So who bought a super eagle I or II and how is it?

gsuk

New Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2017
Messages
4
Hi I am new to the forum. And have predominantly been a strat guy but lately been loving the look and feel of the PRS range. And lately the Super Eagles really caught my eye. Beautiful guitars.

So who bought a super eagle I or II and how is it? Also did anyone buy one as an investment?

Or anyones opinions on the resale value of them do we think they will be worth alot in a few years? as tempted i must say... beautiful sounding and looking guitars.

And what do people think about the choice of african blackwood as an upgrade for the neck? Feel free to chime in anything Super Eagle :)
 
Welcome gusk.

I didn't order a super eagle. I think it is unlikely that they will appreciate in value in the near term.

African Blackwood, is a really good fingerboard and I would not hesitate to put it on another guitar.
 
Not meant to be a specific and personal response to you. Just something that seems to come up not infrequently from newer members. I'm not convinced that purchasing guitars as an investment vehicle is the best decision. The '59 era Les Paul as well as additional older, low volume guitars have appreciated nicely, but I'm not sure that is going to be the case with newer guitars. Not sure I would want to consider one as an investment. (i.e. see baseball cards) Please buy what you love and enjoy the heck out of it. If it just happens to go crazy on the used market, someday, just an additional bonus!

Now if you want to consider level of depreciation in your buying decision, that might be a different story.

Kevin
 
Whether it serves its purpose as a musical instrument that will inspire you, or not, is the only question whose answer you can be confident of.

Predicting the future market value of instruments is a fool's errand. It could become merely a nice used guitar, as 99.99% of instruments do.

I bought a couple of Private Stock limited runs, because I love them as instruments. 60 years from now my grandkids will be getting social security; maybe they'll find out if old limited run PRSes are worth anything, or are things to put in a garage sale.

I hope they play them!
 
Thanks for the comments guys. So the investment curiosity is based of the fact its a JM sig model. The John Cruz Blk1 limited run of 83 Strats sold for around 14k new. those things are now worth nearly 35k - i saw one sell on reverb - which to me is crazy. but they are obviously very desirable guitars. -

Now the PRS super Eagle II and I are amazing private stock instruments in themselves. And sounding too. ( matter of preference that one i know some don't like the sound ) - the investment part is like kes7u says its a bonus if the value went up.. i would defintely be playing it itjust might not leave the house ever if i owned anything in that league! So the curiosity is the JM part - custom pickups - wiring etc not found on any other Private Stock plus the signature of course... i wonder what having JM attached to them will do for them long term..
 
Without disclosing too much, I can say the Super Eagle II is the best guitar I've ever played and the Super Eagle - as a concept - is the guitar of my dreams, pretty much exactly how I would build my personal Private Stock. It's very flexible, open/clear sounding, it takes everything you hit it with. The middle NF pickup sounds very "fitting" to the rest and you get very interesting sounds in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions. That said, it didn't stand out that much against my own Custom 24, despite the different constructions and woods. The 58/15 JM seem to be really close to 85/15 pickups, there's just a small difference in output and they sound pretty much the same.
There are still two or three available in Germany at least, three have been sold within a weekend. So there's a demand for them and there will be people who (have to) miss out.
I have been following the price of the former guitar of my dreams (TM :D), a 2004/5 Gibson Jimmy Page #1 Les Paul VOS, limited to 870 pieces closely and it went up from 6300€ initially in 2005 to 8500-9500€ in 2017. So I think it's absolutely possible that the now total 220 Super Eagles will increase in value over time, even if Paul decides to do another run. You can play it and smile while you wait ;)
 
I don’t think the Super Eagle will gain value over time because there’s an approximately 1cm wide Signature of John Mayer on the sticker (BTW: The official name is “Private Stock Super Eagle” - nothing about John Mayer here), I think it will catch value because there are only 220 pieces in total and the only way to get a Super Eagle is to actually buy one. Of course it’s possible to order something similar in Private Stock, but I don’t think they’ll build an exact copy of it (talking about the preamp and the pickups, for example).
 
I don't think any modern day artist can raise the value of a PRS guitar on account of a 'run in their name', unless we're talking about say Santana's personal No.1 guitar and that's a different kettle of fish altogether.

I do think PRS guitars' residual value can be boosted by some other factors:
- Very outstanding tops. These always distinguish themselves and command a premium. They are limited, in the true sense of the word.
- Rare woods like CITES endorsed brazilian RW, pernambuco.
- The trajectory of PRS in the world ex-USA. That's where the future demand will come from. If marketed well, the sky's the limit.
- Guitars made before 2017 (pre-convention CITES Rosewood listing). If PRS catches on outside the US, pre-convention guitars will stand a big advantage because they are guaranteed to be granted a CITES export permit, ie they are liquid and transferable across borders. By contrast after 2017, made for USA guitars stay in the USA.
- Private stock guitars with Paul's signature, albeit their high production numbers so far. For what it's worth it does signify that Paul personally inspected the guitar.

So is the African blackwood also on any pre convention list? It appears the single curly maple back is an upgrade to the two piece from the first super eagle - curious to know if african blackwood is also rare
 
African Blackwood (dalbergia melanoxylon) is classified as a rosewood as it's Dalbergia designation implies. It's therefore newly listed as of 2017 in the CITES appendix II and subject to appendix II regulations. It's rated by the IUCN as near-threatened. It's a super-dense, super-hard and super-stable wood primarily used for wind instruments and turned woodcraft. As far as I know, small blanks are not rare but big straight pieces like one-piece guitar neck blanks are virtually impossible to find. The tree is small and crooked, grows very slowly.

As for the CITES stuff. Guitars made before 2017 with AFBW or any rosewood except Brazilian RW, would be pre-convention to the 2017 rosewood regulations.

Since 2017 started, any rosewood guitar regardless of when it's made would require an export permit from the respective governments to leave its current country of residence.

A pre-convention guitar would be easily granted an export permit, regardless of which country the guitar sits in. It gets a free-pass so to speak but you still need to obtain the papers.

A post-convention PRS Maryland made guitar (made 2017 and onwards), if sitting outside the US, would require the original export permit which allowed it to leave the US, in order to obtain an export permit to leave the current country of residence. For PRS to ship it to the international dealer in the first place, the original export permit would exist, so its not a problem to obtain that copy from the dealer. No problem.

If the Maryland made guitar is sitting in the US with a US dealer, it would not have an export permit cos it never left the US in the first place. If you bought the guitar and want to ship it out of the US, you'd have a problem. You'd need the export permit that allowed the raw timber to leave India, Madagascar, Honduras etc for the PRS Maryland factory. You'd never obtain that retrospectively, I believe, no matter how many times you contact PRS customer service. So, post-convention Maryland made PRS guitars with rosewood that were meant for distribution within the US, will forever have to stay in the US.

Sorry, it's horribly complicated I know. It's headache inducing to write and read.

No not at all its extremely interesting. In fact so much so i have indeed decided to get one of these incredible guitars. I cannot wait for its arrival. The blackwood looks stunning. And even if it did gain value ( or not ) i would not be parting with it. I decided to off load some technology based music equipment as that will only decrease in value.. this way i get something that is not only incredible to play but as lschefman says i hope my kids or grandkids will play one day! i hope my playing does it justice!
 
No not at all its extremely interesting. In fact so much so i have indeed decided to get one of these incredible guitars. I cannot wait for its arrival. The blackwood looks stunning. And even if it did gain value ( or not ) i would not be parting with it. I decided to off load some technology based music equipment as that will only decrease in value.. this way i get something that is not only incredible to play but as lschefman says i hope my kids or grandkids will play one day! i hope my playing does it justice!
Excellent.

African Blackwood makes a really nice fingerboard. I would definitely use it again.
 
Nancy Wilson's custom Dragon seems to be an exception. o_O

$75K

Still looks good after all these years......

20170627162546551_Page_2.jpg


http://guitars.com/news/nancy-wilsons-1978-paul-reed-smith-12-string

http://guitars.com/inventory/ez5595-1980-custom-paul-reed-smith-custom-12-string
 
African Blackwood (dalbergia melanoxylon) is classified as a rosewood as it's Dalbergia designation implies. It's therefore newly listed as of 2017 in the CITES appendix II and subject to appendix II regulations. It's rated by the IUCN as near-threatened. It's a super-dense, super-hard and super-stable wood primarily used for wind instruments and turned woodcraft. As far as I know, small blanks are not rare but big straight pieces like one-piece guitar neck blanks are virtually impossible to find. The tree is small and crooked, grows very slowly.

As for the CITES stuff. Guitars made before 2017 with AFBW or any rosewood except Brazilian RW, would be pre-convention to the 2017 rosewood regulations.

Since 2017 started, any rosewood guitar regardless of when it's made would require an export permit from the respective governments to leave its current country of residence.

A pre-convention guitar would be easily granted an export permit, regardless of which country the guitar sits in. It gets a free-pass so to speak but you still need to obtain the papers.

A post-convention PRS Maryland made guitar (made 2017 and onwards), if sitting outside the US, would require the original export permit which allowed it to leave the US, in order to obtain an export permit to leave the current country of residence. For PRS to ship it to the international dealer in the first place, they would have obtained an export permit leaving US, so its not a problem to obtain that copy from the dealer. No problem.

If the Maryland made guitar is sitting in the US with a US dealer, PRS would not have obtained an export permit cos it never left the US in the first place. If you bought the guitar and want to ship it out of the US, you'd have a problem. You'd need the export permit that allowed the raw timber to leave India, Madagascar, Honduras etc for the PRS Maryland factory. You'd never obtain that retrospectively, I believe, no matter how many times you contact PRS customer service. So, post-convention Maryland made PRS guitars with rosewood that were meant for distribution within the US, will forever have to stay in the US.

Sorry, it's horribly complicated I know. It's headache inducing to write and read.
So that all makes sense for normal international shipping of new guitars from us dealers, how does it apply to second hand sales?
Also, what happens for people touring overseas from the US, must they leave behind their new guitars?
And if a visitor to the US purchased a guitar and took it out the US, would the check in airport counter know it's restricted and ask for export papers?

.. Asking for a friend
 
And if a visitor to the US purchased a guitar and took it out the US, would the check in airport counter know it's restricted and ask for export papers?

.. Asking for a friend
The people at the check in counter don't care. It is customs at the destination that will check for paperwork, or not as that individual sees fit.
 
"Guitar as an investment" = wrong approach to purchasing an instrument. If you can afford one enough to be contemplating some weird other factors about it's appreciation then I'd say get one, forget all the JM fanboy jazz and go play it.
 
Maybe bodia will sell his house and buy 'em both before Santanafest? I mean, where else is left for him to go?

I still need a rosewood neck! Besides, I don't think the townhouse would fetch enough to get them both. It's a toss up who I want to meet the most, John or Nancy.........
 
I still need a rosewood neck! Besides, I don't think the townhouse would fetch enough to get them both. It's a toss up who I want to meet the most, John or Nancy.........

Nancy's is cheaper... Maybe you could use that to talk John down? Or at least have him throw in a nice big cardboard refrigerator box for you to live in?
 
Back
Top