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Incredible build quality is matched by a very high price-tag.

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• Review

We got our first look at PRS's new acoustics in prototype form at the company's annual Experience event back in 2008. Having hired ex-McPherson man Steve Fischer, Smith was - and remains - near evangelical in his quest to prove that more can be done with the humble flat top.

Typically for Smith, we're not talking slavish vintage reissues - it's all about learning from the past and evolving. Two years later the guitars are finished, and with some fairly hard-hitting endorsement coming from the likes of Martin Simpson and Tony McManus, the team has obviously made some highly compelling instruments. So, take a look at that price, wipe the sweat from your brow, and let's see what they've come up with.

"The Angelus body uses cocobolo rosewood for the back and sides, a lovely figured selection."

The Angelus is one of two body styles from PRS acoustics. 394mm (15.5 inches) across the lower bout, cutaway and with a maximum depth of 111mm (4 3/8 inches), it finishes up halfway between Martin's 000 blueprint and the much-loved Taylor 514CE.

The rounded outline hints at mini jumbo territory, but PRS's other shape - the Tonare Grand - fits that description more comfortably. The guitar is built on a 641mm (25.25-inch) scale - again, part way between 000 Martin and Taylor-standard lengths - and has a 44.5mm (1.75-inch) nut, which is towards finger-style territory, but still manageable for comfortable chording.

The Angelus body uses cocobolo rosewood for the (ever so slightly arched) back and also the sides. It's a lovely figured selection that originates from the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. The sides have strengthening struts - beautifully cut and shaped - while the lining is so fine and precise it could only have been done on a CNC machine.

Back outside, rosewood bindings are coach-lined with inlaid maple, with more rosewood and a ring of abalone around the soundhole: flawless. The top itself is Adirondack spruce, a highly prized variety thanks to its high strength-to-weight ratio and subsequent vibrational/tonal qualities.

What's more interesting, however, is what's going on underneath, which is mixture of 'standard' steel-string X-bracing, and the fan bracing you see more commonly in nylon-string classicals.

"The hybrid brace design came about because of an old Torres guitar that was owned by a friend of Paul's," explains Steve Fischer. "He and I thought [it] was possibly the most beautiful sounding acoustic instrument we had ever heard. Paul's friend was kind enough to let me take the guitar back to my shop in Utah, where I measured everything, examined everything inside and out and even had it X-rayed."

Fischer goes on to explain how the fan bracing seems, on a common sense level, to be a more natural way of bracing a resonating soundboard, though of course it will not stand up to the tension of steel strings. The solution?

"It came to me that if I could leave the X-brace and remove the diagonal tone bars normally found in a Martin X-brace pattern, and replace them with fan braces, it would be strong enough to withstand the pull of steel strings, but allow the top to move in a more natural and efficient way."