Nov 24, 2015 · Paul Reed Smith built his first guitar in 1975. Now, his company builds more than 1,100 guitars per month in the United States and imports 2,500 more from Korea.

Paul Reed Smith Guitars, also known as PRS Guitars or simply PRS, is an American guitar and amplifier manufacturer founded in 1985 in Annapolis, Maryland by Paul Reed Smith. After dropping out of college, Smith began making guitars by hand and found early customers in players like Peter Frampton and Carlos Santana .

When Paul Smith was 16, he dreamt about a guitar with a dragon inlaid down the neck. 20 years later, the first PRS Dragon guitar was born. With a list price of $8,000 it was an ultra-high-end "collector" guitar.

Jan 12, 2023 · Launched in 2000 at the first Winter NAMM show of the new millennium, the PRS Singlecut was the company’s first single-cutaway electric. Clearly an evolution of the Gibson Les Paul design, it also saw PRS adopt the twin volume, twin tone and three-way toggle control configuration that featured on the first Goldtops back in 1952.

Oct 17, 2018 · In the 70's gas was .36 cents a gallon, the Beatles had just broken up, and a 19 year old Paul Reed Smith was preparing to build his first guitar. Our new YouTube series "From The Archives" explores the instruments, documents, and other goodies that are historically significant to our company.

PRS was started in 1975 by Paul Reed Smith. He built his first guitar at college and started the business making guitars by hand in the attic of his house in Annapolis, Maryland with a friend, John Ingram. The guitars received some attention from professional and well-known musicians when Ted Nugent tried out the second PRS guitar ever made.

Mar 7, 2022 · In the latest episode of PRS Guitars YouTube series From The Archives, Smith looks back to the very first guitar to feature the iconic design, a guitar he built for none other than Peter...

Feb 28, 2024 · Nearly 50 years since Paul’s first garage-built guitar, PRS thrives through cultivating tradition and embracing change. Design tenets established by our founder during that exploratory era remain integral, as does his ethic of restless improvement.

Feb 16, 2021 · In 1985, Paul Reed Smith manifested his dream in the form of a uniquely contoured 25” scale length solid body guitar with a rotary pickup selector and custom hardware. The guitar was a hit at NAMM, and within three years the PRS team had expanded to 45 people, building 15 guitars a day.

PRS Guitars was created by Paul Reed Smith in the mid-'80s, when the likes of Fender and Gibson were already incredibly well established and, in a relevantly short time, became a huge player on the guitar scene.