{"id":132928,"date":"2022-07-23T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-23T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=132928"},"modified":"2023-05-31T20:09:18","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T03:09:18","slug":"paul-reed-smith-took-inspiration-from-torres-for-his-acoustic-guitar-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/paul-reed-smith-took-inspiration-from-torres-for-his-acoustic-guitar-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Reed Smith Took Inspiration from Torres for His Acoustic Guitar Design"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>This feature originally appeared in the <a href=\"https:\/\/store.acousticguitar.com\/products\/no-264-december-2014\">December 2014<\/a> issue and has been updated for 2022<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a  2013 TEDx Talk about guitar making, Paul Reed Smith dropped three nuts on the floor, paused to make the obvious double entendre, then drew the audience\u2019s attention to something more subtle. Each guitar nut had a distinct sonic property. One was made from plastic, which Smith compared to the material linking a toilet to a septic tank. It landed with a dull thud. Another was made of bone, and had a greater resonance when it hit the floor. The third was constructed from a proprietary material, and sounded even livelier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Smith looked up at the crowd. \u201cIt makes a difference what the materials are,\u201d he said. Moments later, he walked over to one of the acoustics that his company, PRS Guitars, makes. \u201cSo now I\u2019m going to play with the theory,\u201d he said, strumming the instrument. \u201cIt\u2019s sustaining longer than most electric guitars. Can you hear that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Building the perfect guitar: Paul Reed Smith at TEDxMidAtlantic\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sNzJjlV1TOA?start=270&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Over his four-decade career as an instrument maker, Smith has approached the guitar, which he refers to as an \u201capplied physics device,\u201d with scientific rigor. He has scrutinized the impact that even the smallest component, like the nut, has on sound. He has analyzed the best Fender and Gibson designs to arrive at his own style of high-performance electric guitar, and in so doing succeeded at crafting a lineage of instruments known for their imposing voice and easy play coupled with trademark cosmetics such as gemlike finishes and bird-in-flight inlays that have transformed the electric guitar into a luxury good. In more recent years, Smith has given the acoustic guitar a similar treatment in PRS\u2019s collection of custom and mass-produced instruments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like many guitar makers, Smith, now in his mid-60s, had a modest start. The son of a big band leader turned mathematician, Smith grew up in a musical home, taking up the ukulele when he was four. At home his mother sang and played a nylon-string guitar, which he appropriated for learning Beatles songs. Smith got serious about the guitar as a means of coping with teenage life, but he couldn\u2019t afford the expensive instruments favored by his favorite groups. \u201cI had no choice but to build my own,\u201d he says by phone from his headquarters in Stevensville, Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/9SEA60E_PRS-back-wood-figured.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/9SEA60E_PRS-back-wood-figured.jpg?resize=900%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-132981\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/9SEA60E_PRS-back-wood-figured.jpg?w=900&amp;ssl=1 900w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/9SEA60E_PRS-back-wood-figured.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/9SEA60E_PRS-back-wood-figured.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/9SEA60E_PRS-back-wood-figured.jpg?resize=600%2C400&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/9SEA60E_PRS-back-wood-figured.jpg?resize=360%2C240&amp;ssl=1 360w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Ziricote on full display on the back of a PRS SE A60E<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As a high school student, Smith began building guitars in his bedroom, and around the same time learned to repair guitars while working in a shop in Washington, D.C. He briefly studied at St. Mary\u2019s College of Maryland, but dropped out to focus on building guitars and playing in bands. Smith became a fixture on the local scene and soon developed a clever strategy: after completing a guitar, he would tote it to a venue and ingratiate himself with a roadie in order to gain backstage access. This is how he sold a guitar to <a href=\"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/al-di-meola-takes-classic-beatles-tunes-to-new-places\/\">Al Di Meola<\/a> and then another to Carlos Santana. \u201cPeople were definitely much more excited by the instruments I was making than by my guitar playing,\u201d Smith says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By 1985, on the strength of his high-profile clients, Smith was able to move from tiny shop where he\u2019d been working and living to a proper factory with a staff of guitar makers. The mid-\u201980s was a rough period for the major electric-guitar manufacturers, both in terms of brand identity and quality control. But PRS, with its new designs and consistently fine craftsmanship, established itself as a top player on the electric market. Smith was so persnickety about quality that he was known to destroy guitars that weren\u2019t up to snuff. From the outside, it seemed that Smith had solidified his reputation as a lasting instrument maker, but he wasn\u2019t satisfied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey say it takes 10 years to get good at something,\u201d Smith says, \u201cbut it must\u2019ve taken me twice as long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Smith had always loved acoustic guitars. As a young repairman, he had become intimate with acoustics by rebuilding guitars that he says were \u201csmashed in anger.\u201d At trade shows, he was well-known for checking out all the best new acoustics. \u201cI enjoy the form immensely\u2014this combination of guitar making, beauty, and physics,\u201d Smith says. \u201cEven more than electrics, acoustic guitars are physics devices, involving a transfer of force to sound. Take two identical sets of nylon strings, put one on a $100 guitar and the other on Segovia\u2019s guitar, and the latter will fill an auditorium with music, while the other might have a puny sound. Segovia\u2019s instrument is doing a much better job of transferring force into sound energy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/PRS-Tonare-and-SE_P20E_TobaccoSunburst_02.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"612\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/PRS-Tonare-and-SE_P20E_TobaccoSunburst_02.jpg?resize=900%2C612&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-132982\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/PRS-Tonare-and-SE_P20E_TobaccoSunburst_02.jpg?w=900&amp;ssl=1 900w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/PRS-Tonare-and-SE_P20E_TobaccoSunburst_02.jpg?resize=300%2C204&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/PRS-Tonare-and-SE_P20E_TobaccoSunburst_02.jpg?resize=768%2C522&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/PRS-Tonare-and-SE_P20E_TobaccoSunburst_02.jpg?resize=600%2C408&amp;ssl=1 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Left: Tobacco sunburst finish on an all-mahogany SE Tonare parlor guitar. <br>Right: Quilted maple top on a Private Stock Angelus cutaway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In the early 1990s, PRS briefly flirted with acoustic guitar making in a collaboration with the luthier Dana Bourgeois, resulting in a handful of instruments that never made it past the prototype stage. Smith couldn\u2019t put his finger on it, he says, but the guitars just didn\u2019t capture the sound that he was looking for. Then, in the mid-2000s, Smith saw a guitar in the collection of Larry Thomas, the CEO of Guitar Center who now heads Fender. Smith was blown away by the instrument. \u201cLarry played two notes on this tiny guitar, three inches deep with maple back and sides, built in the 1800s by <a href=\"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/from-the-archives-a-200th-birthday-appreciation-of-luthier-antonio-de-torres\/\">Antonio Torres<\/a>,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen I heard it for the first time, it was so beautiful that I instantly welled up. The guitar was just exploding with tone, so much louder and with more bass than any other acoustic guitar I\u2019d ever heard. I was confounded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To understand how the guitar worked, Smith had it X-rayed. Based on his findings, Smith says, \u201cI came to the conclusion that, although he didn\u2019t know it as such, Torres was thinking of the guitar as a kind of speaker cabinet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Smith knew then that his own steel-string acoustic guitar designs would borrow structural elements from Torres. He enlisted the luthier Steve Fischer to arrive at a model whose soundboard combines Torres-style fan bracing with the X-pattern traditionally used on steel-string guitars. Rather than having both the top and back vibrating, as on the traditional steel-string, PRS uses a back that doesn\u2019t move; it\u2019s locked in place with large but lightweight mahogany braces. To extend Smith\u2019s metaphor, the soundboard is the diaphragm and the back is the cabinet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The same basic design principles are used on all PRS acoustics, from the <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3coduoj\">Angelus<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3Pzf6d0\">Tonare<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3cq2hmT\">Parlor<\/a> models in the Korean-made SE series, of which around 2,000 total are made per month, to those select few, two dozen or fewer per year, built primarily by the luthier Austin Harris inside the Maryland factory&#8217;s Private Stock department. Smith has never actually built an acoustic guitar himself, but he takes a hands-on role with the one or two acoustic instruments the company makes each month. \u201cAt this point, it wouldn\u2019t be a good use of time to sit in the back of a shop and work on an acoustic; it would take away from my role as a leader in working on new projects,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I have my hands on every guitar we make, and I even keep a master bracing pattern right here in my office. I might be the managing general partner of PRS, but not a single acoustic leaves the building without my playing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHold on a second, let me grab a guitar,\u201d Smith says. He pauses to retrieve a nearby Angelus and tunes its sixth string to D before launching into some aggressive playing. \u201cThis thing is probably distorting your phone. It just sounds like a rocket!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"New Gear: The Paul Reed Smith Angelus SE A30E Reviewed\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/en5jcTUp79w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Though Smith\u2019s description may sound like hyperbole, more than a few top-shelf players agree with his assessment of the power and tone of PRS\u2019s acoustic guitars. Two of those players are the fingerstyle wizard Tony McManus and singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOne day several years ago,\u201d LaMontagne says, \u201cmy friend brought over a PRS acoustic guitar and took it out of the case. I was like, \u2018Oh my God, that\u2019s so weird! The headstock is odd\u2014what\u2019s going on here? But as soon as I started playing it, I just lost it. All that stuff I was missing was there. It was so present [with a] really beefy low end, and yet I wasn\u2019t losing anything on the high end. With every other guitar to this point, I felt like I was getting one or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After distorting my phone, Smith picks up his Angelus and, in a nod to Torres, plays a brisk passage in the E Phrygian mode. \u201cThe guy had it right,\u201d Smith says, \u201cand we\u2019ve left a lot of his theories intact in making our rockets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Review: Paul Reed Smith SE A10E\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-7t9xda_mJI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Paul Reed Smith first heard an 1800s acoustic guitar built by Antonio Torres, he knew his own steel-string guitar designs would borrow structural elements from Torres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":132980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"When Paul Reed Smith first heard an 1800s acoustic guitar built by Antonio Torres, he knew his own steel-string guitar designs would borrow structural elements from Torres.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1147],"tags":[1704,1125,228],"ppma_author":[1541],"class_list":["post-132928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guitarmakers-and-guitarmaking","tag-december-2014","tag-makers-and-shakers","tag-prs"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Paul-Reed-Smith-Acoustic-Guitar-Luthier-Plays-a-PRS-model-in-the-studio-e1658428123278.jpg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1","authors":[{"term_id":1541,"user_id":24,"is_guest":0,"slug":"adam-perlmutterstringletter-com","display_name":"Adam Perlmutter","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Adam-Perlmutter.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Adam-Perlmutter.jpg"},"user_url":"","last_name":"Perlmutter","first_name":"Adam","job_title":"","description":"Adam Perlmutter holds a bachelor of music degree from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and a master's degree in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory. He is the editor of <i>Acoustic Guitar<\/i>."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132928"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135961,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132928\/revisions\/135961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132928"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=132928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}