On the PRS

[From an email I sent to Toland]

I put my first toe in the water today, finally putting my hands on a pricey guitar. I was in Weatherford on business, and they have a shop there called Craig's. It's where I bought my acoustic. They're PRS dealers too.



I only had a few minutes, as a coworker had driven, and our shift was over. Didn't want to keep her waiting. I put my hands on a Chris Henderson model. It's a single cutaway Les Paul type.



The good: Big crunch. They have an amp just like mine there. I dialed in a familiar setting, and it drove the amp better than mine. The tone was kind of generic, but maybe I could have tweaked that out with EQ.



The bird inlays on the fretboard really are quite beautiful. The workmanship looked very good, and I liked the color.



The bad: One tone knob seemed messed up; it turned like it had no... resistance at all. The other knobs all acted normal, whereas this one felt... broken. And I'm sorry, but I don't like recessed knobs. I felt like I had to work harder to access them.



Their famous "wide fat" neck felt kind of unwieldy in my hands. Maybe a guy with big hands like yours would like it, but it was a wee bit cumbersome to navigate. And for whatever reason, I didn't feel like my bends sang the way they should. I'd bend up, and the note would just die.



AND the A string vibrated in this strange, very wide, buzzy arc. Now, this instrument has 3 humbuckers, and a big magnetic field like that will jack with strings' vibration. Still... this is a $2600 (street price) instrument. You'd think that if they're bothering to make such an instrument, they'd have a common problem like this one licked, you know?



So the verdict thus far on PRS is a big fat "overrated." Granted, I only spent five minutes with it, but I now wish I'd spent my five minutes with the black Gibson ES-335 up on the wall...