What’s a fair price for a good electric guitar?You’ll get a decent Fender Telecaster for anything from £550 to around £1,000 and you might have to fork out between £3,500 to £5,000 for a Gibson Les Paul.Would you believe £25,000?Yup, twenty-five thousand pounds.That’s the asking price on what is a beautiful instrument from the hands of Paul Reed Smith – the PRS Paul’s 28.Paul Reed Smith is hand making just 28 guitars, of which 20 are for the US and only eight will be available for the rest of the world. The only guitar in the UK is available through a company called Digital Village.
PRS electric guitars are the creation of the eponymous Paul Reed Smith, who made his first guitar at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and he carried on building guitars after he finished college.He made them one at a time, one every month. Smith would often bring his guitars backstage at concerts, and eventually got his break when Derek St. Holmes, of the Ted Nugent Band, agreed to try out the second guitar Smith had ever made. Smith then contacted Ted McCarty, former president of Gibson and creator of the Explorer, ES-335 and Flying V guitars, who became his business advisor. The result of their collaboration is reflected in the current line up of PRS guitars, which includes electric guitars utilising a vast range of exotic materials such as elaborately figured tone woods and intricate shells for inlays.
The PRS Paul’s 28 Electric Guitar is the is first guitar for almost a decade that has been hand made by Paul Reed Smith himself, hence the price tag of £25,000.It’s got one of the curliest tops PRS have ever made and a rare tiger -striped mahogany back that was hand-selected from an entire warehouse of wood.An extremely rare Pernumbuca Neck combines with an exotic black Rosewood Fretboard, a dark Mexican Rosewood Headstock veneer, and rippled Green Abalone, Paua Heart, and Mammoth Ivory “Celtic Cross” inlays.
Paul Reed Smith spent several years refining all of the parts and processes that went into this instrument: the wood drying methods, the colour “Burnt Gold” (PRS has been working on this stain method for the last two years), the very special paper-thin nitrocellulose finish, the pickups (PRS proprietary 1957/2008 pickups made from PRS’s rare magnet and wire supplies), the nut, the tuning pegs, the frets, the glues…everything. Smith even spent two years researching the materials for the case. Paul Reed Smith personally supervised the work picking out all the woods, re-carving the body to original specs, carving the neck by hand, stained it, played and adjusted it until it was perfect. Run of the mill (if you can use that phrase) guitars from PRS usually range from £300 – £6,000
