Paul Reed Smith

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Paul Reed Smith (February 18, 1956) is one of the world's premier luthiers and the founder and owner of PRS Guitars. His electric guitars are played by the likes of Alex Lifeson, Carlos Santana, Al Di Meola, Dave Navarro, Mark Tremonti, Mikael Åkerfeldt, Peter Lindgren, Steven Wilson, Tim Mahoney, Marcos Curiel, and Larry Lalonde.

Smith is originally from Bowie, Maryland. He made his first guitar while at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and continued to build guitars after he finished college, making them one at a time, one a month. He brought his instruments backstage at concerts, convincing musicians to try and critique his guitars. With this feedback he refined his guitar design.

Smith got his big break when Carlos Santana agreed to try one of his guitars. The story goes that Carlos thought the first guitar played so well it must have been an "accident of God", so he ordered a second instrument. That was an "accident of God" too, so he ordered a third, a doubleneck guitar. On the third try, Carlos realized that Paul was for real.

He then contacted Ted McCarty, former president of Gibson and creator of the Explorer, ES-335 and Flying V guitars, and McCarty became his mentor and advisor. The result of their collaboration was the current line of PRS Guitars, which include solid- and hollow-body guitars.

Gibson filed a lawsuit against PRS which claimed that the PRS Singlecut guitars infringed on the design of the Gibson Les Paul guitar. A Federal court granted an injunction prohibiting PRS from manufacturing the Singlecut guitar until the lawsuit had been heard. The Gibson lawsuit was unsuccessful and PRS has resumed production of the Singlecut.

Paul Reed Smith guitars' locking machine head tuners are incorporated into their design, allowing guitar strings to be rapidly changed. The strings easily lock into the machine heads on the guitar's headstock and do not have to be tied to the heads to prevent string slippage. This allows the guitar to stay in tune for a long time.

PRS has a lower-end line of guitars called the SE series. These guitars are either completely new models or cheaper versions of custom guitars, such as the Santana SE. The newer "Custom" SE Models have a higher quality neck (which is also set instead of bolted) than the rest of the line, feeling more like their big brothers.