Click on "Show More" above to see all 24 of the pictures in this gallery

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Scarlet red and RED HOT.  This was one of the last guitars built in in 1994 at the Virginia Ave shop before the factory opened in 1995.  That is where automation began to dominate the build process.  If you want a naturally aged vintage guitar that you will not be afraid to take out of its case and which will build value for as long as you own it then you’re in the right place.  Age matters.  Retro-builds and relic'ed finishes will never emulate the effects of natural aging on an instrument's sound.  Each position on this mechanical rotary switch provides a distinct tone.  The switch design changed significantly for all guitars after 1994.  Read more about that in the section below about Pre-Factory / Post-Factory guitars. 

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The serial numbers of core guitars leaving the factory today are approaching the half-million mark.  This guitar is number 20,709 putting it in the first 2.5% of all core PRS guitars ever built.  I've gigged this guitar many times.  It has a "Regular" neck carve, which I wasn't sure I would like before I bought it.  I typically seek wide/thin necks.  These Regular carves have their merits however.  I got comfortable with the feel very quickly and went on to gig the guitar routinely for the next three years.  The regular carve fretboard has a tinner dimension in the upper frets, which lends itself to comfortably fretting or muting the low E string.  It's a fast player as well.  I'm also a fan of these bright white Pearloid bird inlays which really stand out under the stage lights.  PRS only used Pearloid inlays on their production guitars for four years starting in 1993.  Comes with the tools, original hang tag, stringing instruction sheet and the 1994 swag card as shown in picture #16.  I'll also let this one go with the signed backplate on it as seen in picture #11. 

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Red flame top guitars are very difficult to capture in digital photography.  I've got indoor and outdoor pictures for your consideration, but none of them live up to the way this flame moves with the light in direct view.  The cosmetic condition is excellent.  I've rated it at 9.5 in consideration of some rivet worming in a small area on and near a corner of the back plate.  You can see the area clearly in photo #19.  The guitar is otherwise free of dings, dents or scratches including the headstock tips.  The frets show no meaningful wear at all.  The pickups are original HFS/Vintage Bass with the gold metal back plates that PRS started to use at around the time this guitar was built.  The over-all appearance of this naturally aged 32 year old vintage guitar is simply RED HOT.  Plenty of pictures provided for you to view and enlarge.  I’ll call it 9.2 / VG++ condition, all things considered.  Comes with original PRS hard case and tremolo bar.

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These vintage pre-factory PRS guitars are an investment.  You'll ALWAYS have the option to re-sell it for as much or more than you paid. 

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This guitar was hand made by a small group of craftsmen who were on a mission to build a world class guitar company.  The outstanding quality of the pre-factory PRS guitars produced during the first ten years at the Virginia Avenue shop, is the foundation on which the PRS factory was eventually built and from which their global brand was launched.  

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A word on Pre-Factory PRS Guitars and Factory built PRS Guitars

 

The new core guitars built in the factory are fabulous instruments.  Rock solid and perfect.  Perhaps too perfect.  I look at it as the result of feeding a blank of wood into a machine at the front end of a production line and taking a very fine guitar out of a different machine at the end of that line.  Over the years, every single step of the build that can be automated, has been automated.  The virtual absence of a craftsman’s hands throughout the build process somehow makes them feel like identical coins stamped out of a machine.  Very, very fine coins, Yes!  Yet still, a sterile product of hyper automation compared to the guitars from the Virginia Ave. shop made by the original team of craftsmen before 1995.

 

Before the factory opened in 1995 the PRS team built approximately 30,000 guitars in a warehouse shop over the ten years prior (~20KCustoms and ~10K CE-24’s).  The Second Tier (S2), Third Teir (SE) instruments were not even remotely on their radar.  The fork in the road that started PRS down a path to flooding the market with cheaper models started seven years after the factory opened with the introduction of the Santana III.  The S2 and SE lines that followed, have produced over 650,000 of these Second/Third Teir guitars, in addition to the half-million cores built since 1985.  The USA PRS factory now produces over 25,000 core guitars each year, every year.  The guitar in this listing is from the first 12,000 that PRS ever made. 

 

Here is an overview of the permanent design changes that took place for the Custom 24 and CE-24 model when mass production began at the factory in 1995.

 

• The neck heel was extended, impeding access to the upper frets

• The solid block Mil-Com tremolo bridge was redesigned to a five-piece assembled unit

• The mechanical rotary (3 unique versions in the first 10 years) was replaced by a switch which routes the pickup signal through a Printed Circuit card 

• The small headstock decal that identifies the guitar as a vintage original was abandon for a larger, polished gold decal

• The individual character of each instrument, was homogenized away in favor of sterile, mass production protocols

 

Why These Things Matter:

 

I’ve bought, sold, owned and gigged over 300 hundred PRS guitars throughout the past 25 years.  The original, Pre-Factory, mechanical blue wafer rotary switch provided direct connection between the vintage pickups and the output jack.  All guitars that came after 1995 have newly designed rotaries, which utilize a printed circuit board to channel the pickup’s signals. Where there were three versions of the original rotary which provided unique pickup coil combinations, all rotaries after 1995 are coil-configured exactly the same.  The circuitry of the printed circuit rotaries also suppress the raw signal from the pickups subtly, in a way that the original mechanical switches do not.

 

I’ll never understand the neck heel change.  I believe they sacrificed that feature to accommodate automation during the build process.  In 2011 PRS created a Guitar Center “Throwback 1985” run of Custom 24’s.  The model was not true to spec in several key aspects.  The neck heel was shaved down to a passable version of the original short heel contour, so why can’t they put a short heel on all of them? 

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The one-piece Mil-Com bridge is said to be more resonant.  I don’t know if anyone could tell the difference, but it is unique to the pre-factory guitars, it does weigh more than the assembled bridges and was probably re-designed just to cut costs. 

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The headstock decal change is sort-of a good thing.  Like the short neck heel, the small signature decal is an immediately recognizable indication that a PRS guitar was made between 1985 and 1994 in the Virginia Ave shop, with a considerably higher level of hands-on, personal craftsmanship in the build. 

 

 

A Word About Vintage Instruments:

 

You can tell when you have a true vintage instrument in your hands.  The resonance of the wood which has aged naturally for decades simply can NOT be duplicated in a new instrument. The Retro, Relic, Custom Shop, Re-Issue, Private Stock, Murphy Lab, Master Built, Throw-Back, etc. guitars can all be built to their original spec, but will never replicate natural aging of the wood through the passage of time.  This is a vintage PRS guitar in excellent condition, which is ready for you to honestly, respectfully and authentically “relic” as you make it your own.  All at less than the cost of a new core Custom that will sell for half what you paid for it, four years from now.  If you’re casually looking here out of curiosity, while thinking more seriously about buying your sixth SE in a different color, your third S2 or a new CE-24, give some thought and consideration to selling some of what you’ve already got to buy a vintage Core PRS instead. Pre-Factory PRS guitars are still affordable and will always increase in value, for as long as you own, play and hold them.     

 

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Please be sure to take a moment and click here to look at my ABOUT page or access it from the top menu bar.  I encourage even the smallest of questions so always feel free to e-mail me any time.  Over 140 of my online feedback ratings are from PRS guitar sales.

 

This guitar is also listed on sites with a starting price of $350 more than I'm asking here on my site, just to put a dent in the seller fees they would charge me for a transaction there. 

 

Why pay more than you have to?  Check my feedback and buy it here.  It may be gone soon.  Send me an e-mail and we'll talk.  

 

If you've come to this page directly through an organic Google search, click this link to see a list of all the guitars I currently have for sale before leaving this page.

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$2850.00 Includes shipping to the lower 48

 

I recently heard someone a lot smarter than I am say: 

"Life is short..... Buy the guitar".

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