PRS Custom 24

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A PRS Custom 24 electric guitar, model Artist

The PRS Custom 24 is an electric guitar model with solid wood cabinet ( english : Solid Body ) of the American luthier Paul Reed Smith and his company PRS Guitars . The Custom 24 was the first guitar model to be mass-produced by PRS and was presented to the public in 1985 at their first appearance at the US music fair NAMM Show . The model established the market success of PRS Guitars as one of the most important American manufacturers of electric guitars.

Construction form

The Custom 24 was the first model offered by Paul Reed Smith to have all the design features that have since been associated with the electric guitars from PRS.

The outline of the body of the PRS Custom 24 is based on the Les Paul Special presented in 1955 - a special model of the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar built by the manufacturer Gibson . Like the Les Paul Special from competitor Gibson, the PRS Custom 24 has a cutaway on both sides of the transition to the instrument neck to make playing the guitar in high pitches easier. Further, derived from the Standard-Les Paul guitar models features of the Custom 24 is the body made of mahogany with a ceiling made of maple , the set-in into the cabinet mahogany neck as well as equipping the instrument with two electromagnetic pickups in addition to noise-free dual coil design (English .: Humbucker ).

In addition to these similarities, however, the independent design features predominate, which clearly distinguish the Custom 24 from the guitar models of the competition. A characteristic feature of PRS guitars is their 25  inch (635 millimeter) scale length . This dimension is almost exactly between the lengths used by the manufacturers Gibson (24.56 inches / 624 mm) and Fender (25.5 inches / 648 mm) as standard for their solid body electric guitars. Other independent PRS features are the head plate with the signature of Paul Reed Smith logo, the 24  frets of the instrument, a special milling of curved maple wood ceiling and the characteristic pearl inlays ( intarsia ) in rosewood - fretboard , the stylized outline depicting birds in flight. The vibrato system of the Custom 24 is an in-house development by PRS Guitars, which builds on the "classic" vibrato of the Fender model Stratocaster and improves its tuning stability.

An innovation from PRS, which went into series production for the first time with the Custom 24 , is the type of painting of the instrument cover that is glued to the body. This is only provided with a colored decorative finish on the top; the edge of the ceiling, which is up to 1.5 centimeters wide, is given a colorless clear coat. This creates the visual impression of a bright decorative border of the body (English: binding ) without the use of narrow plastic strips that is common in guitar construction.

The sound of this guitar is considered to be very diverse. This is particularly due to extended circuitry and possible combinations of the four coils reaches the two pickups: By means of a housed in a compartment in the body of the potentiometer , which is connected with an attached to the instrument cover knob (PRS as " 5-way rotary switch " refers to ) five different pickup circuits and thus different sounds can be called up. The pickups can be activated individually as humbuckers or separately as single-coil pairs that can be combined in different ways, in series, in series or in parallel. This split-coil circuit enables multiple sound variations of single and double -coil pickups in one instrument.

The guitar and with it the PRS company received a lot of attention, as famous guitarists such as Carlos Santana performed with this no-name brand at the time (even if they played specially made models and not the Custom 24 ). Starting with the Custom 24 model , PRS Guitars was able to establish itself today as the third largest American electric guitar manufacturer after Gibson and Fender.

literature

  • Tony Bacon, Dave Hunter: Totally Guitar - the Definitive Guide . Guitar encyclopedia, English. Therein: Chapter PRS, pp. 532-549. Backbeat Books, London 2004. ISBN 1-871547-81-4
  • Dave Hunter, Deidre Cartwright: Guitar Facts - the Essential Reference Guide . In it: Chapter PRS, pp. 78-85. Backbeat UK / Outline Press, London 2006. ISBN 978-1-87154-778-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Hunter, Cartwright: Guitar Facts - the Essential Reference Guide, pp. 80 f.
  2. ↑ a b Bacon: Totally Guitar, p. 536
  3. ↑ a b Michael Dommers: American Dream - PRS Artist I 1993 . Article in: Electric Guitars ; Special issue of the magazine Guitar & Bass on the history of the electric guitar, p. 158 f. MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm 2004. ISSN  0934-7674
  4. ^ Bacon: Totally Guitar, p. 532