Paul Reed Smith makes for all kinds of high-profile players. He pretty much launched PRS Guitars on the back of Carlos Santana’s endorsement. Forty years on, players such as John Mayer, Mark Tremonti and Zach Myers swear by his electric guitar designs.
But he was asked an interesting hypothetical the other day, one that all guitar makers will have pondered at some point: if Eddie Van Halen knocked on your door and asked you to make a guitar, what would you make him?
It’s a tantalizing prospect, not least because of how the PRS high-end electric guitar aesthetic might have jived with EVH’s DIY Mcgayver approach, guitars hot-rodded with power tools and bicycle paint. It would have to be something from the bolt-on series, right? Surely, as on Herman Li of DragonForce’s limited edition Chleo, it would have a double-locking vibrato.
But it is kind of a trick question. Because as Smith reveals, he did actually make Eddie Van Halen a guitar – and he made him one of his most famous S-styles.
It started with a panicked phone call from the top brass at Kramer. They needed his help. “What was going on was, Kramer at the time didn’t have a guitar maker, Eddie was coming. So they called me,” says Smith. “Dennis Berardi called me, and said, ‘Paul! Paul! I need your help. Eddie’s coming up. We need you to put a guitar together.’”
They called the right man. Smith had some ideas.
“I came up and we assembled this Kramer guitar for him. I made the pickup for it,” he says. “It was set up with pieces of aluminum in the back and he could set it like this [like a lap steel] and play it like a piano. But that guitar, eventually, those pieces of aluminum got removed and that was the 5150 guitar.
“At the time, Kramer was making necks and making bodies, so we were assembling parts. But I did get a chance to make Eddie a guitar.”
Those are life goals right there. But Smith had another fun anecdote. Where were you when you first played a guitar with a Floyd Rose? Was it, say, a Jackson Dinky in a now-defunct Glasgow guitar store? Was it at NAMM?
When Smith first tried a Floyd, it was backstage at a Van Halen show, and it was on Eddie Van Halen’s touring guitars. The enquiring mind of the engineer in him would have been fascinated by the Floyd’s architecture, but that wasn’t his takeaway from the whole experience. It was Eddie Van Halen’s greatness.
“We had never seen a Floyd Rose, and I was able to try the guitar backstage at a Van Halen concert,” says Smith. “What was interesting about it was the crew was excited to hear their own musician play.
We had never seen a Floyd Rose, and I was able to try the guitar backstage at a Van Halen concert
“They were literally talking from 12 o’clock, all day, ‘Oh my God! This guitar player!?’ And he would prance across like a pony and play… Just musical. It wasn’t fast. It was just so musical and powerful. What a guitar player.”
PRS Guitars is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, doing what it enjoys best – releasing guitars, at least one a month. Just a few days ago Mark Holcomb’s signature guitar was added to the Core US-made lineup for the first time. It had previously been available only as a limited edition model.
The Maryland-based brand also announced that it would be selling its electric guitar pickups, so you can mod your electric with some US-made pickups from Smith. Which, y’know, were good enough for Eddie Van Halen.
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