It's always a joy to play a great guitar, especially one you've held your breath and waited what seems like forever for. The devil is in the details with guitars, and this'n is just a little different from most SC58s: mahogany neck, but with ebony instead of the usual RW board, 53/10s instead of the 57/08s.
The general thinking is that ebony fingerboards tend to brighten the tone; I wouldn't say that's necessarily the case. I think what happens is that there is an impression of brightness due to a few factors.
What happens is subtle; ebony seems to make a note more articulate at the attack, and thus give chords a tiny bit of extra string-to-string definition. More articulate note attack can fool the ear into thinking, "ah, that's brighter." But in fact the actual treble content can be the same as RW or even less, over the entire attack/decay/sustain/release cycle of a note. But that comes at the price of maybe a little less complexity in the midrange.
So there's a tradeoff that's kind of interesting, and makes this instrument unique. Again, we're talking subtle here, these aren't the kind of differences you hear on first strum.
And of course, the feel is a little different between ebony and RW.
I'm still getting a handle on the 53/10s; what I can say is that they sound gorgeous, and can drive an amp from vintage clean to a roar with the volume knob. The combination of the ebony and the 53/10s is pretty cool; they seem to go well together.
Great advice was given by Jack Gretz in spec'ing this thing out, and the efforts of the PRS team in making this dream happen are much appreciated:
Here's a pic, the guitar has a name, Uriel:
The general thinking is that ebony fingerboards tend to brighten the tone; I wouldn't say that's necessarily the case. I think what happens is that there is an impression of brightness due to a few factors.
What happens is subtle; ebony seems to make a note more articulate at the attack, and thus give chords a tiny bit of extra string-to-string definition. More articulate note attack can fool the ear into thinking, "ah, that's brighter." But in fact the actual treble content can be the same as RW or even less, over the entire attack/decay/sustain/release cycle of a note. But that comes at the price of maybe a little less complexity in the midrange.
So there's a tradeoff that's kind of interesting, and makes this instrument unique. Again, we're talking subtle here, these aren't the kind of differences you hear on first strum.
And of course, the feel is a little different between ebony and RW.
I'm still getting a handle on the 53/10s; what I can say is that they sound gorgeous, and can drive an amp from vintage clean to a roar with the volume knob. The combination of the ebony and the 53/10s is pretty cool; they seem to go well together.
Great advice was given by Jack Gretz in spec'ing this thing out, and the efforts of the PRS team in making this dream happen are much appreciated:
Here's a pic, the guitar has a name, Uriel: