PRS Employee Spotlight - Travis Guare // Casing
Posted Aug 16, 2019
MEET TRAVIS
As a member of our quality control team, Travis is an important final step in our production at PRS. After final assembly, Travis and his coworkers in casing are the last touch point before a guitar is shipped to our dealers and distributors worldwide.
Travis landed at PRS after applying for a position as a sander in 2014. On his application, he mentioned how much he enjoyed cleaning and maintaining his own instruments. Naturally, this made him a great fit for our casing department where guitars are giving a close final inspection and polished before leaving our factory. In addition to being an all-around cool dude, Travis loves discovering new music, playing guitar & bass, and riding his longboard. Learn more about Travis and his role at PRS below!
Q&A
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You have handled a lot of guitars over the years, do you have a favorite PRS model and color?
TG: My 2 year employee guitar, it’s a Custom 24 in Eriza Verde finish. It has a bunch of different tones and settings that I like to explore. It feels great and I love the shape.
What does a job in casing involve? What are you responsible for?
TG: I’ll run it down from beginning to end, guitars are inspected by the final assembly team where they do the final play-test and sound check. The finish quality is given another inspection by Steve and Jason, you can think of them as the pre-casers. They load up our rack where our team (quality control) will look over the whole guitar for any types of blemishes, scratches, pin holes, or any marks on the bare wood (fretboard / headstock veneer). We use bright lights at our benches so we can see any minor scratches. The small scratches we can buff out so we mark the spots with wax pencil and once it’s all marked up we take it to the buffing room. We do our buffing in two stages, the first to get rid of the scratches, and the second to do a final polish. Once the guitar is looking perfect, we scan the serial number and take a photo of the instrument for inventory. We then grab the right case or gig bag for the guitar and it’s off to shipping. Some models are faster to case than others, but the process might take 10-20 minutes per guitar. I do around 20-25 guitars per day.
Are you involved in any music projects at the moment?
TG: I’ve taken a step back from playing in bands at the moment, but I’m having a lot of fun learning different rhythm parts in a variety of songs.
Imagine you’ve got a private jet and a long weekend, where are you going?
TG: I’ve always wanted to go to Australia and a private jet seems like the right way to get there.
You can eat whatever you want while listening to whatever you want, what’s your pick?
TG: Surf and turf with a side of Biggie Smalls.
Would you rather be an average person in the present, or a king of a large country 2000 years ago?
TG: Definitely an average person in the present, the technology is awesome. Sitting around a throne sounds boring.
What do you love most about working at PRS?
TG: The friends I’ve made and everything I’ve learned here. I've learned a ton about guitars in general and everything that goes into the process of making them. It’s pretty fascinating.
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Check out the PRS Product Pages to see the guitars Travis and our other great employees work on each day!