Zach Myers says a new signature guitar from PRS Guitars is in the works, and if you have caught Shinedown live in recent months you might already have already seen him play one of the prototypes.
Joining MusicRadar from a boat as he takes some R&R before the Shinedown touring machine winds up again for some of the biggest shows in the band’s history – a debut at Madison Square Gardens beckons next week – Myers says he says the final design might still get tweaked.
But we are way off with our guesses as to what this guitar might look like. Could this be a radical departure? Myers loves the NF3 and Silver Sky – and the NF53 for that matter – perhaps this could have been a bolt-on?
No. Wrong. Myers tells us to expect a subtle refresh on his single-cut semi-hollow electric guitar – emphasis on subtle.
“Really, it’s pretty much the same thing as the last one,” he says. “But it’s a different colour. I believe we might have done something different with the pickups. It’s basically a different colour variation of the Myers Blue, of the last version of the Myers. It’s a cool colour, matching headstock. It’s very pretty.
“I’ve actually played a couple of prototypes onstage and just didn’t tell anyone what it was. People were asking. But we have redone the prototype since and the colour has changed a little bit.”
Myers has got a reputation for colour-changes on PRS guitars. Well, it's true. You do something once in this world and no one will let you forget it – like when he refinished his John Mayer Silver Sky in hot pink and then got it relic’d to look like Mayer’s BLK1 Stratocaster. The relic job was bang on. But it’s fair to say that people lost their minds over it.
Myers argues that it remains one of his favourite guitars but he admits that the reaction to its refin had him joking with his tech, Drew Foppe, that he might cremate it in the band’s onstage pyro.
“I’ve got to be careful what I say," he says with a chuckle. "Dude, I told Drew one day, I was like, ‘One night I’m just going to throw that thing in the fire and let it burn to death because I’ve had more drama around this guitar…”
And he only uses it for one song live, Monsters. It’s kept in D standard and otherwise minds its own business. At the time, there was talk of people’s noses out of joint at PRS. But Myers says none of this drama came from Paul Reed Smith.
“He didn’t say anything! He notoriously doesn’t like relics,” says Myers. “It’s well documented, his hatred of relics, and it’s fine. Hey, I would never relic a flame-top guitar – I just felt the Silver Sky lent itself to that kind of cool thing.”
All the heat stemmed from the fact that, unbeknownst to him, that Mayer was just about to release the Stratocaster-inspired Roxy Pink Silver Sky, and this, arriving contemporaneously, well, it was too much for the internet.
“The thing is, as John was making a pink guitar, I did not know that. I was unaware. And I made that guitar pink. It was white,” he says. “There are pictures of me playing it from 2018 to whenever I relic’d it. It was just a white guitar, and I painted it pink, and I didn’t know John had a pink one coming out, so it looked like John had given me a pink guitar and I’d relic’d it. I don’t know who was mad. But people were mad.”
Foppe even had to take to Instagram to explain what was going on and try to take some of the heat out of the situation. “For people who don’t quite understand what a tribute relic job looks like, and just want to talk trash about what kind of wear and tear a guitar should or shouldn’t have… you’re missing the entire point in the first place!” wrote Foppe.
The whole episode was pretty funny. Myers has zero regrets. “It’s still one of my coolest looking guitars,” he says.
What if PRS Guitars did drop him over the controversy? Well, that would of course be crazy. They'd never do that. Even so, Myers says he would still play PRS all the same.
“Even if they say, ‘Okay, you don’t have a signature model anymore. We’re going in a different direction.’ I don’t know if I could play other guitars,” he says. “I really don’t.
I’m obviously a big Gibson hollowbody guy. I love Gibsons. I love Teles. But I just don’t know if I could ever do it. I love PRS guitars so much
“I’m obviously a big Gibson hollowbody guy. I love Gibsons. I love Teles. But I just don’t know if I could ever do it. I love [PRS] guitars so much.”
The reason is the man whose name is on the headstock. Myers was just 15 when he first met Smith (his first PRS was a Custom 22), and he’ll never forget the experience. Smith left quite the impression.
“He’s as kooky as can be,” says Myers. “I tell people all the time, the first time I ever met him, he talked to me about fly fishing for two hours and never mentioned a guitar. And I was 15 and just wanted to talk about guitars all day long.”
Was Smith making the point that fly fishing was analogous to making guitars, that there's craft to it, et cetera?
“I think that was his point,” concedes Myers. “But at 15, I was not trying to hear it! [Laughs] Dude, tell me why the guitar sounds so good!”
Smith would get around to that when he and Myers were working on developing their first signature model together.
He’s the first person I’ve ever seen, when I went to go build a guitar, take a neck and hit it, and he would go, ‘Oh that’s a G’
Zach Myers on Paul Reed Smith
“Paul Reed Smith is a genius, and I don’t call people that, but you’ve got to call people what they are in the spectrum of their field. He is the Leo Fender of today. He is the Orville Gibson of today,” says Myers. “To have a guy at the helm who goes around the world and wants to find – even if it is on the cheapest guitar they make – the best sounding plastic nut, like, ‘I’m going to drop these nuts on a table and I want to see which one sounds the best.’ Y’know!?
“He’s the first person I’ve ever seen, when I went to go build a guitar, take a neck and hit it, and he would go, ‘Oh that’s a G.’ [hums tapping] He’s just so focused on making something better.”
You can read our full interview with Myers coming soon to MusicRadar. In other Shinedown news, last week, they released their third single of 2025, Killing Fields, and the next leg of their Dance, Kid, Dance Tour kicks off on July 19 at the TD Garden, Boston. See Shinedown for dates and ticket details. And check out MusicRadar's interview with Shinedown frontman Brent Smith on songwriting, Rick Beato, and what how music can heal you.
Keep your eyes posted for more new models from PRS. The company is celebrating its 40th anniversary by releasing new guitars each month. In June, PRS teamed up with DragonForce's Herman Li for the limited edition Chleo, a souped-up shred machine with HSH Fishman pickups, a Gotoh floating vibrato and Eclipse Dragon inlays.
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