What drove you away from brand X?

gush

Where is that speedo pic
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Nov 4, 2012
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We all know what makes PRS guitars so good but what drove you away from brand X? I will start.

1-I won't have an expensive guitar that won't stay in tune! It is ridiculous!!!!!
2-We used to do some rage and Tom Morello uses his toggle and his fingernails to produce this scratching sound. When I would do this on my LP the toggle cap would come off. Most of the time I would catch it but I did eventually lose the original cap.
3-Do they not intonate from the factory????????
4-Did I mention going out of tune?
5-Can they make a neck that will consistently stay true?
 
1. I paid this much and i have a bad pot.
2. Wait i have only had this guitar for a month and it needs another tr adjustment!!!!!!
3. Ok, maybe it is the amp that sounds bad. No it's the pickups....
 
I can't pin it down exactly but I think it is how easy it is to play.
Started out as a Fender guy vintage 7.5" radius all the way Strats / Teles vintage necks and 9s THEN I got my first LP something kinda cool still fenders did it for me super Strats , Kramers, Ibanez even a Roland followed on a whim I got a Flying V wow what a guitar fat neck ebony board all hog great sound

Loved her but they are difficult to play sitting down and I just felt funny playing this in public so started out on a quest for an SG and I found this

The KL-33 was the real start of my PRS path
Now I am here
 
Oops, and to answer the original question of this thread...I've had and loved a few Teles and LPs, but constantly had issues with set ups, especially on their respective imports. And none of them give the tonal variations that a PRS does. The original 5 way rotary sold me on this. Of course, later the Push-Pull. Of course, you can tap/combine PUs on any guitar now...
And none of my LPs or Teles looked like that first red Custom Studio I saw with that gorgeous maple top!!! (back in the mid '80's)
 
I can say that all of my SEs blow the doors off of my '73 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe I had brand new back then.
When I got back into guitars are a 30 year period of not picking one up, I got the 2012 Gibson SG '61 Reissue.
There are no flaws with it, and I was lucky and got the one piece fingerboard before they switched over to the two piece after the feds raided them.

So my SG is nice and plays well, but feels very uncomfortable (lightest weight guitar I have though) due to neck dive, but my other guitars are more fun to play and well balanced.
Needless to say, I will not be buying anymore Gibsons in the future.

And since I do have it, occasionally I do hang out over at the official Gibson forum, and I read plenty of complaints there on fit, finish, and other quality control issues.
People are even getting control knobs put on the pot shafts crooked.
How hard can it be to push down the knob straight on the shaft?
This is clearly a lack of "I do not care", or poor quality control before it gets packed away before shipping.

My next PRS will be a 25" scale singlecut, or perhaps an SE bass if they ever release one.
 
I solved all my Gibson problems by switching to Heritage guitars and I still like their old school way of building brand new vintage guitars.
But I also like the latest, state of the art high performance nature of PRS guitars.
It's like having a garage with an old school vintage muscle car as well as a modern high performance sports car.
[Analogy:] Sometimes I like to drive the vintage car and sometimes I like to drive the new high performance car.
So that is why I own both brands, Hetiage and PRS.
 
I can't pin it down exactly but I think it is how easy it is to play.
Started out as a Fender guy vintage 7.5" radius all the way Strats / Teles vintage necks and 9s THEN I got my first LP something kinda cool still fenders did it for me super Strats , Kramers, Ibanez even a Roland followed on a whim I got a Flying V wow what a guitar fat neck ebony board all hog great sound

Loved her but they are difficult to play sitting down and I just felt funny playing this in public so started out on a quest for an SG and I found this

The KL-33 was the real start of my PRS path
Now I am here


I had a V once and I really liked it. It fit the music I was playing at the time. My 10 year old son wants me to get a V because they are "cool" but I would fell kind of stupid playing one now that i'm an older fella!
 
I have been on a 30 year search for what works best for gigging, before PRS I had gone through many Fenders and Gibson's, Guild's, Rickenbackers and even an Ampeg see through and of all of those the best was a Fender Custom Shop 51 Nocaster. Then one day I picked up a PRS Custom 22 and everything was exactly as I needed it for my gigs, the guitar was light weight, felt good on the strap, the 57/08 pickups were amazing, the single coil tones were usable, the neck was comfortable, this is the first guitar I've owned with a tremolo that stayed in tune no matter what I did, the quality of workmanship is as good or better than anything else out there. To sum it up, this is the perfect guitar for the gigging musician who has to cover a lot of different styles of music.

I sold off most of my vintage in instruments and now I own 7 PRS guitars and I play all of them regularly with my favorites being an Artist V and DGT Goldtop, I use Fender, Victoria, and Bad Cat Amps.
 
What drove me away from ALL brands (including PRS) - I only buy used now - was the market conditions which force small shops out of business and leaves us with the internet and Guitar Center as the only option to buy guitars. It's not PRS' fault, it just is. But I refuse to play along. So I'll buy used from small dealers and friends.
 
I didn't really move away from the other brands, I didn't have any of them to move away from. I grew up rather poor and didn't have money to spend on good guitars until a few years ago. I found PRS at the time that I was looking for a Les Paul. I've kept one of the Strats (and I do like Heritage), but the other brands have come and gone. The PRSi seem to stay and I love playing them. Pretty simple really.
 
You just can't beat the fit, finish and overall quality of a PRS guitar. Add in the attention to design, tone and playability, and you can't lose!
 
It wasn't so much of a moving away from any particular brand, it was more just moving toward PRS.

I have had Ibanezes (MIJ & others), Gibsons and Fenders (MIM & American) and over the years (pre my playing hiatus, and now) they ended up collecting dust because my PRSes just felt, sounded, played and looked better...from the SEs on up. I would sit there playing other guitars, some more expensive, and just felt like they were missing something compared to my PRSes. Sometimes it was tangible, sometimes not.

I ended up liquidating all my non-PRSes to fund the purchases of more PRSes. The only other brands I have right now are a Taylor (314CE - couldn't fine an SE Angelus within 100 miles to try, and I really liked it) and an old MIJ Ibanez Roadstar II bass (coz I got it for 100 bucks and it's awesome).
 
I stopped playing guitar for about 7 years and one day my wife surprised me with a new acoustic for a Valentine's Day gift..

She told me, in the card that accompanied the guitar, she didn't just want to give me something perishable like chocolate or flowers or any other typical VD gift, she wanted to give me my joy back...

I cried like a Mitch and I also played a lot of guitar that weekend..

That all led me to eventually buy myself a brand new Strat that immediately had to go to my old tech for a setup and some much needed fret work. I thought it a bit ridiculous at the time but to be honest was used to it at that point.

Then, the stars lined up and my brothers' band mate at the time sold me a battered SE Cu22. That old beat up guitar blew the doors off the Strat and a Wolfgang I had also acquired.

I started digging around the interwebs for info on PRS, found BAM and the rest is history. Shortly after, I bought my first Made in Maryland PRS, sold the other gear and haven't looked back since...

The quality, attention to detail, fit and finish are absolutely second to none. As a result, I have 7 PRS guitars, 2 PRS amps, 2 PRS cabinets, a ton of PRS cables, straps as well as any other imaginable accessory they produce and I can't wait to acquire my next.

Not to mention the sense of community and family we have with not only the company but the enthusiasts too. There's nothing like it anywhere else!!!
 
Ergonomics ergonomics ergonomics.

I grew up playing Strats, but I always wanted that big mahogany-humbucker rock tone. But the Les Paul is too heavy, the singlecut design makes it almost impossible to play the upper frets comfortably, and (because I was used to Strats) the shorter scale length of the Gibson never felt right to me. Those factors combined were enough to drive me away.

Enter the Custom 24.

Although I was originally attracted to PRS because of Alex Lifeson, I keep coming back to PRS because the design has the best ergonomics for the tonal combination I want. Because of the extra 2 frets and slightly longer scale length, the neck's length is more comfortable for me to play. Not only that, but because the extra 2 frets require the bridge to be moved closer to the neck, my strumming hand winds up right between the pickups -- so my pick ends up at the perfect position on the string for the tone I want. The thinner body, lighter weight, and double-cut design all make it much more comfortable than the LP ever was. The fact that the 5-way rotary provides a more comprehensive selection of tones is the icing on the cake.

I still keep a Strat around to tinker with, but I hardly ever use it. Right now I only use it if I want that Hendrix/Gilmour single coil neck pickup tone, or if I want to emulate Eric Johnson. But if it weren't for PRS, that's probably what I'd still be playing.

In the end, it's the positive aspects of PRS that made me switch, and not so much the negative aspects of Brand X.
 
I'm pretty new to PRS, just got my first back in November and the second 2 weeks ago, but I have to say they already feel like home and I can see that I will be playing these a lot more than my other guitars, the Mira in particular. I even had a moment over the weekend where I was playing my Custom Shop Stratocaster, a guitar that cost double what the Mira did, and felt like it was pointless to try to get a good sound out of it since the PRS not only plays better but gets the tones I want effortlessly. So I put it back down, picked up the Mira and went "ahhh"
 
I wasn't driven away, I just felt that the first PRS I played was so good that I bought it on the spot.

That was in 1991. Been going strong with PRS ever since.
 
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