MusicRadar

• Related News
• Review

Texan guitarist David Grissom was a prime mover in the development of the 1994 PRS McCarty model. After a decade of using McCartys, Grissom – who Paul Reed Smith has referred to as "my ears" – was well-placed to help in the genesis of an 'improved' model.

"Three or four years ago," remembers Grissom, "Paul and I started to discuss different possibilities. I felt that there were several things we could do with the guitar to make it better. Some of the things I was already doing on my own McCartys: different fretwire, pickups, changing the tuners.

"At the same time a lot of people, studio players, would play my main McCarty and say that they'd buy one if they could get one like mine. See, you can't get a McCarty with tremolo [an option dropped by PRS in 1999, aside from a very limited run in 2007] and I never stopped tinkering with my tone.

"When we felt there were enough things we could change, and when we felt there were enough top players who wanted one, that was the germ that lead to the new model."

Outwardly, the DGT appears to be an archetypal PRS. But, as always, it's all about the details. Like the McCarty, the DGT's body is slightly thicker than a Custom's, while the 22-fret neck features a new DGT profile and bigger Dunlop 6100 fretwire.

"With bigger frets – they're not radically bigger just a little taller and wider – you can use bigger strings," says Grissom. This is the first PRS solidbody to ship with .011s.

And the neck? "It's somewhere in between a wide-fat and an old regular profile. We compared my '93 McCarty and my '87 Standard and shot for something in between as they are my favourite feeling guitars."

The DGT is the only standard PRS production model to be finished in nitro-cellulose, more specifically cellulose top coats over a very thin polyester basecoat. "It lets the guitar breathe more, gives a less plastic feel, and it does make a difference to the sound", reckons Grissom.

Even the tuners have been Grissom-ised: "I think they do have a tonal effect. They're the new Phase II locking tuners with the brass posts. Now, I'm not gonna sit there and A/B tuners day in and day out but Paul Smith has done that.

"I'm very much a traditionalist, in that I always feel that you've got to put Klusons on, but I'm really sold on these tuners. I'm not much of a one for locking things but this tuner is sonically a really good way to go.

"We also put ivoroid buttons on [PRS refers to these as "faux bone"]. Literally when I took the old ones off it felt like I had a pound in one hand and nothing in the other with the ivoroid, so that's a lot of weight we've taken off."

Once Grissom and Smith had the acoustic sound how they wanted it, the pair set about the pickups. "The pickups were built from the ground up. I spent over a year on pickups using a test guitar where we were able to change pickups in and out of the guitar in, literally, 15 seconds. So, we had a really accurate way of evaluating pickups.