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20th Anniversary Custom: a superb instrument

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The base price of £2,750 for the 20th Anniversary Custom 22 or 24 is only £160 more than the standard non-anniversary model, and although the 20th Anniversary Artist Package is £145 more expensive than the standard Artist Package it does include a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and headstock facing.

We've selected a Custom 22 with Artist Package, creating just about the most upmarket spec before you move into Private Stock.

20th Anniversary Custom 22 Love 'em or hate 'em, it's impossible not to be swayed by PRS's build quality.

Through the faultlessly applied and polished dark cherry sunburst, the Artist-grade maple top with its near perfectly symmetrical bookmatching is jaw-dropping, as is the perfection of the clean natural maple edge.

The deep red of the top's edge continues over the back, sides and neck back, and while on the early guitars there'd be noticeable finish shrinkage – which some, of course, loved – PRS's modern thin hard finish (polyester basecoat/ acrylic top coat) has few rivals.

Along with the orange-hued brown of the Brazilian rosewood headstock facing, with its 'Paul Reed Smith' signature inlaid in green ripple abalone, the fingerboard is a stripy, 'interestingly' grained slab of Brazilian rosewood that features those unique-to-2005 20th Anniversary bird inlays.

The birds, for the first time, are curved, rather than central, either side of the 12th fret while three wisps indicate flight; also for the first time, the 12th fret features two birds.

But don't let such arty frippery hide the fact that the combination of PRS's wide-fat neck profile, 10-inch fingerboard radius, its chunky but not over-big frets and subtly rounded fingerboard edges creates easily one of the most comfortable and positive playing platforms available.

In combination with the extended heel, the wide-fat neck is designed to improve stiffness and tonal girth, primarily in the low-end, and to compensate for the longer, unsupported neck of the double-cut design.

While some will be drawn by the curly maple top, it's the properly dried South American mahogany back and neck – both one-piece – that form the basis of the model; there's a full-width tenon where the neck fits into the body, and note how the body rises, in profile, to accommodate the neck pitch and keep the strings and vibrato quite low to the top. These are all crucial parts of the PRS recipe.

While the vibrato looks identical to the original it's changed a few times along the way, and is now a two-piece machined brass version of the original's one-piece brass casting.

However, the function remains the same: a vintage update that works effortlessly with reasonably wide travel and excellent return to pitch.

Locking tuners too were always essential to this system – likewise the nylon/Teflon friction-reducing nut and seven-degree headstock back angle.

The current tuner design that's been used since 2002 swaps the original bulky and costly-to-produce cam-lock design for a more simplistic slot-head bolt that clamps each string in its regular tuner post.

At the same time the tuner buttons were changed from the previous larger design to the smaller one you see here.

The covered Dragon II humbuckers appeared in 1997, and by the following year had replaced the pokier-sounding uncovered Dragon pickups on the core 22-fret PRS guitars like the CE, Standard and Custom.

The year of 1998 also saw the option of a three-way toggle switch plus a coil-split switch on the tone control on all models that previously offered the original five-way rotary switch as standard.