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One of few PRS guitars with a maple 'board

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Few guitarists enjoy as much respect as Johnny Hiland, and if you’ve ever been lucky enough to see him in action you’ll know why. His perma-Stetson suggests a country twangster but, while Hiland has his super-Nashville chops down pat, he’ll suddenly rip into metal meltdown, Gatton-esque jazz, blues, you name it: he’ll play it.

He’s the archetypal stunt guitarist and makes it all look effortless. You won’t see him break sweat and if indeed he has an ego he leaves it well hidden. He’s certainly a world away from PRS’s other high profile signature artists, lacking the huge-selling credentials of Carlos Santana or the modern rock kudos of Mark Tremonti, Dave Navarro and new-for-2007 signature artist Chris Henderson of 3 Doors Down. But arguably Hiland’s signature model is the most interesting artist guitar that PRS has ever created and – for PRS fact-lovers – it is also the first-ever artist bolt-on model.

The JH is unique to the PRS line. The only current maple ‘boarded bolt-on is the Swamp Ash Special, but that’s a 22-fretter where the JH is a 24-fret guitar. Unlike the SAS it uses the typical PRS body recipe of one-piece mahogany back with carved maple top (the SAS uses ash). Its closest relative then is the CE Maple Top 24 (and it comes with a CE prefix to the serial number engraved on the neck plate) but you can’t get that with a maple ’board and, when you could back in the late eighties, it came with an alder body back.

But there’s plenty more uniqueness to this model: it’s the only PRS guitar to use a three-way Fender-style lever pickup selector, then there are its large black dot fretboard markers – just under 9mm in diameter below the 12th fret and closer to 7mm above – that come with a 513-style 12th fret bird inlay (there’s even a first fret dot – a tribute from Johnny to the late Danny Gatton). It has its own JH neck carve too, along with specially created JH Treble and Bass covered humbuckers. Even the ‘Johnny Hiland’ engraved truss rod cover is inlaid into the headstock to facilitate those behind-the-nut bends.

Yet such is the visual strength of the now-classic double-cutaway outline, headstock and dual humbucker/vibrato layout, not to mention the beautiful ‘fiddleback’ flamed maple 10 top, that it couldn’t be anything else but a PRS.

In use

PRS makes very, very good guitars. Opening the case, it’s as near-as-dammit in tune. The set-up is bang-on PRS specification. It doesn’t need tweaking or adjustment - so long as you use the supplied .009-.042 strings, of course - and it’s gig ready.

On a tactile level the main change here to the PRS blend is the neck. PRS describes the Johnny Hiland neck carve as, “a variation of a PRS wide-thin neck, incorporating aspects of a ‘C’-style neck from the first fret to the 12th fret”. In the hand the nitro, low gloss-finish neck feels like a slightly deeper wide-thin, even though it doesn’t feel that wide at all, perhaps due to the fuller profile.