Paul Reed Smith interview
Neal: Hey everybody, Neal Walter from guitartrick.com. We got another great interview from the man of show this year with the one and only Mr. Paul Reed Smith. That’s right, the fabulous guitar maker to making awesome guitars for so long, high quality. It has always been his number one goal, all those guitars and they really stand out. We had a chance to meet him in the Paul Reed Smith booth and do a little chat with him and tell us what inspired him to get his company going so check it out.
Neal here from Guitar Tricks with the legendary Paul Reed Smith, how’s it going?
Paul: Its fine, thanks for doing this?
Neal: Sure, thank you for doing this too. You got some of the most excellent guitars in the planet and I was wondering what makes your guitar to sustain so well?
Paul: Well, actually it’s a simple answer and it’s a complicated answer. Okay, the simple answer is that you have to do every little thing little tiny thing you can do to make it sustain better. The complicated answer is about 12 or 13 places where we work very clearly on the guitar to get it this way sustain but you can imagine the bridge might have some impact. You might imagine that the tune impacts might not have some impact. How do we try the wood to just have some impact, the finish would some impact.
Always different thing so it’s a complicated art form and it’s nice that you think that this sustain well. We’ve actually timed some private sock guitars that went over a minute. I think anything over in 35 seconds is remarkable. We have actually timed this thing you are talking about.
Neal: Were you that way as a kid before you got into guitars? Were you like somebody who would have to tear apart a radio and see how it worked or what do you think was the beginning of what made Paul Reed Smith the guy that makes these amazing guitars?
Paul: Not being allowed to have good gear. I did not have the money for good gears so I had to make it. All the guys in the neighborhood, they had good gears. Their parents bought them good gear. Nobody in my house bought me any. If I want to know really good thing, I had to make it.
Neal: Necessity is the mother of invention.
Paul: Yeah, not being allowed into somebody’s club that you wanted to drive the bus pretty well.
Neal: But then it’s awesomely, we saw your demonstration last night the acoustic guitar. You were comparing to some of the classics.
Paul: Yeah well, we did not want to compare to our competitors. We want it to compare to history and it was scary. I mean you know that was head to head with —I mean you were there, you saw it you can report on. You will have to get it from me but in the truth is these musicians compare them to this all the time anyway because they aren’t
Neal: Who’s that deal with it for the bird and wing?
Paul: Mine but my mother was a bird watcher so it just kind of make sense to me. What surprise me was that people ever wore bird at all.
Neal: Have you ever thought of using any other animals like squirrels or sharks?
Paul: Donna Shark guitar didn’t do a squirrel guitar, done bat guitars.
Neal: Really?
Paul: Yeah they can get Paul Highlander Miles, they are beautiful. We’re able to get snakes, we’d have fun. Dragons we do lots of them.
Neal: New models for 2010.
Paul: And 25th anniversary guitars and there’s beautiful examples here. You can take film of. They are wonderful guitars, they are about a thousand dollars less than when we would normally charge. We put a lot of beautiful stuff on for free as a sign of our 25th anniversary. So we got lots of new amplifiers on our 25th anniversary, the amp and the cigarettes.
Neal: Another is the background you got here, it’s pretty impressive.
Paul: You well these stuff all sounds good and we focus and got the acoustics on our 25th anniversary acoustics and gear green basses and we don’t make drums.
Neal: But we are going to check out some of the guitars right now. Thank you very much personally for taking the time.
That was really cool experience to get to meet Paul and to talk one on one and see what really makes him tick and what really gives him inspired behind this all the great stuffs he does with guitars. I want to thank you Paul. It was great to meet you.
And don’t forget to check out our also other lessons, tips and tricks right here on the guitar tricks channel. You can leave me a request and we’ll hook you up with some fresh ideas for your guitar plan. See you back in about seven days.
Have a great week everybody.
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