Paul’s Favorite Features In Your Hands

“I don’t just like my guitar, I love it. With these pickups, I can move from a strong bridge pickup to a very clear, “whoopy” neck pickup – you can hear every note – by just setting the mini-toggles and using the 3-way as normal. It’s a highly musical and very usable setup. This guitar has clear, spanky single coils when you split the pickups but a very full soapbar quality when they are in humbucking mode. It’s just beautiful.” - Paul Reed Smith

Historically, the Paul’s Guitar (like the Modern Eagle before it) has been a realization of Paul Reed Smith’s latest discoveries surrounding tone. Paul specified every appointment of this instrument from the wood selection and inlay design to the pickups. This revamped model represents Paul’s vision not only as a guitar maker but as a guitar player who needs versatile stage - and studio-ready gear that can achieve all the right tones. As a man who has every option available to him, Paul’s personal design choices include mahogany bodies with maple tops, Honduran rosewood fretboards, Nitrocellulose finishes, “Brushstroke” bird inlays, and narrow pickup bobbins. The Paul’s Guitar model also includes PRS’s TCI (Tuned Capacitance and Inductance) treble and bass pickups with two mini-toggle switches that allow players to put either or both pickups in either humbucking or single coil mode.

For 2024, PRS Guitars is updating the tuning machines on many of our Core guitars. While, aesthetically, our new Wing buttons are designed to echo the 12th fret bird wingspan design, they were first and foremost designed for tonal reasons all the way back in 1982. Because these buttons are lighter weight than their metal predecessors, they are subtracting less energy from the vibrating strings, thus helping the guitar ring longer and at a more musical note. The removal of the tuner’s locking feature on non-tremolo-equipped guitars further decreases their weight.