in neck guitars. I have never received even one letter with a different theory. I have built glue in neck guitars myself, and most of them came out sounding great. I just wonder how much better they would have been if they were bolted in.

4, Direct Coupling The Guitar is essential to improving the sound It adds ton of tone & sustain.

5, Hard Mounting The Pickup in the Neck/Pickup cavity eliminates the shaky sound and gives you much more sustain.

6, Replacing the cheap Indian Rosewood fingerboard with Ebony. This not only gives you a much more percussive tone but it hold

7, Replace The Pickups, I suggest using the Seymour Duncan Black/Backs TM  they were developed over a 5 year period to be used in our LSR guitars & Quicksilvers. They are available and they sound great no matter what guitar you put them in.

8. Install Push Pull Pots they will allow you to switch to single coil and or out of phase in an instant and it doesn't affect your unity gain as much as the PRS 5 position knob. It's quite a bit easier to use also.

9, Change to the Gold Adamantium Fretwire which sounds like the nickel silver but wears like Stainless Steel.

Or you can simply purchase a Quicksilver Guitar they all come with most of the above modifications as standard

We also inlaid an eagle on the headstock of this one. This particular guitar was the 100th PRS we retopped. It was done for Winn Wilson of Connecticut in 2001.

Today Ed Roman retops about 20 PRS guitars a year.
Back in the 90's we did about 50 a year. Today people just buy a Quicksilver instead. 

 Improve Your Playability.
1, Remove the plastic finish on the back of the neck. this will also improve your tone but that's only half of the modification. On our 1500 G neck mod we sand & oil the neck in such a fashion that the friction is greatly reduced. People really rave about how much they like this mod. Click Here for more info.

2, Remove the Heel from Hell that comes on the later models after 1995. The early models (Pre 95) don't have that silly big heel on the base of the neck. It's not very expensive to remove on the CE model and you will love the way the guitar plays and feels after it has been removed.

Or you can simply purchase a Quicksilver Guitar they all come with most of the above modifications as standard

Basic upgrades that need to be made in order to improve the cosmetics.

1, Ebony fingerboards make your inlays show much better !!!

2, We offer 45 different types of wood for the top of your guitar. See our PRS Retop Page   Gibson Retop Page

3, Unlimited paint finishes imagine A Rickenbacker Style Fire Glo on a PRS truly awesome, or a Metalflake job or anything you can think of. We Do It All   Portraits, Themes, Flames, Pinstriping etc etc

4, We offer custom inlays including Dragons, Vines, custom designs or anything you can imagine

Or you can simply purchase a Quicksilver Guitar they all come with most of the above modifications as standard