This year's Custom is offered with two neck profiles: pattern thin or pattern regular, as here. It's super-sharp today, too: comparing fit and finish to a 1988 PRS Classic Electric, you can see and feel the differences as though every fine detail has been subsequently honed to perfection. Everything is perfectly executed high quality - words that have been associated with PRS from day one. The extended tongue of the 24-fret, one-piece mahogany neck sits under the neck pickup, while the compact heel and the hallmark cutaway 'scoop' allow easy access to the top frets. The 49mm-thick Custom's body uses a one-piece 28.5mm mahogany back topped with a 20.5mm-thick, book-matched and centre-jointed carved maple cap. What has barely changed in 30 years is the construction style.
The nut material has evolved, too always friction-reducing, the latest recipe adds bronze and glass powder to the material. While the vibrato has remained very true to the original vision, the locking tuners have evolved and today we're onto the third generation of top-locking types with open backs and a total absence of any nylon washers. The offset double-cut body with its halfway-between-Gibson-and-Fender scale length, its vibrato with notched pivot screws and originally all-brass casting, now, as it has been for a considerable time, a two-piece design. Of course, the pickup can hear only what the instrument is producing, and PRS's blend was certainly unique back in 1985. Plugging pickups into his testing rig, Smith shows us the tonal effect of covered versus uncovered humbuckers - the latter, as here, have noticeably more output and a slightly higher resonant frequency, which results in a subtly brighter tonality compared to the covered version. We have a machine that we test our pickups on - it has really helped us to 'see' the sound: it tells us exactly how the pickup will sound before we plug it in. There's a real trick to making them bright and musical and not bright and ice- pick-y. "See, some people just don't remember how bright they could be.
As a matter of fact, sometimes some PAFs with their covers removed can be brighter than Strat pickups - really bright but still in a musical way. "If you listen to a set of old PAFs, they almost sound like Strat pickups - they are very clear-sounding pickups. Typically tight-lipped about what's under the hood, Smith prefers to discuss the sonic differences. Covers aside, the internals are identical. Available covered on this year's SC 245 and new P245, and called 58/15s, the uncovered versions here, which show off their proprietary square-edged bobbins, are called 85/15s. The latest in the 'date' series, they continue Paul Reed Smith's ongoing quest to nail the 'best' PAF-style 'bucker.