In this episode of Guitar Center’s Inside the Noise with Gabe Dalporto, our CEO travels to the PRS Guitars headquarters in Stevensville, Maryland to tour the manufacturing facility and have a casual and informative chat with founder Paul Reed Smith. The two leaders detail business struggles and successes and dig into Smith’s enthusiasm for “just wanting a chance” when artists try his guitars. Smith kicks things off by having Dalparto tap a block of tonewood to experience its bell-like resonance.
 
PAUL REED SMITH ON WHY HE STARTED PRS GUITARS
“I had prototypes, and I wanted the guitars made. I went to piles of companies to get them to do it, and it became very clear that unless we did it ourselves it wasn’t going to happen. What you’re looking at engineering-wise didn’t happen in one day. It wasn’t some grand plan to make Cogswell’s Cogs like in The Jetsons, where you put the stuff in one end and it comes out the other. This has been a really long journey, and the fascinating about it is that so many people have joined together to try to make nothing into something.”
 
PAUL REED SMITH ON HIS TOUGHEST DAY AT PRS
“There was a time when there were 400 guitars in the hall and we had no home for them. I told Warren Esanu—our Chairman of the Board—that we had a big problem. He said, ‘I don’t even know how I know this, but I think you can muddle through and somehow put it together.’ I took him at his word, kept swinging and we got out of it. How did it happen? It was done with an incredibly determined teamwork of people who kept their heads down to find a way.”

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Chapters
00:00 – Inside the Noise at the PRS Guitars Factory
00:26 – Inside PRS Private Stock: Choosing Wood with Paul Reed Smith
01:05 – How PRS Private Stock Guitars Are Born
01:40 – Burl Tops, Figured Maple, and Rare Tonewoods Explained
02:15 – How Private Stock Became a Core Part of PRS
02:36 – Tap Tones, Harmonics, and Why Wood Rings
02:55 – Meet Paul Reed Smith, Founder of PRS Guitars
03:18 – Why Paul Reed Smith Started PRS Guitars
03:39 – Early Prototypes, Rejection, and the Decision to Go Independent
04:27 – Raising Capital and Taking PRS on the Road
05:20 – Building PRS One Baby Step at a Time
06:08 – Carlos Santana’s Endorsement and the Turning Point for PRS
07:50 – Earning Trust: What It Took to Win Santana Over
08:24 – Why Great Artists Decide for Themselves
09:16 – The Reality of Building a Guitar Company
09:53 – Stone Soup: How PRS Was Built by a Community
11:12 – Longtime Employees and a Culture of Innovation
12:16 – The Hardest Moments in PRS History
13:12 – Leadership, Teamwork, and Finding a Way Forward
14:17 – Solving Problems When There Is No Obvious Solution
15:12 – Why Listening Inside the Factory Matters
16:34 – Execution, Strategy, and Building Great Teams
17:00 – Continuous Improvement and Engineering at PRS
18:13 – The Future of PRS Guitars and Industry Innovation
18:36 – What Paul Reed Smith Wants for PRS Customers
19:07 – Chasing Better Tone and Playability: PRS's Approach
20:06 – New PRS Tones, Prototypes, and Sonic Innovation
20:48 – Hendrix Amps, Transparency, and Letting Artists Be Themselves<