“Look, Let’s get right to it. So in 2018, PRS and myself released my signature model, “The Silversky”. And, Silversky model was meant to recreate all of the magic and sound and feel of a vintage guitar, but now I’m really excited to show you the SE, which is a guitar that I think nails the sound and feel of that Silversky Core model. The SE is the more affordable and therefore more accessible version of PRS Guitars and its something that Paul (Paul Reed Smith) had always talked about doing. People had talked about wanting it for, pretty much since the original came out. And, I’m really really excited to show you a guitar that is more accessible but doesn’t penalize a guitar player for not having the core US model. Let’s talk about intonation on this guitar – tuning is really really important obviously, and PRS guitars are known for really really good intonation and it was important that the Silversky SE keep that same integrity going in terms of tuning. And to prove it I’ll play the beginning of one of my songs: “Shot in the Dark”, which was very hard to record because it was hard to keep it in tune because there’s so many piano-like chords but check it out. Really is sort of like, piano-like, and the way you can prove that is to do the whole thing an octave higher. I’ll do it in C because I’m running out of room. It sort of proves that it really keeps those fine sort of piano-like chords. All the way up and down the neck.”
“The neck carve still had that beautiful vintage feel that I love in a neck. it’s sort of ‘C’ shaped but it also has this modern thing that’s just really even up and down the neck, and I sort of play based on the feel of a guitar – if the guitar feels good, I’ll keep playing it and, a lot of my ideas come from just having my hand up and down the neck, and I’ll watch TV or something, and I’ll put it on mute and just (plays guitar riff). I mean you’re supposed to play a guitar after all – it’s “playing”. And this is a really really fun guitar to play on. I’ve had it for, a month or two now and I actually just sit down and play it and lose time, y’know and that’s the sign of a great instrument is if you can just stare off into space and, not realize it been an hour that you’ve been playing. This is actually one of those guitars that even if you have US versions of guitars and you know, you got a nice little guitar arsenal, you could pick up an SE and bond with it and go “well, I’m gonna throw that in”.
“The three pickups are voiced the same, it’s the same thing as the core model Silversky and that’s really really nice when you move across pickups. We’ve all played some guitars that have different voices – some are louder, some are quieter, some have stranger dynamics. This is really really even across the board because they are all three of the same pickup they’re just in different spaces under the string which gives a different sound. And so as you’re playing, (plays riff) it sounds like me, on an old guitar, on a Silversky, and it sounds like me on an SE. Because all the same electronics, all the same vibe, made it through the process of making a more accessible guitar.”
“So when I was growing up, if I were buying a guitar that wasn’t the US standard version, I felt sort of like, I had the colour pallet taken away from me. And that’s why it was really important to introduce the SE in four really beautiful colours: Stone blue (which is the one that I’m holding, Ever Green, Moon White and Dragon Fruit. It’s really important also when it comes to a more affordable guitar, the fretwork doesn’t hurt you as you move your hand up and down. I think for many many years we’ve all had to sort of accept that a less expensive guitar was going to hurt a little bit when we ran our hands up and down the neck. And in this case it is as well dressed and set up as any of the guitars I play on stage.”
“For twenty years now, parents have come up to me asking me what electric guitar they think they should buy for their kid. And I never really had a good answer – I always felt either guilty for recommending something that was too expensive or guilty for recommending something that I didn’t think was very high quality. And when you’re beginning to play the guitar, it’s sort of a daunting task to begin a new hobby or a new passion. And if the guitar isn’t set up right, I think sometimes people don’t understand their guitar’s not set up right and just think that guitar is too hard. I know there are some people in this world who’ve put a guitar away because they said guitars just not for me. But what they really had going on was the guitar wasn’t set up in a way that was comfortable to play. And so I was always stuck in between these two answers: It’s going to be too expensive, or it’s going to be sort of crummy and it’s not going to give someone the right kind of playing experience to begin playing guitar. The Silversky SE is now the answer I’ve been looking for, because it’s affordable enough, but it’s also going to stand up against the test of time and a lot of playing.”
“when I first started playing the electric guitar, I had a $99 guitar, and the tuning pegs would fall out, and the strings would break and I fought through it, but it was tough and it probably would have done me some good to not have it be so tough. And so the SE really brings the same experience of being the guitar player that I have to someone who just started playing for the first time. And that to me, as an older version of my younger self, is something that I take very seriously.”
“When can you tell that you’re playing a great guitar? (Plays muted upstroke) I can kinda tell when I do that. Just the low ‘A’ string, how the string rings out – how I can stop it, how I can start it. How I can get the raking sound. How I can get that tubby neck pickup sound out. I always like to pick up a guitar and just start with the most basic thing. That’s when I can tell a guitar is good: from just that amount of playing that the strings will go with you the way you want them to – that you’ve got high… This is the high end (muted upstroke) This is the low end (muter upstroke). You hear how there’s high end IN the low end? All the great harmonic high-end information is in these pickups in the SE.”
“Feel wise, it’s hard to hear, because you have to have your hands on the guitar. But guitar players can sometimes hear the way something feels. and I’m going to try to show you for the first time ever how something feels based on hearing it. (playing riff)”
“Hey, here how that feels?”
