Today’s announcements are focused across the PRS Guitars’ line up from Core to the SE Series and represent both electric guitars as well as a new amp.
The PRS Modern Eagle V Officially Joins the Core Lineup
The first Modern Eagle instrument was introduced in 2004 and represented the pinnacle of the Core manufacturing at that time. Previously only offered via limited runs, the PRS Modern Eagle V now continues that tradition in the core lineup with its innovative pickup and electronics system offering a vast array of highly usable, musical tones in one guitar. The Modern Eagle V utilizes a hum/single/hum (five-coil) pickup layout and features a 5-way blade switch that selects the pickups in intuitive groupings: treble, treble and middle, middle, middle and bass, and bass. There is a single volume and a push/pull tone control that activates both humbuckers when engaged, which allows players to access all three pickups simultaneously. Finally, the mini toggles allow players to individually separate the pickup coils, turning the humbuckers into true single coils. This electronics design provides a whole set of classic and new tones.
“Modern Eagle models have always been built to stand up to history while celebrating tonewoods and the discovery of new tones. The Modern Eagle V is a sophisticated instrument not only in its craftsmanship but in its electronic and mechanical design,” said Paul Reed Smith. “We’ve refined the pickup tones and are pleased to now add it to the Core lineup.”
The Modern Eagle V | Demo | PRS Guitars
Vintage-Inspired McCarty and DGT Models Come to the PRS SE Series
For 2023, PRS is introducing four new models in the SE Series: the PRS SE McCarty 594, SE McCarty 594 Singlecut, SE McCarty 594 Singlecut Standard, and the SE DGT (David Grissom Trem), and it’s no accident that these models are coming to the SE Series at the same time. The original McCarty design (released in 1994) was highly influenced by Grissom and was designed to infuse vintage specs in a reliable, modern guitar. In 2007, Grissom’s signature DGT model was released, which added a tremolo bridge, tweaked pickups, and a refined neck shape to the McCarty platform, creating a guitar that rivals Grissom’s personal vintage favorites. PRS recently released a three-part video series documenting the development of the SE DGT model, which can be seen on the PRS Guitars YouTube channel. These introductions continue the SE’s recent promise to bring more PRS DNA and value into the more affordable line.
“I didn’t just rubber stamp this. This guitar is something I have been very involved in and am really proud of. The SE Series is lightyears ahead of anything I could get my hands on when I started playing - it’s amazing how far the quality has come – and I am proud to be able to offer this guitar to more people.” - David Grissom
The SE McCarty 594 | Demo | PRS Guitars
Dustie Waring Limited Edition CE and Artist Model Updates
Dustie Waring’s signature PRS starts with the CE 24 platform and includes a satin-finished maple neck, maple fretboard, a slightly modified Pattern Thin neck carve, and (on this limited edition version) a hardtail bridge. The Between the Buried and Me guitarist finishes the model with his signature Mojotone Dustie Waring Gen 2 Tomahawk pickups that offer articulate, clear, high-output sounds.
“I tracked a whole record with this guitar. It performed amazingly and just had a different flavor from my Floyd model. There’s way more body – it definitely has a full sound. I’m able to use it for 99% of my session work in Nashville,” said Dustie Waring, Between the Buried and Me.
Periphery’s Mark Holcomb signature SE is also being updated with a new color – Holcomb Blue Burst – and all-new signature Seymour Duncan pickups. The new “Scarlet & Scourge” treble and bass pickups were designed to work with modeling amps in mind and bring full tone with slightly less drive, offering more articulation than ever. Zach Myers of Shinedown’s signature model is also getting a new spec, updating the scale length from 24.5” to PRS’s 24.594” scale length.
The DW CE 24 Hardtail Limited Edition | PRS Guitars
10th Anniversary of the S2 Series
The PRS S2 Series began in 2013 as a way to offer the fit, feel, and attention to detail of PRS craftsmanship in a fresh, straightforward design. Meaning “Stevensville 2,” the S2 Series was named for a second manufacturing line that was created inside the PRS Stevensville, Maryland shop that blended new manufacturing techniques with practiced quality control and workmanship to create instruments at a new price point for players. Over the last ten years, the S2 Series has grown from three to more than a dozen models and has become a powerful part of PRS Guitars. Today, the S2 Series is more integrated into a single production line with PRS Core and Bolt-On instruments.
To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the S2 Series, PRS is offering two celebratory models: the 10th Anniversary PRS S2 Custom 24 and 10th Anniversary PRS S2 McCarty 594 Limited Edition guitars. These special models will retain the guitar’s standard specs and add a Cuban mahogany neck, mother of pearl bird inlays, and – most notably – USA-made PRS 85/15 and 58/15 LT pickups and electronics (respectively). PRS has been on an inspiring journey studying pickup tone and design for many years now. These pickups have been fine-tuned using their TCI process for rich, clear, and balanced tone. Only 2,000 total 10th Anniversary S2 Series instruments will be made.
The 10th Anniversary S2 Custom 24 | Demo | PRS Guitars
The PRS Sonzera Returns
Returning to the lineup after a brief reprieve, the PRS Sonzera is a moderately powered 20 watt 1x12 combo amplifier. The Sonzera offers mid-1960’s American-style tone with two independently controlled, footswitchable channels designed for maximum versatility. The Sonzera’s gain channel can be set as a boosted clean channel or with heavy distortion, and the spring reverb and built-in effects loop allow players to easily expand their tonal palette. This is a distinct amp in the PRS line up, which also boasts the Archon, HDRX, DG Custom, and MT-15 amplifiers.
“I am very happy to re-release the new Sonzera 20 combo with improved construction techniques, refined voicing, and fresh cosmetics. Their design inspiration draws from the purity and tonal beauty of vintage American reverb amps of the 60s. The two-channel design is currently unique to the PRS lineup in that the Gain channel is simply the Clean channel with additional gain stages and its own tone stack inserted for discreet lead voicing control,” said PRS Amp Designer, Doug Sewell. “The 12 to 35-watt classic American reverb amps were very inspirational to me as a beginning amp designer in Texas. I consider the Sonzera amps an homage to those early days, and it was especially satisfying and nostalgic to be a part of their development and production.”
The Sonzera 20 | PRS Guitars
For more information, please visit prsguitars.com.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
The Gibson EH-185, introduced in 1939, was one of the company’s first electric guitars.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of electric guitar in shaping American popular music over the last half-century. Its introduction was a revolution, changing the course of modern musical styles. Today, when we think of the guitars that started the revolution, we think of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul, guitars held against the body and fretted with the fingertips. But the real spark of this musical mutiny was the lap-steel guitar.
In the early 20th century, guitar music was moving out of the parlors of homes and into public spaces where folks could gather together and dance. Guitarists needed to project their sound far beyond where their wimpy little acoustic instruments could reach. Instrument manufacturers began experimenting with larger body sizes, metal construction, and resonators to increase volume.
Around this time, George Beauchamp began experimenting with electric guitar amplification. He settled on a design using two U-shaped magnets and a single coil of wire. Beauchamp was in business with Adolph Rickenbacker, and they decided to stick this new invention into a lap steel.
If we put on our 1930s glasses, this decision makes perfect sense. The most popular music at the time was a blend of Hawaiian and jazz styles made famous by virtuosos like Solomon “Sol” Hoʻopiʻi. Photos of Hoʻopiʻi with a metal-body resonator abound—one can imagine his relief at being handed an instrument that projected sound toward the audience via an amplifier, rather than back at his own head via resonator cones. Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were simply following the market.
As it turned out, the popularity of Hawaiian music gave way to swing, and electric lap steels didn’t exactly take the world by storm. But Beauchamp and Rickenbacker had proven the viability of this new technology, and other manufacturers followed suit. In 1937, Gibson created a pickup with magnets under the strings, rather than above like Beauchamp’s.
“When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y.”
The first page of Gibson’s “Electrical Instruments” section in the 1939 catalog features a glowing, full-page write-up of their top-of-the-line lap steel: the EH-185. “Everything about this new electric Hawaiian Guitar smacks of good showmanship,” effuses the copy. “It has smoothness, great sustaining power, and an easy flow of tone that builds up strongly and does not die out.”
Picking up the 1940 EH-185 at Fanny’s House of Music is about as close as one can get to traveling back in time to try a new one. It is just so clean, with barely any dings or even finish checking. Overall, this is a 9/10 piece, and it’s a joy to behold. Speaking of picking it up, the first thing you notice when you lift the EH-185 out of the case is its weight. This is a much heavier instrument than other similar-sized lap steels, owing to a length of thick metal between the body and the fretboard. The catalog calls it “Hyblum metal,” which may be a flowery trade name for an early aluminum alloy.
This 1940 EH-185 is heavier than other lap steels in its class, thanks to a length of metal between its fretboard and body.
Photo by Madison Thorn
There are numerous other fancy appointments on the EH-185 that Gibson didn’t offer on their lesser models. It’s made of highly figured maple, with diamond-shaped decorations on the back of the body and neck. The double binding is nearly a centimeter thick and gives the instrument a luxurious, expensive look.
Behind all these high-end attributes is a great-sounding guitar, thanks to that old pickup. It’s got three blades protruding through the bobbin for the unwound strings and one longer blade for the wound strings. When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y. It was just crying out for a little crunch and a bluesy touch. It’s kind of cool how such a pristine, high-end vintage instrument can be so well-suited for a sound that’s rough around the edges.
As far as electric guitars go, it doesn’t get much more vintage than this 1940 Gibson EH-185 Lap Steel. It reminds us of where the story of the electric guitar truly began. This EH-185 isn’t just a relic—it’s a testament to when the future of music was unfolding in real time. Plug it in, and you become part of the revolution.
Sources: Smithsonian, Vintage Guitar, Mozart Project, Gibson Pre-War, WIRED, Steel Guitar Forum, Vintaxe
