Silver Sky Gut shots

[dmatthews]

Time for its first string change, and of course I got a little curious.
Eight screws later, I had a very easy time just flipping the loaded pickguard over so that we can all see what's inside!
I know that somebody posted a gut shot somewhere else, but I had to see for myself.

 

[dmatthews]

And I almost forgot the TR...





One thing I noticed about the nut, is that the slots seem rather shallow compared to others. The strings just sort of rest there as opposed to being in deep.

 

[flux]

Thanks so much for posting these, I've been most curious to get a peek behind the curtain.

 

[dmatthews]

Thanks so much for posting these, I've been most curious to get a peek behind the curtain.

No problem!
I'd have done it day one if the strings weren't so pristine at purchase.
Geeking!

 

[veinbuster]

It looks very tidy. Not unexpected from PRS, but still nice to see.

 

[dmatthews]

It looks very tidy. Not unexpected from PRS, but still nice to see.

Odd that the middle pickup has red markings on the pole pieces, but the others do not.

 

[bodia]

Looks like a little routing may be in order to fit a Paul's treble in there.........

 

[Cbouty]

One thing I noticed about the nut, is that the slots seem rather shallow compared to others. The strings just sort of rest there as opposed to being in deep.

The nuts are all shallow like that on my strats... makes sense that it would be more towards the strat nut type....

 

[C&M Music - Lafayette]

Odd that the middle pickup has red markings on the pole pieces, but the others do not.

The pickups as I understand are all the same, except for the middle being reverse wound. I guess the red dots on the middle pup are there to recognize the difference during assembly.

 

[dmatthews]

The pickups as I understand are all the same, except for the middle being reverse wound. I guess the red dots on the middle pup are there to recognize the difference during assembly.

Good call!

 

[elvis]

The nut slot depth is pretty similar to my non PRS guitars. PRS sets theirs unusually deep in most of their guitars.

 

[dmatthews]

The nut slot depth is pretty similar to my non PRS guitars. PRS sets theirs unusually deep in most of their guitars.

Yup... sure looks that way to me too.

 

[John Beef]

This is interesting. There's a resistor between the hot and ground on the volume pot. I can see the top band is red, bottom is gold, but can't make out the 2 other colors. Sort of looks like Red, green, blue but that would be 25 million ohms. That's a lot! Wouldn't effect anything in a guitar circuit. If it's red green black that would be 25 ohms. That's not very much! that would have huge impacts on the guitar's sound. Quite likely make very little sound come out of it at all. Any resistor in there would alter the resistance value of the pot.

Anyway, I've never seen this before and wonder why they would want to change the pot's value?

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Anyway, I've never seen this before and wonder why they would want to change the pot's value?

Simple. If you want a value that is different than the normally used or easily available ones.

 

[garrettb]

This is interesting. There's a resistor between the hot and ground on the volume pot. I can see the top band is red, bottom is gold, but can't make out the 2 other colors. Sort of looks like Red, green, blue but that would be 25 million ohms. That's a lot! Wouldn't effect anything in a guitar circuit. If it's red green black that would be 25 ohms. That's not very much! that would have huge impacts on the guitar's sound. Quite likely make very little sound come out of it at all. Any resistor in there would alter the resistance value of the pot.

Anyway, I've never seen this before and wonder why they would want to change the pot's value?

It's a 300 k pot with a 2.7 meg resistor, so that would make it 270 k total resistance. In theory, at least; actual value will vary within the tolerances of the pot and resistor.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Maybe Paul is playing a Jedi JM mind trick, and taking whatever value the pot tests at, and putting in whatever resistor makes it match JMs perfect resistance value. Wouldn't that blow you away.

Seriously, pots have by far the biggest variance of any "good" parts used in amps, pedals or whatever. You can easily get 1% variance in caps and 5% in resistors, but even "good" pots usually test around 20-25% variance from spec. (Unless PRS starts using really high end pots like some of the Bourn or something. Heck the best ones wouldn't even fit in a guitar!) Like I said, I've read amp and pedal makers before say they sold off as much as 70% of what they bought and only kept those within say 5% of the value they wanted.

 

[garrettb]

Maybe Paul is playing a Jedi JM mind trick, and taking whatever value the pot tests at, and putting in whatever resistor makes it match JMs perfect resistance value. Wouldn't that blow you away.

Seriously, pots have by far the biggest variance of any "good" parts used in amps, pedals or whatever. You can easily get 1% variance in caps and 5% in resistors, but even "good" pots usually test around 20-25% variance from spec. (Unless PRS starts using really high end pots like some of the Bourn or something. Heck the best ones wouldn't even fit in a guitar!) Like I said, I've read amp and pedal makers before say they sold off as much as 70% of what they bought and only kept those within say 5% of the value they wanted.

I think it's just a practical solution to make sure the pot value stays within an acceptable range. For example, the RS Guitarworks SuperPot is 280k with about 10% tolerance to keep it within 250-300k. Assuming PRS are able to get 300k pots from CTS at 10% tolerance, they can spend a penny on a resistor to get a similar result from standard components.

10% tolerance is easy enough to find with pots. The Mojotone pots are 7% and at a fair cost. The regular PRS 500k pots must be 20% at least, as I have one that measures 400k.

End of day, though, the difference is so slight I'm confident 99% of players would never know the difference. My feeling is it's one of Paul's tone nit-picks based on what he hears with his magic ears.

 

[JJJ]

Nut looks a lot to me like an old strat nut, they really aren't very tall comepared to modern PRS ones

Also I am surprised there aren't metal baseplates on those pickups, given Paul is in the spirit of improvement, they were only omitted from strats back in the day to save money.

 

[Andrew Paul]

Always nice to see what’s under the hood. Thanks!

 

[Andrew Paul]

Odd that the middle pickup has red markings on the pole pieces, but the others do not.

Yes, wonder why there are marks on it. They are supposed to be all the same pickups.