PRS Silver Sky

3
first play
13
MaY 2018 Guitarist
PRS SILVER SKY
(measuring 21.6mm at the 1st fret, 24.7mm
at the 12th), the shoulders are quite full
but far from over square. And any worries
that the small radius will choke out are
completely unfounded; thumb around or
thumb behind it’s extremely comfortable.
Action is pretty normal, a shade over 1.5mm
on the treble side and a shade under 2mm
on the bass measured at the 12th fret with
minimal relief (approx. 0.127mm) and a
saddle radius that’s closer to 229mm (nine
inches). Yes, the smaller frets might take
more adjustment, as the lower height means
your fingertips feel more contact with
the rosewood ’board than they do with a
bigger jumbo wire. They seem to contribute
to a slightly different note attack, a little
snappier, woodier perhaps? Yet the sustain
is noticeably rich – the headstock and body
feel alive and vibrant.
Plugged in there are some gorgeous
sounds: neck, neck and middle, middle and
bridge all hit the spot immediately. The
neck’s voice balances a fullness in the lower
end with cut but not too much metallic
percussion; those textured combined
voices don’t sound overly scooped (and are
hum-cancelling). After our first play test
we realised we hadn’t gone to the middle
or bridge but in our second session neither
disappointed. The bridge is rather like the
PRS 58/15 LT, it’s not quite what you expect:
it isn’t wig-lifting and its ‘honk’ is pulled
back a little. Kick in some dirt and roll back
the excellently tapered tone and the Strat’s
textured, grainy rock voice comes to the
fore: the middle pickup offering a darker,
subtly deeper but nicely gritty texture.
Yes, it’s a Stratocaster but there’s a really
noticeable balance between heft and spike,
a huge dynamic range and that wonderfully
enveloping sustain. This is a guitar that we
really don’t want to put down. On the one
hand every sound recalls a great Strat player,
or style, but everything works so well that
once you get over that you’re into your own
WORKING
WITH THAT
FINGERBOARD
RADIUS
A vintage Fender fi ngerboard
radius is historically ‘good for
chording comfort but chokes
out on higher fret bends’. “If
the frets aren’t level or the
action is too low, yes,” says
Paul Reed Smith. “But if you
have the frets and neck dead
level and the action is not too
low and it’s set up right then
it doesn’t choke out. Listen
to
Machine Gun and every
Hendrix bend there is? Does
it choke out? So we went
in the face of current logic.
John Mayer solos on all those
records with that radius. I
just don’t hear a problem.”
Setting the guitars up
so that they play perfectly,
however, isn’t so easy. “It’s
not easy. Not only do the
frets have to be dead level,
the edges have to be rounded
over perfectly, the neck can’t
be too bowed, it can’t be
bowed backwards, it can’t be
dead straight and the action
has to be set up dead on the
money. There are all kinds of
issues here. The nut’s gotta
be cut the right height, it’s
very sensitive.”
3. 635? A mix of ’63 and
’64 so the name is in the
middle: 63 and a half.
Sound-wise they blend
those years’ vintage
voice with PRS’s own
proprietary tweaks, not
to mention ‘precision
valued’ pots, a higher
signal-to-noise ratio
plus hum-cancelling
in the mix positions.
Ultimately, the pickups
were based on “one
pickup on one of his
[John’s] guitars, a ’64,”
says Paul Reed Smith
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
GIT432.rev_prs.indd 13 3/20/18 5:24 PM