Paul Reed Smith Shop Tour

By: Rick Landers

An annual tradition was born when Paul Reed Smith Guitars opened up its doors to the company’s dealers, distributors, PRS endorsees and the press in 2007, and named the company-specific trade show, Experience PRS. It’s now 2010, and Experience PRS has grown each year, from a first year population of visitors of around 700, to over 2,500 friends of the company this past year.

Throughout the years, PRS has invited guests from Australia, Japan, Europe and from nearly every major U.S. city to the event, as well as celebrity guitarist that have included: Carlos Santana, Buddy Guy, Orianthi, Mark Tremonti, Buddy Guy, Bugs Henderson, Gary Grainger, and other endorsees or musician friends of the company.

Experience PRS includes guitar clinics, guitar building seminars, music sessions and other interesting and fun things to do over the two-day event. One of the highlights includes a factory tour, where visitors are led by PRS insiders who know the details of the PRS guitar building processes work that include sanding, routing, painting, finish work, pickup construction and more. At the end of the line is an amp where all guitars are sonically tested before the final products are gently placed into their guitar cases, where they are moved to the shipping zone of the building.

On our first tour of the 80,000 square foot plant, our tour guide was Jack Higgenbotham, President, Paul Reed Smith Guitars. And he explained all the details and answered all of the tour group’s questions, when the visitors were mining for general and, sometimes, arcane information. Higgenbotham handled all with aplomb. Of course, a little background check on Jack tells us that he started out at the bottom of the PRS food chain, as a guitar body sander – the step after boards are routed by the company’s sophisticated CNC machines and shaped into those very cool PRS guitar shapes.

Sanding, it seems, is a job that may seem rudimentary and the physical motions are just that. But, over time sanders become experienced in checking for faults in their work or the material, by sight and by feel. Sanded bodies must meet strict quality standards before they move to the next process and this attention to quality runs throughout the production and assembly stations. For readers who might feel compelled to move to Stevensville, Maryland for a position at PRS, most likely they’ll be pointed in the direction of the sanding area, their first career post. And for those ambitious types, if you want to start at the top position in the company, well, we can tell you that Paul Reed Smith will likely be hanging on to the top job at PRS for some time, as he appears to be as enthusiastic about PRS Guitars, as any young pup applicant.

Today, we offer our readers a glimpse of the PRS Factory tour…enjoy.

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