I have spec’d guitars before. There is a Warmoth in the rack that I put together, body, neck profile, pickups, all of it, and I like that guitar. But picking parts off a menu and designing an instrument with the man whose name is on the headstock are not the same. It has been nine years since my trip to Maryland. It’s time to tell the story in detail.
This is PS #8060. A PRS Private Stock 509 with 24 frets, and as far as I know the only one that exists.
The Spec
I am a 24-fret player. Ibanez RGs and PRS Custom 24s are what my hands know. I appreciate guitars with fewer frets, but 24 is home.
When I got the chance to do a Private Stock, the spec was obvious. I wanted the fret count of a Custom 24 with the electronics flexibility of a 509. The order sheet just calls it “509 w/ 24 Frets.” It keeps the 509’s 25.25-inch scale, longer than a Custom 24. My original plan was a 513, but Paul talked me out of it. He said the 509 was the better guitar, so I took his word for it. The 513 gave you thirteen sounds off five coils. The 509 keeps the same five coils and nine of the sounds, the ones you would actually reach for. I had made a mockup and posted it before I ever flew out, and the team had already seen it on Instagram and passed it around.
Looking at it now, they hit most of it. The burst, the three-pickup layout, the trem, the two mini toggles, the ebony board. I had even drawn the birds in flame orange to match the top, which at the time was just me coloring in a picture and had not yet occurred to me as something that could be done with wood. My original idea was orange outlined with red.
Adding two frets to a 509 turned out to be hard. It moves the neck pickup, changes the neck joint, and changes the harmonic relationship in the layout. They built multiple neck prototypes before they got it right. The order sheet has a line item that just reads “CNC for 24 Frets,” which is a pretty subtle way to describe cutting new tooling for one guitar.
The Factory
I flew out to Maryland with my buddy James Schultz, who now runs Quimper Sound, and his guitar repair tech Dave Thurston. I expected a standard tour, and instead I got hours with Paul Reed Smith.
We spent part of it in the history vault. I played the first guitars he ever built. That is not something that gets offered, and I knew it. I saw a ’59 Gibson Les Paul they used to test pickups in. Paul casually tossed it to my friend Dave, which nearly gave him a heart attack.
The Wood Library
I sat in the wood library with Paul Reed Smith and Paul Miles, the PRS Private Stock director, and picked my own wood. Raw billets, no finish, no dye. You spray them with water to see what the flame is going to do once there is a finish on it. The water darkens the wood, the figure jumps out, and then it dries and disappears again.
I sprayed several and picked the one that is now on the front of my guitar. I chose the neck blank, the body, all of it. Every other decision happened in that room too. Dragon’s Breath Glow for the finish, mixed hardware, natural maple binding, and my own logo inlaid on the heel where nobody sees it but me.
The order sheet records it twice, in PRS’s own words. Under the body section, “Customer picked top and back from PS Vault.” Under the neck section, “Customer picked neck, fretboard and veneer from PS Vault.” Two lines on a form, and they are the only written record that the afternoon happened.
Skitch’s Wire
The Silver Sky was in development while I was there, though few knew that yet.
At some point during the day Paul got word that John Mayer had signed off on the pickup samples they had sent him. A guy at PRS everyone calls Skitch had been the one working with John on the winding. Paul was thrilled, and it was clearly about the problem being solved rather than the deal being closed.
Then he turned to me and asked, completely on impulse, “Do you want Skitch’s wire in your guitar?”
There was no version of that day where I said no.
The Birds
Paul Miles had just worked out how to color-match the bird inlays and the headstock eagle to the top without them fading over the years. The birds and the eagle on mine are not shell. They are curly maple from the same top, inlaid and then stained to match. Stained wood drifts. An inlay that matched perfectly on day one would eventually stop matching.
He solved it, and mine was the first PRS that shipped with the birds and eagle matched to the guitar top.
Paul Miles sent me this photo partway through the build. The fretboard and the headstock veneer, birds and eagle inlaid and stained, sitting on a bench under shop lighting. Ebony, mother-of-pearl outlines, and that orange. Somewhere in the middle of an eight-month wait, that landing in my inbox was the first proof the guitar was becoming real.
Eight years after it shipped, the eagle, the birds, and the amber core of the burst still read as the same color. It worked.
Scotch and the Studio Over the Garage
The part I will never forget came after an impromptu dinner at a grill near the hotel. Paul offered to show me his studio. We got in his car, drove to his house, and I met his wife. It was her birthday. I still can’t believe he spent part of that evening with me.
The studio is over the garage. He listened to some of my music while he showed off his recording rig and his custom speaker design. He handed me his personal guitar and started swapping pedals, things he thought I should hear. At some point there was Scotch.
When it was over he walked out to the road and waited with me until the Uber showed up. Nobody was watching. He had already done more than anyone could reasonably expect. He still stayed and chatted until the car came.
The Wait
The order sheet is dated May 2, 2017. The back of the headstock reads PS #8060, 1-20-18, custom built for Jason Burns, signed by Paul. So call it eight months from signature to finished guitar. Much faster than it would happen today. I hear it can run two years now.
Eight months is still a long time to carry around a picture in your head of a piece of maple you saw wet once for about thirty seconds.
What Stuck
I can still see the water going dark on the maple, I can hear Paul asking about the wire, I remember exactly what the road outside his house looked like while we waited for the car.
The wood was picked by hand. The neck took several tries. The birds were a first. Dave nearly shitting his pants trying not to drop a ’59 Les Paul. The whole thing started because I asked for two more frets. The guitar is the receipt. The time in Maryland is what was special.
Special thanks to James Schultz for making it happen. It started as a conversation about an Artist model, but Dragon’s Breath Glow is Private Stock only, and once we made that switch, the two extra frets became possible. None of this adventure happens without him. If you are in the market for a nice PRS, a Gibson, or plenty else, definitely check out Quimper Sound.
