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That beautiful maple top in all its glory

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• Review
• Manufacturer's Description

Originally introduced in 2004 as the now discontinued 513 Rosewood, the 513 amounted to a virtually complete redesign of the PRS Custom. But, at well over £4000, with new pickups and electronics and Brazilian rosewood neck and fingerboard, its potential impact was severely limited.

With a base price under £3000, achieved primarily by swapping the Brazilian rosewood for a standard mahogany neck with Indian rosewood fingerboard, the new model aims to provide the same versatile sounds but at a more affordable price.

“What’s going on is if it wasn’t made before 1970, it doesn’t exist,” says Smith. “Fender and Gibson are existing, somewhat, on doing vintage original spec ‘copies’ of what they made before 1970. I wasn’t alive [in terms of guitar making] before 1970. I can’t do that. So I’ve got to push forward.”

At £2,950 full retail, the standard 513 is, aside from the special order Santana and the limited-edition West Street, the most expensive double-cut PRS in the main USA range. Oddly, bearing in mind the 513 is designed as a more affordable version of the 513 Rosewood, PRS sent us a 513 loaded with optional flame maple 10-top and gold hardware – tonally unnecessary upgrades that add £798 to the price!

But let’s not forget, the 513 is all about sounds and providing more of them. “Paul Jackson Jr is playing one on American Idol every night,” says Smith proudly. “That was what the guitar was intended to be: the swiss-army knife of our guitars with a whole bunch of sounds. Paul needs to be able to switch sounds on every single song, we couldn’t be more pleased with that.”

So, the ‘5’ refers to the five single-coil pickups designed for the guitar by PRS’s Winn Krozak – the outer two pairs are grouped like dual-coil humbuckers. The ‘13’ refers to the number of sounds and you’ll notice two lever switches. The one closest to the master volume is a five-way and selects the pickups in standard Stratocaster style: bridge, bridge and middle, middle, middle and neck, neck. The second lever switch is a three-way ‘mode’ switch that offers ‘heavy humbucking’, ‘clear humbucking’ and ‘single-coil’.

In heavy humbucking the two outer pairs are selected (the middle pickup doesn’t change, it’s always a single-coil); clear humbucking ‘taps’ the two dual coils, reducing the output for a cleaner tone. In single-coil mode the neck-facing coils of both humbuckers are selected.

Another change is the scale length that extends the standard PRS scale to 642mm (25.25-inches), adding a little more tension to the strings over the standard 635mm (25-inch) scale and adding some of the upper harmonic ‘sparkle’ associated with the longer Fender scale length of 648mm (25.5-inch).