The_Grudge
New Member
I've been on the hunt for an American made PRS for years, but never had the budget to do so until now. Funny how kids and bills can get in our way lol.
I live in Canada in a "medium-sized" city about 2 hours from Toronto. We have a Long and McQuade here, but despite being a PRS dealer, all they ever seem to stock is Epiphones, Fenders, and a tiny selection of Ibanez, usually all with rusty strings and bad setups from sitting in the store for a year. If I ever saw a PRS in there I think I'd faint, let alone an American made PRS.
I already own a PRS Tremonti SE Custom from about 5/6 years ago. It's a great guitar and since I play a lot of Metallica, Soundgarden, Tool etc, it serves its purpose nicely, though I hate the tremolo. If I touch it the G goes out of tune and I just don't have a reason to use it much anyway.
For my new guitar I was eyeing up the S2 single cut (and its stop tail) but I had two concerns. I was worried I might not like the neck shape coming off the Tremonti "pattern thin", and I was worried the pickups would be a little too vintage. Easy enough to swap pickups but as I get older the Metallica jam sessions do often go into cleaner things like "Blackbird" by Paul McCartney or heck, even Alterbridge....so softer sounds are good too =)
I had made the decision to go for the S2 but another local shop in town (also a PRS dealer) told me the orders to PRS were at least a year out at the moment. Feeling bummed I held off and scrolled through Reverb and Sweetwater here and there, recognizing it was likely going to be hard finding someone who would ship to Canada.
A couple weeks ago I was sitting on my couch on a Saturday morning and figured I'd check Reverb. I spotted a shop in Edmonton (Guitar Brando) who is a PRS dealer and they were selling a "custom color" Smokeburst. I saw there were 4 others watching the ad and realized I had hemmed and hawed for too long, this was the one. So I bought it -- more below...
I'm extremely happy with it. The neck is certainly different than the Tremonti but it's a good different. I like having the two options available to me now based on mood, requirements etc. The seller sent the guitar in PERFECT condition as well. Not a blemish on it when I got it.
The only (factory) imperfection (which took me a week to find) was that on the neck around the 3rd fret (down on the treble side, so facing the floor while playing), there is a tiny tiny tiny bump. Like a speck of dust that hit the guitar just before they threw the satin finish on it. It doesn't really bother me and when I showed my wife she rolled her eyes heavily as if to say - wow, how did you even notice that?
Anyway -- after all that gibberish, I came here to ask how many of you set up and tinker with your own guitars? Based on everything I've seen/read online, the PRS factory is notorious for setting up their guitars perfectly when they leave the factory. Honestly, I found the action on mine to be higher than I like and the truss rod needed an ever so slight adjustment to straighten the neck a tiny bit. I suppose going from the factory in Maryland to Edmonton where it's -25 Celsius and then 5 days on a truck to come to me, something is bound to move around a bit. But yeah, I keep tinkering a bit with the action to find that balance of the low action I like and as little fret buzzing as possible. How much do you guys play around with your setups?
I live in Canada in a "medium-sized" city about 2 hours from Toronto. We have a Long and McQuade here, but despite being a PRS dealer, all they ever seem to stock is Epiphones, Fenders, and a tiny selection of Ibanez, usually all with rusty strings and bad setups from sitting in the store for a year. If I ever saw a PRS in there I think I'd faint, let alone an American made PRS.
I already own a PRS Tremonti SE Custom from about 5/6 years ago. It's a great guitar and since I play a lot of Metallica, Soundgarden, Tool etc, it serves its purpose nicely, though I hate the tremolo. If I touch it the G goes out of tune and I just don't have a reason to use it much anyway.
For my new guitar I was eyeing up the S2 single cut (and its stop tail) but I had two concerns. I was worried I might not like the neck shape coming off the Tremonti "pattern thin", and I was worried the pickups would be a little too vintage. Easy enough to swap pickups but as I get older the Metallica jam sessions do often go into cleaner things like "Blackbird" by Paul McCartney or heck, even Alterbridge....so softer sounds are good too =)
I had made the decision to go for the S2 but another local shop in town (also a PRS dealer) told me the orders to PRS were at least a year out at the moment. Feeling bummed I held off and scrolled through Reverb and Sweetwater here and there, recognizing it was likely going to be hard finding someone who would ship to Canada.
A couple weeks ago I was sitting on my couch on a Saturday morning and figured I'd check Reverb. I spotted a shop in Edmonton (Guitar Brando) who is a PRS dealer and they were selling a "custom color" Smokeburst. I saw there were 4 others watching the ad and realized I had hemmed and hawed for too long, this was the one. So I bought it -- more below...
I'm extremely happy with it. The neck is certainly different than the Tremonti but it's a good different. I like having the two options available to me now based on mood, requirements etc. The seller sent the guitar in PERFECT condition as well. Not a blemish on it when I got it.
The only (factory) imperfection (which took me a week to find) was that on the neck around the 3rd fret (down on the treble side, so facing the floor while playing), there is a tiny tiny tiny bump. Like a speck of dust that hit the guitar just before they threw the satin finish on it. It doesn't really bother me and when I showed my wife she rolled her eyes heavily as if to say - wow, how did you even notice that?
Anyway -- after all that gibberish, I came here to ask how many of you set up and tinker with your own guitars? Based on everything I've seen/read online, the PRS factory is notorious for setting up their guitars perfectly when they leave the factory. Honestly, I found the action on mine to be higher than I like and the truss rod needed an ever so slight adjustment to straighten the neck a tiny bit. I suppose going from the factory in Maryland to Edmonton where it's -25 Celsius and then 5 days on a truck to come to me, something is bound to move around a bit. But yeah, I keep tinkering a bit with the action to find that balance of the low action I like and as little fret buzzing as possible. How much do you guys play around with your setups?
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