24 for 45

I remember when he first said it. “What are you doing for your 45th? I mean, you gotta go big since it’s a big year right!?” I guess I never thought about the “5’s” being as big as the “0’s” in terms of birthdays but my friend reminded me that 45 was pretty big. So I started thinking. Big.

What you are looking at above is the result of thinking big. It is a 2012 PRS Custom 24, limited-edition with hand-signed headstock. This was part of a small run of guitars that happened this spring and summer where Paul Reed Smith actually signed the headstock vs. it being a decal, as seen in the final photo above. I really like limited-edition guitars and gear, and this one caught my eye while perusing the Willcutt Guitars website one day. I wasn’t necessarily in the market for a new guitar, but I did have a nice little stash of funds from some side work and the eBay sales had been good lately so I started thinking that it would be fun to go Big with a new guitar.

As far as what makes this a limited edition other than Paul hand-signing the headstock, it has “Modern Eagle” birds, which means that the fretboard inlays are the same shell materials that PRS uses for their higher priced Modern Eagle guitars like the Quatro. It also has the new PRS 59/09 pickups that are uncovered for this series, and I am a fan of uncovered pickups. I just like the look of them much better than covered pickups. Speaking of those pickups, they are more vintage sounding than the ones in my 20th Anniversary Custom 24 PRS guitar, so that was another thing that had me interested because I don’t need 2 guitars that have similar sounding pickups. Other than that, all the other features of the Custom 24 are there, the rosewood fretboard, new beautiful Phase III open back tuning machines, V12 finish, 10 Top, tremolo and the magic that just is a PRS guitar.

As far as acquiring it, after I figured out that I did in fact have the cash, I still struck a deal with the store to shave a few hundred off the price since I’d seen another one cheaper at a different dealer and once Willcutt agreed to that, it was a done deal. I invited my friend Zac to accompany me on the 3.5 hour trip to Lexington, KY where Willcutt is, and we made a Saturday of it back in August. We got up there, and my rep Eric Cummins pulled the guitar for me. I opened the case, examined the look of it, sat down on a couch and started playing and didn’t stop for about 45 minutes. Then I went into the amp demo room and played for another 20 minutes or so. I liked the guitar immediately and in 2 seconds knew that it had all the amazing magic that a PRS has—great acoustic tone just playing it unplugged, perfect intonation and action, felt great and sounded great. And of course having a 10-Top doesn’t hurt either.

Zac and I went up the street to a local BBQ place to eat lunch and think about the purchase and by the time lunch was finished, I had pretty much made up my mind, but wanted to go back and play it for a bit more. I loved the guitar right off, it was just a matter of whether or not I wanted to spend the money.

We returned to Willcutt, I got the guitar out again and played for another 20 minutes or so and then decided it was mine. We started the paperwork and while that was happening, I picked out a black leather PRS guitar strap, because you have to match your guitar right?

Part of the reason for the purchase other than it being my sole birthday gift from Kristi and me combined, was that this has been a very hard year for me physically and emotionally, and I wanted to have something Big to help me get through the struggles I have experienced and to be a physical object of surviving the trials I have been in. Playing guitar gives me a lot of joy and peace and to me this is a symbol of survival. It’s more expensive than a tattoo, but brings me all joy and no pain. 

Once we were done with the payment, I asked Eric to open up one of the PRS “Collection” acoustics he has. Collection series are guitars are the highest end production private stock guitars that PRS makes, and they only make small batches of 50 each quarter that go out to a set amount of top PRS dealers. Willcutt is the top PRS dealer in the USA and they always have a great selection of amazing PRS instruments so it was a treat to get to play this $15,000.00 acoustic for 5 minutes or so. The sound was Big. Real Big. Price matching Big. 

I couldn’t play it very long because it made me nervous sitting there with a guitar that I could buy a car with, and we needed to get back on the road too. So Zac and I thanked Eric for his time and great service and we headed back to Nashville. It was a great one day adventure up to one of the best music stores in the entire country. This will not be my last Willcutt purchase, so I look forward to more trips up there with friends in the future. But for now, I will and have been enjoying my new PRS a lot. I got Paul Reed Smith to sign my backplate at Experience PRS 2012, but that will be covered in an upcoming post. 

Until then, stay tuned.