I'm gonna stick with the standard PRS body shape and scale length. I've never liked their single-cut design, and the alternate scale lengths have never done much for me, either. That's not a knock on them, it's just that I have other guitars with those scale lengths which I like better than any comparable PRS. That applies to semi- or mostly-hollow guitars as well.
So I'll start with a nod to the original Custom -- PRS established a strong recipe from the start -- from there, here are three models/runs that resonated loudly with me:
1. The original Modern Eagle. Paul came by the booth where I was working at the 1998 summer NAMM show to check out a Budda amp. (I was working for Klein Guitars but we shared a booth with Budda Amplification) He had his personal guitar in tow, which was the amber Dragon guitar with the Brazilian rosewood neck. I heard Paul play it, and played it myself. My reaction, which I shared with Paul, was,
If you made a production version of that, I'd still be playing your guitars. Yea, verily, it came to pass with the 2004 Modern Eagle. I bought one from the second production batch and happily played it for a bunch of years. It's now been superseded by a couple of guitars, but that's the way things go with PRS. They're always looking to raise the bar. As am I.
2. The DGT model. Obviously not a limited run, but it did three really important things IMHO:
a. added a second volume control to a traditional McCarty-recipe PRS
b. implemented some truly PAF-style pickups that worked great in conjunction with that guitar chassis
c. made the McCarty Trem [sic] into a standard production model
Oh, and I really REALLY like the DGT neck carve as well.
3. The first Collection Electric. That raised the bar in a major way. When I first got mine, I wrote Paul and said,
This is like going from regular TV to high definition TV. Paul responded by calling me up and we talked for the better part of an hour about what he was trying to accomplish with that guitar. IMHO, a whole lot of the great stuff they've done since then evolved from that guitar.
In terms of what I personally own, all three of the guitars mentioned here passed through my hands and moved on after I learned what I needed to learn and tweaked the recipe for my own specific purposes/needs. The PS KingsleyDGT is basically a cross between a Modern Eagle and a DGT. And the terra cotta McCarty Trem [sic] is basically my personal version of the Collection Electric I. Oh and of course there's Miss April, which is basically a super-hot version of the DGT.
