Special edition guitars to commemorate 20th anniversary

PRS Guitars has announced a ‘very limited’ run of instruments to mark the 20th anniversary of its Private Stock programme.  The 20th Anniversary Private Stock guitar, of which only 40 will be built, featured significant design input from Paul Reed Smith and are said to hark back to Howard Lesse’s Golden Eagle model.

The guitars feature slightly modified body dimensions, with a 1/16” thinner top and 1/8” thicker back than the normal PRS Custom body design for a warmer tone. Smith also specified a precise 24.6” scale length neck and hand-selected all of the East Coast curly maple tops from what he felt were two of the best batches of maple in PRS’s history.

The electronics are also unique, with a three pickup configuration consisting of two narrow 408 treble and bass pickups and a Narrowfield middle pickup. The five-way blade switch and control placements also nod to the Golden Eagle’s original electronics layout.

PRS Guitars completed the first Private Stock on April 19, 1996. The 20-year old programme started as a way to recapture the original essence of the PRS workshop with a small team making fewer guitars with more customisation.

As such, Private Stock offered customers the opportunity to design their own unique guitar. Along the way, Private Stock has developed exclusive models and one-off instruments of its own design.

The Private Stock 20th Anniversary models are strung with 10-guage PRS strings and come in a Private Stock case with black ‘Western’ tolex and black lustre interior with an embroidered 20th Anniversary Private Stock logo.