PRS QC Issues

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Lacire said:
Not being able to see the guitar in person and only looking at the pictures, the ruff edge looks to be on top and not under the finish. It would be hard for me to tell where or when the finish on the edge became damaged. I’ve had two experiences where the packing and the inside of the case caused damage to the finish of the instrument in shipping. I had detailed pictures of the instruments and neither had any finish damage before I received them. Both were shipped too me in summer months when the inside of the shipping trailers can get extremely hot. If the stars a-line as in my two cases and the shipping box was not properly put in the shipping trailer or fell over in transit and the guitar sat with the majority of its weight distributed on that edge, the heat and the small amount of friction of the guitar moving in its case as it was driven across country could account for that. The case lining actually almost embeds Itself in the finish and gives it a very rough texture like it wasn’t sanded, much like what I can see in the picture. Not saying that this happened in your case, but it has happened to me twice. The image in the link below was one of the guitars I received.

http://imgbox.com/qMMcjVd3
Click to expand...
There is no damage to the guitar I sent back. If it were a surface/finish issue I would think it could have been buffed out....I could be wrong.
Have you ever sanded something and painted over it without removing all the residual dust or forgot to use the fine sandpaper during the sanding process and painted it?? That's what my defect resembles. As I have said before the defect is too uniform to be damage.
dmatthews said:
Of the 7 I own, 4 were bought sight unseen. All four are/were perfect.
Sorry to hear yours was not.
Click to expand...

It sucks not being part of the flawless club.... lol
 
merciful-evans said:
Wow. Amazing endorsements!

We are indeed fortunate in this day and age. However, I have never seen a flawless guitar in 49 years of playing.
But despite not being as fortunate as you, I'm sanguine enough, having some wonderful guitars with tolerable flaws.
Click to expand...

Flawless is obviously subjective and very much depends on what you consider 'perfection' or 'flawless' to be. If you take Paul Reed Smith's analogy that every instrument is a system and the parts are 'subtractive', then Perfection is likely to be an impossibility. Yes they may reduce the overall subtraction so that its closer to a perfect system but chances are, especially whilst natural materials are involved as well as making an instrument comfortable and playable for a human, then a perfect system is unlikely to be achieved.

Even with such consistency and accuracy of making instruments to the same specification and shape thanks to modern methods like CNC, the fact that these then have to be sanded to remove tooling marks may mean they are fractionally different again could be taken as them not being 'flawless' - even if they are within fractions of a mm of tolerance with each other. The fact that Natural Materials are used could also impact on whether you consider the grain, the pattern etc to be perfectly aligned when bookmatched to the point you can't see the join, or even the grain pattern itself being 'perfect (whatever that means). Then of course you have the instrument itself, the intonation and fret position - something those weird, non straight frets try to compensate for and something PRS doesn't offer.

It really depends to what degree you are looking at these instruments as to whether or not you consider them to be 'flawless' or not. For me, not one of my PRS guitars had any fit or finish problems that I can see - certainly not with the limitations of my own eyes that maybe require a Microscope or maybe different spectrums of light to see issues. Nothing felt wrong and the fret work was great but maybe a Plek would find thousandths of a mm flaws here or there - things like that for example could mean they are not 'flawless' when looked at by machines that are far more sensitive to incredibly small variations - more so than I has a human can detect - but as far as my limitations are concerned as a human, and based on what I expected, All my PRS guitars were flawless - in that I cannot find any flaw in any aspect.
 
Anticipating the outcome of this thread...
khCzQM3.gif
 
Klale0819 said:
There is no damage to the guitar I sent back. If it were a surface/finish issue I would think it could have been buffed out....I could be wrong.
Have you ever sanded something and painted over it without removing all the residual dust or forgot to use the fine sandpaper during the sanding process and painted it?? That's what my defect resembles. As I have said before the defect is too uniform to be damage.


It sucks not being part of the flawless club.... lol
Click to expand...

Yes actually I do know what it looks like, I sprayed and finished lacquer for 15 years. I’m sure they’ll take care of it for you and you’ll never be able to tell there was any finish issues. Hope you get it back quicker than they said.
 
Klale0819 said:
There is no damage to the guitar I sent back. If it were a surface/finish issue I would think it could have been buffed out....I could be wrong.
Have you ever sanded something and painted over it without removing all the residual dust or forgot to use the fine sandpaper during the sanding process and painted it?? That's what my defect resembles. As I have said before the defect is too uniform to be damage.


It sucks not being part of the flawless club.... lol
Click to expand...
You'll get there.:)
 
Ashley Madison...? Never heard of it, I had to go look this up to find out what it was. That’s what I get for following the link on how to post pictures on the forum. How to post pictures with IMGBOX https://imgbox.com hope everybody actually looked at the picture. ;)
 
I share the OP's feeling.. i just got a new Private Stock with what seems to be an out of phase middle pickup on my SSH22. Positions 2/4 are super thin and out of phase, like a big spike at 1khz. Not sure how the heck this happened- how did it pass a final QC test (doesn't Paul play all PS before shipping)? Or a solder joint coming loose during shipping? (although with that i'd expect to just cut sound completely). Its extremely pronounced and noticeable.

Completely bummed that my first Private Stock has this issue right out of the box.. i wouldn't expect it from a Core model much less a PS. Ive bought five core models over the years and they have been 100% perfect. That said.. stuff happens... we are all human, so Im just gonna see how this pans out. In the end i just want it working.

It's on its way to PTC for them to check it out, I am hoping/expecting they will fix it and take care of it and this thing will be back in my hands soon to enjoy!!

UPDATE: PTC addressed the issue and did so very quickly. Like i said, these things happen it's inevitable. They stood behind it and fixed it. Best possible outcome.
 
Last edited:
Bsic said:
I share the OP's feeling.. i just got a new Private Stock with what seems to be an out of phase middle pickup on my SSH22. Positions 2/4 are super thin and out of phase, like a big spike at 1khz. Not sure how the heck this happened- how did it pass a final QC test (doesn't Paul play all PS before shipping)? Or a solder joint coming loose during shipping? (although with that i'd expect to just cut sound completely). Its extremely pronounced and noticeable.

Completely bummed that my first Private Stock has this issue right out of the box.. i wouldn't expect it from a Core model much less a PS. Ive bought five core models over the years and they have been 100% perfect. That said.. stuff happens... we are all human, so Im just gonna see how this pans out. In the end i just want it working.

It's on its way to PTC for them to check it out, I am hoping/expecting they will fix it and take care of it and this thing will be back in my hands soon to enjoy!!
Click to expand...

My WL509 had a wire come loose during shipping. It was similar to what you are describing. PTC made it right. There was too much going on in too small of a space for me to try it.
 
I went to a large PRS dealer and looked through a number of DGT’s and 594’s.

Each 594 had binding inconsistencies and finish issues.

One of the 594’s has a dead neck pickup.

One of the DGT’s had black markings from the factory that weren’t buffed out all over it.

I ended up buying a NOS guitar from 2010 and it’s perfect.

Unfortunately I won’t buy a new production PRS sight unseen.
 
I had a similar experience. Purchased a new PRS P24 in 2016 only to discover a number of QC items that I simply couldn't get past due to how much I paid. I contacted customer service only to receive some lip service about how good their guitars are. I ended up returning and went to a competitor.

For the record, here's what I found upon closer inspection:

1. The nut was cut too short and not flush with sides of neck. It was worse on one side than the other.
2. The clear coat had many pin holes and sanding witness marks.
3. Paint bleed all around the binding.
4. A different set of fasteners was used for the bridge pickup and neck pickup which yielded differently shaped screw heads.
5. The fabric tape used to wrap the pickups was slowly unraveling.
6. A few of the pickup pole heads were mildly stripped.
7. All of the bridge pivot posts had stripped heads.
8. Dried rubbing compound everywhere.
9. The pickup selector slot was partially filled with paint/dye, was not fully finished and bare wood was exposed. Also appeared the slot was not long enough so actuating the pickup selector slowly elongated the slot.
10. One of the screw heads holding the bridge spring was stripped.
 
Axeman75 said:
I had a similar experience. Purchased a new PRS P24 in 2016 only to discover a number of QC items that I simply couldn't get past due to how much I paid. I contacted customer service only to receive some lip service about how good their guitars are. I ended up returning and went to a competitor.

For the record, here's what I found upon closer inspection:

1. The nut was cut too short and not flush with sides of neck. It was worse on one side than the other.
2. The clear coat had many pin holes and sanding witness marks.
3. Paint bleed all around the binding.
4. A different set of fasteners was used for the bridge pickup and neck pickup which yielded differently shaped screw heads.
5. The fabric tape used to wrap the pickups was slowly unraveling.
6. A few of the pickup pole heads were mildly stripped.
7. All of the bridge pivot posts had stripped heads.
8. Dried rubbing compound everywhere.
9. The pickup selector slot was partially filled with paint/dye, was not fully finished and bare wood was exposed. Also appeared the slot was not long enough so actuating the pickup selector slowly elongated the slot.
10. One of the screw heads holding the bridge spring was stripped.
Click to expand...

I don’t believe you.
 
Axeman75 said:
I had a similar experience. Purchased a new PRS P24 in 2016 only to discover a number of QC items that I simply couldn't get past due to how much I paid. I contacted customer service only to receive some lip service about how good their guitars are. I ended up returning and went to a competitor.

For the record, here's what I found upon closer inspection:

1. The nut was cut too short and not flush with sides of neck. It was worse on one side than the other.
2. The clear coat had many pin holes and sanding witness marks.
3. Paint bleed all around the binding.
4. A different set of fasteners was used for the bridge pickup and neck pickup which yielded differently shaped screw heads.
5. The fabric tape used to wrap the pickups was slowly unraveling.
6. A few of the pickup pole heads were mildly stripped.
7. All of the bridge pivot posts had stripped heads.
8. Dried rubbing compound everywhere.
9. The pickup selector slot was partially filled with paint/dye, was not fully finished and bare wood was exposed. Also appeared the slot was not long enough so actuating the pickup selector slowly elongated the slot.
10. One of the screw heads holding the bridge spring was stripped.
Click to expand...

Well, thanks for signing up, telling us what happened 3 years ago, and buying something else. I guess that's what the internet is for these days.
 
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