The Two Guitars That Helped Launched PRS

In the early 1980's, a young guitar-builder named Paul Reed Smith knew that he needed funding in order to start his business - so he hit the road. Traveling up and down the East Coast, Paul took two guitars with him - the "PRS and PRS Custom."

These pre-factory guitars were essentially early prototypes of what would later become the PRS Standard, an all-mahogany guitar body with an opaque top, and the Custom 24, a mahogany backed guitar featuring a curly maple top.

While traveling the coast trying to acquire enough capital to get the business off the ground, Paul spoke to Ted Nugent about using a PRS to help promote his fledgling company; however, Paul didn't have a spare so he lent the Pearl White "PRS" to Ted to play at several shows. Paul says that all of the dings and scratches seen today on the guitar were put there by Ted.

"I lent this to Ted Nugent for this tour because I didn't have another guitar, and I needed him playing the guitar on tour," Paul said. "I needed every piece of advertising I could possibly get."

A highlight of the trip was meeting Richard Ash (of Sam Ash music) in New York. Richard put the maple topped "PRS Custom" through its paces. Despite it having been on the road with Paul for over a week, it played like a dream and stayed in perfect tune. Richard was apprehensive of the curly maple top as they weren't in favor at the time in the 1980's, but his salesman assured him that this guitar would absolutely sell without issue.

"He gave me an order for 12 guitars and then he repeated it in another 12 stores, and then repeated it four times, once every three months," Paul recalls. "That was almost a $300,000 order that he gave me, but they didn't know if curly maple was gonna sell again, it wasn't the thing!"

Paul set out with the goal of raising $100,000 in orders. He returned home with over $300,000. With the help of investors, Paul was able to secure a location to manufacture, purchase materials, and hire employees to officially launch "PRS Guitars" in 1985. He recalls that while it felt great to have the money to get the company off the ground, the best moment was when he received his first reorders.

The "PRS" guitar features an all mahogany body, a mahogany neck, and a rosewood fretboard with moon inlays. At launch the "PRS" was offered in either Pearl White or Pearl Black, the color was inspired by a car Paul had seen and aimed to emulate on a guitar. The moons on this instrument are an early example of the moon inlays that we still offer today on the DGT and SE DGT. Made to resemble the more traditional dot inlays on classic instruments, Paul elevated the design by utilizing two pieces of inlay instead of one. At first glance the shape is easily recognized as the crescent and gibbous phases of the moon, but a small detail many might miss is that the shape and angle of the crescent portion of the inlay mimics both the shape of the horns and headstock!

Interestingly, the two guitars Paul used to start the company each had a different inlay style, the Custom with birds, and the "PRS" with moons. Paul recalls that he thought the moons would be more popular than the now iconic bird inlays.

"I thought the moons were cool, David Grissom still likes them," Paul said. "It was just a simple guitar, I thought people wanted simple guitars. I didn't think they wanted complex guitars, but people are way more into how things look than you would know."

The "PRS Custom" is the blueprint for the current Custom 24, including its signature curly maple top over a mahogany body, mahogany neck, rosewood fretboard, and bird inlays. One interesting quirk of this guitar is that the top is slip-matched rather than our current process of book-matching maple tops. Paul laughingly said that this guitar would be sent back if they sold it today.

"Would this guitar get through our process now? No." Paul assures. "There's so many things, this thing would be waved off and I think it's magic. I mean, it got us the order to get us started, right?"

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Below, watch Paul Reed Smith and Marc Quigley (PRS Archivist and Brand Educator) in our "From the Archives" episode on these two iconic instruments: