PRS 513.
On Friday I purchased the PRS 513.
I decided to go for the Black Cherry guitar. It will arrive in 4 to 6 months. In the meantime, I took home a loaner Blue Matteo PRS 513. The pictures today are of that guitar.
Playing this guitar is so smooth. The two most obvious differences between this guitar and my last guitar are the stability of the neck and the quality of the sound. Playing this guitar feels so solid. It’s like the guitar is grounded in the rock of ages and it will not be swayed by any amount of distortion. This could be because of the guitar’s weight. The PRS weighs in at 8.5 pounds. I’m not sure what my last guitar weighed, but it was much less.
The second thing is the sound quality. When you set the guitar up with the humbucker settings there’s really nice noise cancellation that’s so pleasant.
The headstock has lock down tuners and a scalloped nut. The guitar has a deep neck and wide frets that play so smoothly. The wood work is gorgeous and the stain, despite being the less than gorgeous (in my opinion) blue matteo, is very well done.
It’s got a huge range of sounds. I can pull off a really quacky twang or a super mellow growl with the quick flip of a switch or twist of a knob.
The internal electronics are intense. Instead of a wire nest that you’d find in a normal guitar, the PRS has a sweet circuit board that keeps everything clean and orderly.
The bridge, complete with a sweet tolerance fit whammy bar connection point, is reinforced by 4 springs in the back as shown below. I was actually really impressed with the whammy bar. My last guitar had a threaded shaft for the whammy bar. The PRS seems a lot better designed. It fits together really nicely.
While the guitar is noteworthy enough, I also got a VOX ToneLab LE. It is a powerful robust effects monster.
It’s got 30 banks and 4 channels for a total of 120 preset settings. Each setting can be EASILY modified from a standing position by smashing your foot against the correct foot switch. There’s also a pedal for fine tuned modifications. It’s pretty wild.
I’m pretty excited about my purchase. And while it was very expensive, the guys at the guitar store dropped $275 bucks off the purchase price of the VOX ToneLab.
The only thing I don’t like about the guitar is that, as I was telling Ben, it has a seriously high rock quota.
My other electric has a very low rock quota, so it was easy to find things to play. The PRS 513 demands superior guitar playing. It demands the rock of legends.
I need to practice my sweep picking.
Authored by: mike d.
