#160589  by playingdead
 
PRS has released the Silver Sky, John Mayer's take on vintage Strats, that he worked on developing with Paul Reed Smith.

As I am a PRS dealer -- although they are not offering them lefty -- I have two available righties on the way in tungsten (the silver color), should ship soon ... if any of you kind folks are looking. They are $2299.

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Details:

“It’s been a dream of mine for years to design a guitar that includes some of my favorite vintage specifications but with a modern spirit and aesthetic. After two years of study and refinement, the Silver Sky is my vision of what a reboot of the electric guitar should look and feel like.” – John Mayer

The PRS Silver Sky is the result of a close collaboration between Grammy Award-winning musician John Mayer and Paul Reed Smith. More than two and half years in the making, the Silver Sky is a vintage-inspired instrument that is at once familiar but also newly PRS through and through. This model was based off of Mayer and Smith’s favorite elements from 1963 and 1964 vintage instruments, resulting in an idealized version of a vintage single-coil guitar. The attention that was paid to every detail sets this guitar apart.

Some of the more distinctive specifications include, the headstock shape, tuners, neck and fretboard, bridge, and pickups and electronics. The headstock shape is based on PRS’s trademark design, but inverted to both accommodate Mayer’s playing style and also to keep a consistent length of string behind the nut, which makes staying in tune easier. The tuners are a traditional vintage-style, closed-back tuner, but with PRS’s locking design. The neck shape was modeled after 1963/1964 vintage instruments, and the fretboard has a 7.25” radius. The moment your hand grabs this neck, it just feels right. Like the tuners, the steel tremolo takes a classic design and incorporates PRS’s trem arm and Gen III knife-edge screws. The bridge on the Silver Sky is setup flush to the body in the neutral position so that the tremolo bridge only goes down in pitch. By keeping the bridge in contact with the body, the guitar itself is acoustically louder, which improves the signal to noise ratio of the single-coil pickups. The 635JM single-coil pickups are very round and full, with a musical high end that is never “ice-picky” or brash.
Other high-quality specifications include a bone nut, a molded metal jack plate that is curved and makes plugging and unplugging a guitar cable hassle-free, retooled knobs, fretwire that is slightly smaller than what you’d find on most PRS electric guitars, and PRS’s double action truss rod (accessible from the front of the headstock for ease of use).

The Silver Sky comes in four colors with distinctive accents on PRS’s trademark lower horn scoop.

The PRS Silver Sky will start shipping on March 20, 2018. The first 500 guitars to ship to dealers and distributors worldwide from PRS Guitars’ Maryland, USA factory will include a commemorative hardshell case. The Silver Sky model will then ship in a newly-designed, premium gig bag.
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 #160593  by tdcrjeff
 
IMO that thing is ugly. Like someone photoshopped a PRS neck onto a Strat body.
 #160595  by Jon S.
 
If Leo had never invented the Tele and someone came out with it new today, there'd be a boatload of threads calling it fugly ;)

My s-style guitar is below. Phenolic resin top and back?! Unbearable! :lol:

Some of the specs on the new PRS JM don't match my preferences. But guitars can be like women, sometimes the ones that don't grab you at first are beautiful on the inside. I'm curious to try one.

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Last edited by Jon S. on Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
 #161679  by Jedstein
 
I heard Mayer debuted the Silver Sky last night. Did anyone catch the show? I checked out the one song they streamed on Nugs, but he was using one of his other PRS guitars.

I must say -- I'm very curious about this one. I love PRSs for their playability. Always loved the way I could fly around on those necks. But -- I've never felt that a PRS could quite nail Jerry tone (though I've heard a couple guys on this forum come close). Mayer's tone is great, and he REALLY flies around on that fretboard, but to me, it's always missing the grit that I want to hear -- that you get from a Jerry style guitar.

I'm super curious if the 25.5 scale length on the Silver Sky will help the tone in this regard. It's still, of course, lacking a lot the needed Jerry details, most of which can be remedied (except for the fretboard, which appears to be only offered in rosewood) But I'm still curious . . . .

So -- who heard/saw Mayer play it last night? Which songs did he play it on?