Paul Reed Smith PRS Private Stock Modern Eagle V Guitar, Aqua Glow

Music Store Live is proud to offer up another unique and beautiful creation from our friends over at the Paul Reed Smith Private Stock department. There's never any question as to the quality of the instrument you're getting when you get any PRS guitar. But there's something magical with these Private Stocks and, at the end of the day, they're unique and simply unlike any other PRS guitar out there.

For this one, we decided to get really creative with it and the results are phenomenal. The back and the neck are both swamp ash with a white wash and blue grain filler. We had never heard of ash being used for a neck before but at the recommendation of Paul Miles, head of PRS's Private Stock department, we gave it a try. And what an awesome decision that was! First of all, it obviously gives the guitar a super clean and really cool aesthetic from the back. The matching neck and back with the white nitro finish and subtle streaks of blue are really cool. But the neck also feels incredible and will only get better over time as the natural oils from your hand rub into it! It's similar to what a rosewood neck feels like but gets you a much snappier tone. Now, rosewood happens to be one of our favorite feeling neck woods (not fretboard, but neck) and so it's very much a good thing that this swamp ash neck reminds us of some of our favorite PRS all-rosewood necks that we've had in the past. Spin that bad boy around and you'll see the gorgeous 1-piece curly maple top that we hand-selected at their factory and a beautiful slab of Brazilian rosewood for the fretboard and the veneer on the headstock. We figured with all the brightness that a swamp ash back and neck would add, getting that warmth from Brazilian rosewood as well as the upper mid-range presence that it provides would round out the tone of the guitar really nicely.

The tonewoods look beautiful, sound amazing, and feel incredible. They pair very nicely with the versatile and modern-sounding electronics here. The two humbuckers are the same found in a Paul's Guitar and the middle single-coil allows for some awesome tones in combination with the humbuckers. Each humbucker can be individually coil-split and there's a mini-toggle that even changes the capacitance of the potentiometers (this basically makes your tone brighter and can be great for playing with distortion and high gain settings). So in combination with the 5-way pickup selector, the three pickups give you pretty much any sound you could hope for.

PRS's Private Stock guitars are the cream of the crop. 

Private Stock represents the highest quality of materials, the most personally crafted instruments, and the greatest level of customization available from PRS. Whether you choose one of our Private Stock models or spec a Built to Order instrument, every Private Stock is carefully conceived and built with a “one-off” mentality. Through this program, we strive to deliver heirloom-quality, musical instruments. All woods for this guitar were hand-selected by the dealer during a trip to our Private Stock vault in Maryland.

"I have never seen anyone playing guitar in a bad mood. There’s something magic about guitars because they are simultaneously art, musical instruments, treasured possessions, and tools to joyfully spend time with. If you get an extraordinary instrument from Private Stock that is equally as good as a family heirloom and a musician’s tool to make a living on, we have done our job." - Paul Reed Smith

Unique features to this PRS Private Stock guitar are:

- The dealer hand-selected all of the woods used
- The top is a 1-piece curly maple top
- Swamp ash with white wash and blue grain filler for the back and neck
- Brazilian rosewood fretboard and headstock veneer
- 30th anniversary bird inlay pattern with blue swirl inlays and mother of pearl outlines

“The Private Stock Modern Eagle V is a sophisticated instrument not only in its craftsmanship but electronically and mechanically,” said Paul Reed Smith. “Modern Eagle models have always been designed to stand up to history while celebrating tonewoods and the discovery of new tones. These instruments are the embodiment of that tradition married with the bold innovation of Private Stock and a new pickup system.”

The Private Stock Modern Eagle V utilizes a hum/single/hum (five-coil) pickup configuration and introduces a new and unique switching system that gives players a vast array of tones in one guitar. The 5-way blade switch selects the pickups just as the 509 does (treble, treble and middle, middle, middle and bass, bass). The two paired mini-toggles separate the slug-side coils, turning the humbuckers into true, “TCI-tuned” single coils. There is a single volume and a push/pull tone control that activates both humbuckers when engaged; this allows players to access three pickups simultaneously. Finally, there is a third mini-toggle that changes the volume pot value from 500k to 250k, which gives the guitar a different palette of tones. This electronics design puts a whole set of classic and new tones at your fingertips.

Bottom line, the Modern Eagle V Limited Edition is a special instrument, producing real, highly-musical tones for both recording and playing live.

It’s All in the Details: TCI-Tuned Pickups

Paul Reed Smith is known as a man who studies history, scrutinizes the details, and never stops applying what he learns to his own instruments. It is that passion, care, and tenacity that has permeated PRS Guitars’ culture and led to the constant evolution of PRS products. Last year, PRS announced TCI (tuned capacitance and inductance) pickups on the Paul’s Guitar. But, TCI is more than a pickup, it’s a process. 

“TCI stands for Tuned Capacitance Inductance. When you wind a pickup, the coils are capacitors, resistors, and inductors simultaneously. Our more refined ability to be able to tune those factors is what we have incorporated into TCI pickups,” said Paul Reed Smith. “To our ears, the results are very musical. We are very proud of how far we’ve come in the understanding and making of pickups. It’s been a fun process.”

PATTERN NECK SHAPES

Neck shapes have always been a high priority for PRS and a hallmark of our quality. A guitar should feel comfortable, like "home," as soon as you pick it up, and the neck is paramount to that connection. These new neck shapes reflect modern tooling and programming that allows us to even more preciously shape and consistently reproduce our necks. Perfected after years of prototyping, the new "Pattern" neck is an updated Wide Fat PRS neck style based on Paul’s pre-factory design. These necks were found on the instruments built for Carlos Santana, Peter Frampton and Howard Leese from the late 70’s to the mid 80’s.