Certain musical instruments have their own stories to be told. Famous guitar players have success stories that are interesting to tell and so do top guitar makers. The story of Paul Reed Smith, the maker of PRS Guitars, is the story of a special quest and every PRS instrument that he made is a landmark of it. People buy them for this good reason.
It's always surprising to find meeting points in guitar-related stories that seem distant, like those of Brian May, born in 1947 in the UK and Paul Reed Smith, born in 1956 in the United States. The former became the lead guitarist of world famous band Queen while the latter is a well-known modern guitar maker. These two people had a first time experiences in common: both have been exposed to small guitars in their early years. And this influence has resulted in their peculiar awareness of the quality of sounds.
A ukulele, the very small Hawaiian guitar with only four chords but a distinctive mellow sound, was Paul's first musical instrument. In contrast to that, Brian started out with early classical piano training. But another small and four-stringed instrument, namely the banjolele, put an abrupt end to that. The sounds it emitted were either harsh like those of a banjo, or mellow like those of a ukulele. When the child got this combination between a small banjo body and a ukulele neck, his fascination with the high peculiarity of its acoustic possibilities took over.
Almost all the Queen tunes were first performed on the Red Special, Brian May's custom-made guitar. Aged 16, Brian manufactured it together with his father, a specialist in aeronautics, using parts from an old fireplace, a motorbike and even a knitting needle. It wasn't for poverty that young Brian didn't buy a ready-made guitar, but for his dislike of the way they all sounded. There is a certain echo of his childhood acoustic experience embedded in the way the Red Special sounds.
Paul Reed Smith went another way in his passionate search for the perfect sound and winded up not as a musician, but as the maker of PRS Guitars. His first guitar was made during college and the experience he got was immediately invested in building a second one. While offering them to musicians backstage, many more instruments followed, on a monthly basis, always one at the time.
His true success came when he found someone to share his dream. Ted Mc Carty had already made the famous Explorer guitars and was leaving Gibson when they met and started working together on what would become the now recognized PRS Guitars, the outcome of two lives committed to the exploration of sounds.
It's always surprising to find meeting points in guitar-related stories that seem distant, like those of Brian May, born in 1947 in the UK and Paul Reed Smith, born in 1956 in the United States. The former became the lead guitarist of world famous band Queen while the latter is a well-known modern guitar maker. These two people had a first time experiences in common: both have been exposed to small guitars in their early years. And this influence has resulted in their peculiar awareness of the quality of sounds.
A ukulele, the very small Hawaiian guitar with only four chords but a distinctive mellow sound, was Paul's first musical instrument. In contrast to that, Brian started out with early classical piano training. But another small and four-stringed instrument, namely the banjolele, put an abrupt end to that. The sounds it emitted were either harsh like those of a banjo, or mellow like those of a ukulele. When the child got this combination between a small banjo body and a ukulele neck, his fascination with the high peculiarity of its acoustic possibilities took over.
Almost all the Queen tunes were first performed on the Red Special, Brian May's custom-made guitar. Aged 16, Brian manufactured it together with his father, a specialist in aeronautics, using parts from an old fireplace, a motorbike and even a knitting needle. It wasn't for poverty that young Brian didn't buy a ready-made guitar, but for his dislike of the way they all sounded. There is a certain echo of his childhood acoustic experience embedded in the way the Red Special sounds.
Paul Reed Smith went another way in his passionate search for the perfect sound and winded up not as a musician, but as the maker of PRS Guitars. His first guitar was made during college and the experience he got was immediately invested in building a second one. While offering them to musicians backstage, many more instruments followed, on a monthly basis, always one at the time.
His true success came when he found someone to share his dream. Ted Mc Carty had already made the famous Explorer guitars and was leaving Gibson when they met and started working together on what would become the now recognized PRS Guitars, the outcome of two lives committed to the exploration of sounds.
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One of the true success stories of modern guitar building the prs guitars were created in 1985 by Paul Reed Smith.
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