Where did the false "Pre Factory" claim start?

Shawn@PRS

yogi
Joined
Aug 23, 1985
Messages
6,871
Location
Stevensville, MD
I just saw a post online showing an older PRS Custom 24 with the caption "Pre Factory". Unless your PRS guitar was built before 1985, it isn't a "pre factory" guitar. One could call it "Old factory" or "Original factory", but nonetheless, it was built in a factory.

So my question, where did the incorrect "Pre Factory" nomenclature begin?
 
Just another description to bump up the price , most likely...just like Pre-lawsuit Singlecuts...same guitar...silly , but effective, I guess.
The fact that Paul and all youzz guys are constantly working on improving your guitars is a testimonial that the older guitars are not necessarily better...just Older.
 
I have always found it to be a silly designation. Anytime there is change, someone wants to cling to the old way (even though they have vigorously complained about the old way). I recall it starting with PRS not long after the move to Stevensville and eBay being where it got legs. Some hear it and pass it along as gospel out of ignorance, laziness and wanting to sound knowledgeable.

There is somewhat of an analogous situation with pre-CBS Fender. Some act like the quality and design specs went to crap the day after ownership changed. It took some time before the CBS cost cutting measures started to show up, but some draw a hard line without factual knowledge about what really changed and when. Ugh.
 
I just saw a post online showing an older PRS Custom 24 with the caption "Pre Factory". Unless your PRS guitar was built before 1985, it isn't a "pre factory" guitar. One could call it "Old factory" or "Original factory", but nonetheless, it was built in a factory.

So my question, where did the incorrect "Pre Factory" nomenclature begin?

I saw that guitar.
 
I'm under the impression that people generally have no idea that there was a little tiny factory in Annapolis which preceded the current factory in its obvious current location. Since I had never even heard of PRS until the early 2000's, the current factory is the only one I ever knew about.

[Funny story in 5... 4... 3... 2...
Even more recently, as recently as only a few years ago and having owned countless core model guitars and long after I got permanently bitten by the PRS bug, I STILL knew nothing about the original factory. One day (even before I even knew who he was) Jack Higginbotham asked me something like "Hey, what do you think of the name 'West Street East'?" (they were apparently trying to decide what to name the store) and I said "I have no idea what that is" and "It scares me".

Later, a good while later, I learned all about the original factory, and I now know quite well who Jack is. Not only that but we have since shared much more productive verbal communication than the first time we spoke.
 
I've been active on guitar forums since 2002, starting with The Gear Page and the original PRS Forum (which died and led to Birds & Moons, which died and led us here). That misnomer was already prevalent back then.

It's mostly died off now, but there was a vocal contingent of people who were convinced the Annapolis-built guitars were superior. My take on it is that these folks strongly identified with the scrappy start-up that was PRS initially. When the brand took off and the need for a bigger facility arose, I think they felt like PRS had "sold out" so to speak and that the switch to CNC and the increased production meant that the quality and image would suffer.

I think it was the above, plus ignorance. Some people are still put off by CNC and claim it means the instrument is not hand built and think it robs the guitar of "soul" somehow. I guess there was an impression that the earlier guitars were "hand made" and the Stevensville guitars, being CNC carved, are "factory made". That is of course false, but change can be hard and scary, so people felt like they had to differentiate the "good" original ones from the new ones.
 
Some people are still put off by CNC and claim it means the instrument is not hand built and think it robs the guitar of "soul" somehow.

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Probably some...with the value of early PRSi increasing, and sometimes purchased as collectibles, I'm sure some take this into consideration when shopping.

What a shame. I know that instrument sales is big business!

The words “rare”, “collectible” and “mint condition” are used too frequently and freely these days!
 
What many people fail to realize is that in the original shop the tops were still carved roughly by machine. A stylus guided (albeit by hand)
over a master final carved top allowed a Dupli-Carver router to shape the blank to the top profile. Then, as now, the final finishing was done by a human.
 
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