I can't believe it....
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FennRx
Gibson Fanboy
As a lifelong Gibson guy and lover of classic rock and blues, my $0.02.
1) Price. The core models are expensive. $2500+ is a lot of cash for beginners and even professional musicians. Most people who buy Gibson Historics seem to be older guys who have good day jobs. PRS isn't any different.
2) Lack of availability. Go into a GC and how many core models will they have? Mine usually has less than 5. And they've been there a while- which ties into 1).
3) The guys with the cash grew up listening to music created with LPs, SGs, Strats and Teles. They don't listen to the newer stuff. PRS's biggest endorsement namewise is probably Carlos Santana. And his classic stuff was recorded using which brand? Next you have Mark Tremonti. It doesn't matter how good he may be, he is Creed. And that's not really a positive to the vast majority of people I know. Superficial? You bet ya. True? Yep.
4) Late entry into the affordable US line. Gibson and Fender have tons (too many?) of models at every pricepoint. Only have $500? You can own a brand new USA made Gibson. $500 might buy you a new SE on sale. Now SEs aren't bad at all; I love mine. BUT....there are lots of buyers out there reluctant to spend money on imports. Just how it is.
CoreyT
PRS Addiction
I played many Gibsons back in the 70s and early 80s, and currently own a cream of the crop 2012 SG '61 Reissue as stated earlier.
Even had my PRS dealer professionally set it up since I bought it at Guitar Center.
Any of my SEs I own blow the Gibson away, and it was a $2K plus guitar.
And the SG plays way better than my '73 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe I had back in '73 brand new.
I would never spend my money on a Gibson again.
CoreyT
PRS Addiction
Nice!
Only yellow and orange like mine was available back in 2012.
FennRx
Gibson Fanboy
Doesn't really surprise me. But I'm telling you there are a lot of people who pick the $500 Gibson even if it's junk, over any SE because of brand recognition and where it is made.
And that's another thing...Gibson and Fender have 60 years of design legacy. PRS will always be trailing. And even though Gibson's lawsuit over the SC was thrown out, some people see PRS as a copy cat company. And to be fair, a SC design with 2 humbuckers, 4 pots, the same switch location, with a maple cap, mahogany neck and body IS pretty close to a Les Paul even if there are differences and/or improvements.
And that's a worry, that guitars that are pretty sub-par in the quality department are being grabbed up by the arm loads. Gibson is in a race to the bottom and that is a race I hope PRS doesn't enter.
FennRx
Gibson Fanboy
I agree. I think the S2 line is a good start, but I think it's a late entry- especially given that we are in April and the new models are nowhere to be found.. After I bought my SE I really really really wanted an S2 SC b/c I didn't want to spend the cash on a core model (happy wife happy life lol). The only downside to the S2s imho is the lack of a HSC. I think that's a major bummer. I know that doesn't matter to everyone though.
Well, thats exactly right. Gibson does indeed have the name that draws in a lot of buyers who only buy long established names. But i still feel theres a extreme bias towards gibson that leaves me seeing only a fraction of players who play humbucker guitars using PRS. I truly believe knowing what i now know that if those people were forced to play a PRS for a few day, heck, even a few hours, things would change radically. I think even more than being name snobs a large portion of gibson players who haven't switch to PRS only haven't because they haven't given PRS a chance. Look at me....i had absolutely no desire to have anything to do with PRS until on a fluke i picked the santana up. Had i not that day i'd still be telling people how great my LP junior special P90 is and thinking theres no PRS i'd be near as happy with.
On a side note i was just thinking. I've tried a few designs in the past that deviate from the norm only to find them inadequate. The last being a epi nighthawk which is a gibson LP sorta affair with a strat style hardtail bridge, H/S/M (M=mini humbucker) and a fender scale length. It was neck heavy and had tonal issues. What i'm getting at is that the originals were always the best and what everyone would come back to after trying new original designs. But Paul, whether by luck or just determination and talent happened upon a basic recipe that not only doesn't sacrifice anything from a gibson but actually improves upon them, at least in my/our opinions. The first one i've come across that does. Well, there was one other but most failed miserably. I guess thats why i wasn't interested in PRS.
By the way, those low end gibsons really ARE lousy ! Picked up a lot of them and there is absolutely no mojo there at all. Beginners likely are the only ones that go there.
On a side note i was just thinking. I've tried a few designs in the past that deviate from the norm only to find them inadequate. The last being a epi nighthawk which is a gibson LP sorta affair with a strat style hardtail bridge, H/S/M (M=mini humbucker) and a fender scale length. It was neck heavy and had tonal issues. What i'm getting at is that the originals were always the best and what everyone would come back to after trying new original designs. But Paul, whether by luck or just determination and talent happened upon a basic recipe that not only doesn't sacrifice anything from a gibson but actually improves upon them, at least in my/our opinions. The first one i've come across that does. Well, there was one other but most failed miserably. I guess thats why i wasn't interested in PRS.
By the way, those low end gibsons really ARE lousy ! Picked up a lot of them and there is absolutely no mojo there at all. Beginners likely are the only ones that go there.
FennRx
Gibson Fanboy
I know what you mean. I really prefer Gibson Historic Les Pauls. I have never met an Epiphone I liked. They all feel like cheap crap to me. And I had zero interest in PRS, much less an SE one. But curiosity got the better of me when Black Friday hit and the SE245s were selling like hotcakes. I went to my Sam Ash and tried a Cu24 for shits and giggles. I was shocked- no, floored- by the quality of an asian made guitar. Everything about it was perfect. And for $400? And when I didn't find any real difference in tone between it and the S2 version? Forgetaboutit.
Same here, and I agree that's a problem that PRS seems to have. I think they took their time in figuring out the S2 line to get it right, The House that Hank Built on the other hand came up with a different approach that while IMO produces something close to junk does sell well and grabbed a lot of wall space. I also have to wonder if PRS not having a moderate priced guitar between the more than adequate to gig with SEs and the excellent upper end Cores for so long lost them the average guy market (it kept me from looking at them for a long time).
In the long run I think the designs, quality and consistency of PRS & SE (and EBMM) guitars will pay off, unless people really just want 5 mediocre guitars rather than one or two excellent guitars.
watelessness
Member
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:congrats:
welcome to the sickness
welcome to the sickness
shinksma
What? I get a title?
- Joined
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Hi, my name is shinksma, and I'm a recent PRS-aholic:
I first "discovered" PRS guitars when I saw Steven Wilson and John Wesley of Porcupine Tree using them when playing live, back in 2004-ish. They looked like awesome guitars (I really fell for a flame maple Emerald Green CU22 SW played one night, but the SCs looked pretty awesome too), and if Messrs Wilson and Wesley were playing them, they were likely very good guitars. So I checked them out - eyeballing a Cu24, because I'd never owned a 24-fret guitar before. The price point made me realize they were a big step up from my normal guitar price-point: I had spent at most about $400 on any particular guitar at that point in my life, stumbling into some really good deals and finding the odd Fender Squier model that played just as well (as far as I could tell) as the USA versions. So I realized at the time I would need to really want a new guitar to justify it to myself, and between 2005-ish to 2011-ish I was not playing as much - my hobby had taken a backseat to other things, and I was never a professional or even amateur performing guitarist - I just hacked away in basement/garage bands with friends and co-workers.
But in the last year and a bit, I've been playing real gigs in front of real audiences - mind you, not exactly rock'n'roll concerts with pyrotechnics or anything, I play in a band that does folk, traditional, old-time, irish stuff, with acoustic covers of classic rock stuff mixed in (Wish You Were Here, a couple of Porcupine Tree songs that I've snuck into the setlist, etc). But I've been adding a bit of "grunge" to the sound on certain songs like Diamonds and Rust or some originals. Usual equipment was a Norman acoustic guitar and a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe (run through a small subset of my footpedal collection) straight in to the PA.
In December of last year I decided a semi-hollowbody or full hollowbody guitar might be an interesting experiment in trying to reduce my gig equipment to a single guitar, so I shopped around and found an Epi Casino I really liked - it played far better than all the other similar models (335, Dot, Riviera) and played just as good as the Gibson ES-330 (Casino equivalent) that was selling for four times the price. That guitar cost more than the $400 I was used to paying, but was worth it.
Then I went through a minor personal crisis early in the new year, and I said to myself "go find that Emerald Green Cu24 you've always wanted!" Because Emerald Green was not a current color, I knew it was going to be a used guitar, which was fine, because I really couldn't justify the price of a new one - I still can't, frankly. And I wanted a core PRS as my first and possibly only model - I didn't want to compromise like I had with Fender Squiers and that Epi Casino (even though those were good guitars!), and I wanted the original maple-top carve, not the carve used on the S2, and I wanted a good flame-maple top (which mine has, a "10 top" by chance). Oh, and I really, really wanted birds.
I went into a couple of local GCs and a Sam Ash over the course of a few weeks, and browsed online, and didn't find any in the color I wanted at the price I wanted (and none locally). There was a nice-looking Cu24 in Whale Blue (I think) at one of the GCs, priced a little more than I was looking to spend, but it must have been set up poorly, because it played lousy - it did not sing to me at all. Eventually an Emerald green one popped up used in a local GC, a little road-weary but it played like butter. Because it was a bit dinged up it was right at my price point, so I snagged it.
Since them I've pre-ordered a PRS SE ZM Spalted and bought a PRS SE MM Baritone. The SE Baritone plays very nicely, set-up pretty well perfectly for me right out of the box (bought online - there were none local to snag at the time, and it was a very impulsive purchase for a variety of reasons). And the cool thing is I now use the Baritone when playing live - it works very well as an upper-range-bass-like instrument when the other guitarist(s) are capoed up to the fifth fret or similar.
Since the Baritone plays so well out of the box, I expect the ZM will also play well. I look forward to comparing that to the Core Cu24. July (or so) cannot come soon enough.
And I continue to browse online looking at all the other models that PRS has to offer (or had to offer in the past), wondering if a Mira or CE or something else would be worth exploring...
This forum doesn't help curb my PRS appetite, by the way - there are so many cool guitars and so many fascinating stories around them or their owners. If I hadn't found the forum, I would never have found out about the ZM Spalted, and probably never gotten interested in the baritone. (btw, Steven Wilson from PTree uses a PRS PS Baritone he requested a few years ago, I think around 2006-ish...)
Thank you for listening to my story. Who's next to stand up at PRS-aholics anonymous?
I first "discovered" PRS guitars when I saw Steven Wilson and John Wesley of Porcupine Tree using them when playing live, back in 2004-ish. They looked like awesome guitars (I really fell for a flame maple Emerald Green CU22 SW played one night, but the SCs looked pretty awesome too), and if Messrs Wilson and Wesley were playing them, they were likely very good guitars. So I checked them out - eyeballing a Cu24, because I'd never owned a 24-fret guitar before. The price point made me realize they were a big step up from my normal guitar price-point: I had spent at most about $400 on any particular guitar at that point in my life, stumbling into some really good deals and finding the odd Fender Squier model that played just as well (as far as I could tell) as the USA versions. So I realized at the time I would need to really want a new guitar to justify it to myself, and between 2005-ish to 2011-ish I was not playing as much - my hobby had taken a backseat to other things, and I was never a professional or even amateur performing guitarist - I just hacked away in basement/garage bands with friends and co-workers.
But in the last year and a bit, I've been playing real gigs in front of real audiences - mind you, not exactly rock'n'roll concerts with pyrotechnics or anything, I play in a band that does folk, traditional, old-time, irish stuff, with acoustic covers of classic rock stuff mixed in (Wish You Were Here, a couple of Porcupine Tree songs that I've snuck into the setlist, etc). But I've been adding a bit of "grunge" to the sound on certain songs like Diamonds and Rust or some originals. Usual equipment was a Norman acoustic guitar and a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe (run through a small subset of my footpedal collection) straight in to the PA.
In December of last year I decided a semi-hollowbody or full hollowbody guitar might be an interesting experiment in trying to reduce my gig equipment to a single guitar, so I shopped around and found an Epi Casino I really liked - it played far better than all the other similar models (335, Dot, Riviera) and played just as good as the Gibson ES-330 (Casino equivalent) that was selling for four times the price. That guitar cost more than the $400 I was used to paying, but was worth it.
Then I went through a minor personal crisis early in the new year, and I said to myself "go find that Emerald Green Cu24 you've always wanted!" Because Emerald Green was not a current color, I knew it was going to be a used guitar, which was fine, because I really couldn't justify the price of a new one - I still can't, frankly. And I wanted a core PRS as my first and possibly only model - I didn't want to compromise like I had with Fender Squiers and that Epi Casino (even though those were good guitars!), and I wanted the original maple-top carve, not the carve used on the S2, and I wanted a good flame-maple top (which mine has, a "10 top" by chance). Oh, and I really, really wanted birds.
I went into a couple of local GCs and a Sam Ash over the course of a few weeks, and browsed online, and didn't find any in the color I wanted at the price I wanted (and none locally). There was a nice-looking Cu24 in Whale Blue (I think) at one of the GCs, priced a little more than I was looking to spend, but it must have been set up poorly, because it played lousy - it did not sing to me at all. Eventually an Emerald green one popped up used in a local GC, a little road-weary but it played like butter. Because it was a bit dinged up it was right at my price point, so I snagged it.
Since them I've pre-ordered a PRS SE ZM Spalted and bought a PRS SE MM Baritone. The SE Baritone plays very nicely, set-up pretty well perfectly for me right out of the box (bought online - there were none local to snag at the time, and it was a very impulsive purchase for a variety of reasons). And the cool thing is I now use the Baritone when playing live - it works very well as an upper-range-bass-like instrument when the other guitarist(s) are capoed up to the fifth fret or similar.
Since the Baritone plays so well out of the box, I expect the ZM will also play well. I look forward to comparing that to the Core Cu24. July (or so) cannot come soon enough.
And I continue to browse online looking at all the other models that PRS has to offer (or had to offer in the past), wondering if a Mira or CE or something else would be worth exploring...
This forum doesn't help curb my PRS appetite, by the way - there are so many cool guitars and so many fascinating stories around them or their owners. If I hadn't found the forum, I would never have found out about the ZM Spalted, and probably never gotten interested in the baritone. (btw, Steven Wilson from PTree uses a PRS PS Baritone he requested a few years ago, I think around 2006-ish...)
Thank you for listening to my story. Who's next to stand up at PRS-aholics anonymous?
CantankerousCarl
Occasionally Onery Member
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2012
- Messages
- 2,009
Standing up would imply some sort of remorse, or even acknowledgement of a problem...I have neither
Fixed it for ya...
Anyone who does a little research will find that PRS didn't just copy the SC as is intimated here. Paul used the SC as a starting point and made a better SC in design, materials, fit and finish, QC and the list goes on. Comparing a PRS SC to a LP on its visual aspects (from a distance - you don't want the LP's crappy fit and finish to sway the comparison) is like looking at the surface of two lakes and deciding that one is deeper or has more fish.
Perception is reality. If people aren't willing to challenge their perceptions, their reality will never change.
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Not slamming your postFenn, but I think oddly enough Gibson's main business these days is making cheap (not inexpensive) knockoff copies of their own classic guitars with quality issues that would embarrass the Chibson sellers on Alibaba and features like plastic pickup covers, chambering (which I'm OK with) and circuit boards (which I'm OK with) instead of hand wiring that go against everything that we were told make a "real" LP.
I don't really see the SC as a LP clone, similar maybe, but not a clone.
You MUST copy to some degree or you can't make a guitar that will sell. In order to not copy you'd have to make some monstrosity like a rectangular hollow metal body with a neck made from teak with plastic frets. Seriously....the point is that ALL guitars have the same parts, so where do you draw the line at what is copying? I think paul's designs are as original as can be without changing what a guitar is. He simply took the design aspects from loved designs and combined all the best of them till he found a recipe that works exceptionally well. Not an easy task and one that would require years of tedious experimentation if you expect to come up with something special, and that makes them as unique as anything.
Heres the thing with Paul the way i see it. the guy knows what is important in a guitar and he set out to combine everything important into one guitar. But then you say thats impossible because everyone has different ideas of whats important. true except for this....there are certain aspects that ALL players want. Sustain, fullness, dynamics, plenty of clatity w/o sounding thin, highly resonant, rich in harmonics. Those are off the top of my head and maybe i'm missing a few. but the point is Paul knows the important details of tone that we all want and set out to get the most of each packed into one guitar. Even tho i'm brand new to PRS i think he succeeded and thats why i bought my 1st PRS and was so blown away i thought this will be one of the only guitars i ever bought i could live with without ever modding. Thats not to say i will never try some pickups. but theres a very good chance i won't, (if i do it would be partially if not mainly to get split tones) and all those details i mentioned are there in this guitar better than any gibson i've played. It even gives me some of what i love about fenders, whereas gibsons tend to sound and feel strictly like a gibson and never reach beyond that. Gibsons are great guitars if you get a good one, but they still always seem to fail in some way even if slight. Paul i think tried to make a guitar that fixes all those failures whether small or large. But a copycat? Naaa...
Heres the thing with Paul the way i see it. the guy knows what is important in a guitar and he set out to combine everything important into one guitar. But then you say thats impossible because everyone has different ideas of whats important. true except for this....there are certain aspects that ALL players want. Sustain, fullness, dynamics, plenty of clatity w/o sounding thin, highly resonant, rich in harmonics. Those are off the top of my head and maybe i'm missing a few. but the point is Paul knows the important details of tone that we all want and set out to get the most of each packed into one guitar. Even tho i'm brand new to PRS i think he succeeded and thats why i bought my 1st PRS and was so blown away i thought this will be one of the only guitars i ever bought i could live with without ever modding. Thats not to say i will never try some pickups. but theres a very good chance i won't, (if i do it would be partially if not mainly to get split tones) and all those details i mentioned are there in this guitar better than any gibson i've played. It even gives me some of what i love about fenders, whereas gibsons tend to sound and feel strictly like a gibson and never reach beyond that. Gibsons are great guitars if you get a good one, but they still always seem to fail in some way even if slight. Paul i think tried to make a guitar that fixes all those failures whether small or large. But a copycat? Naaa...
Uh..... no. From the outset, PRS was experimenting with new materials, new carves, new finishes, new ways to do things.
Easy, no. Except this is exactly what PRS has done.
BTW, welcome to the forum and to your journey with PRS guitars.
FennRx
Gibson Fanboy
1) My SC245 sounds like a Les Paul. I don't disagree that PRS has made some changes to the design. And I also agree the LP was the starting point, but not THAT much has been changed. Just mho.
2) Your last line is true, as evidenced by the one preceding it. :flute::biggrin:
3) The Gibson Custom Shop is putting out some of the finest examples of Les Pauls I have ever seen and I've been playing LPs for 20 years. I don't care much for the USA line, so I don't pay attention to it. I think it's also important to ask how many guitars are produced by each company. If you make 10k per year and I make 1million AND I have far better availability, it may stand to reason that more lemons will show up (or at least the number of people complaining- especially if Guitar Denter and Musician's Fiend are the primary locales to sample the product). And I'm not sure how you can say the SC is made from better materials.
no offense taken.:beer:
I don't disagree. Those guitars aren't my thing for sure. At least the Traditionals get blown out a couple times a year- they're the best of the USA line imo.
Funny thing about LP fans- they complain about something and when Gibson does something about it, they complain. The volute on Norlins, chambering, etc.
At any rate, I did not want this to become a Gibson vs PRS thing. I was only waxing philosophical as to why there are not legions of PRS fans. I love my Gibbies and my PRSi. To each their own.:five:
I think one thing we can all agree on is that gibson is a company run by a number of people all of who likely have thier own agendas and profit is what determines how they make guitars. While PRS is headed by one man who's agenda and life's goal is to make great guitars. Not good or adequate, but great. If nothing else proves that his SE line sure does. He certainly didn't need to make them that good at the price point as is proven by all the other brands that sell boatloads of lesser instruments at the same price. How many low to low/mid range fenders can you count with steel trem blocks? Kudos to Paul. The guy is on a righteous mission.
