Like a PRS SE One crossbred with a Santana SE II

[Leviathant]

I've got an interesting thing I've been holding on to for a while, and finally got around to taking some nice photos of. Before I post those photos, I'll share the backstory:

My sister went to a Jimmie's Chicken Shack show in 2006, and during that show, the frontman's guitar broke. I don't remember if it was intentional, or accidental, but before the show was done, the band signed the guitar (now in two pieces: body and neck), and threw the two bits into the crowd. Some dude got the neck, my sister got the body.

Eventually the guitar fell into my care - although life came at me pretty fast not long after I picked it up from her, so I've only recently sat down and done a little more research on what I had. The body looked very familiar to me, as I have a 2001 Santana SE. However, there are some very interesting details on this guitar body.

For one, it's largely unfinished: it's been stained and maybe there's a coating of poly on it, but it's far removed from the usual gemlike finish you'd find on a PRS.

It also has a single pickup on the neck - the sticker on the bottom says "PRS 7 Brazilian Bass" - there's a brown lampshade knob for this pickup. There are wood plugs in the holes where, on my Santana SE, the knob for the second pickup & the toggle switch go. It also came with a PRS signature strap with straplocks.

This is the part of the post where I explain that some basic Google searching indicates that Jimi Haha of Jimmie's Chicken Shack worked for PRS for a while. I haven't reached out to the guy at this point, but the likely explanation here is that he built himself a few guitars - not a bad fringe benefit!

Being new here, I apparently can't post links until I've made three posts, but this is my third post, so I'll share a link to photos below. I recently got a cheap lightbox for photographing some Philadelphia archaeology (it's a long enough story that there's a podcast called The Boghouse all about that), and it turns out the plate stand we bought works alright for a neckless guitar.

 

[Leviathant]

Click on the image below to visit my Flickr album chock full of full-resolution shots.



I'm kind of interested in bringing this back to life, but I'm not sure the best way to go about that, or if people are precious about something like this in the condition it's in.

Thoughts?

 

[Leviathant]

I found a pro-shot concert from 2006 where you can see the guitar pretty clearly during some of the close-ups:

It appears as though he had a second, very similar guitar as a backup, and that one's survived to this day - you can see it in this footage from mid-2019:

The headstock says HAHA, and the truss rod cover says PRS.

Anyway. Kinda interesting.

 

[Black Plaid]

Click on the image below to visit my Flickr album chock full of full-resolution shots.



I'm kind of interested in bringing this back to life, but I'm not sure the best way to go about that, or if people are precious about something like this in the condition it's in.

Thoughts?

I think the whole point of that guitar is that it wasn't precious.

It has a 2 piece body, no carve to speak of, and edges like a strat. So it was definitely something he was probably just messing around with.

I don't think the PRS Tech Center is going to touch that thing with a 10' pole, so you'll have to source a 25" scale neck perhaps from Warmoth and sort out how to size and glue it in. The PRS 1 piece bridge should fit just fine. I think the pickup was from the mid aughts, someone else will know better than I.

Thanks for sharing the story, it truly is an interesting piece.

 

[Shawn@PRS]

This was something the SE department made for Jimmie, back in the day.

 

[Boogie]

Very interesting story. I’d hang it on the wall, as is, and just admire it. It’s days of making music are over.

 

[Leviathant]

This was something the SE department made for Jimmie, back in the day.

Nice! Bit of a long shot, but is there any way to find out what the finish is? It's not important, I'm just curious - I don't know the first thing about woodworking, I'm guessing it's just a coat of some kind of polyurethane. I'm also guessing there's no reason anyone would keep records about something like this either.

I think the pickup was from the mid aughts, someone else will know better than I.

It's interesting, the only mention Google brings up when I searched the sticker is from a Reverb listing for a "2001 PRS Singlecut Solid Brazilian"

I'm going to try to source a neck and put this thing back together. If my sister's kid gets into guitar later on, this would make a hell of a birthday present. No disrespect to the guys who signed it, but I bet if I asked any of them if this was better off on a wall or being played, I bet every last one of them would root for resurrecting it instead of framing it.