The luthier also recalled how a PRS ax fared when subjected to the test alongside a Les Paul and a Strat.

Paul Reed Smith described a technique for identifying “good” guitars, and described a daring but supposedly efficient technique for guitar salespeople to figure out if customers are really interested in a given instrument.Needless to say, having the right equipment can mean a world of difference for professional players, and subjecting one’s guitar, amp, or other pieces of gear to various stress tests isn’t unheard of.

The master luthier Paul Reed Smith, founder and president of the guitar manufacturing giant that bears his name, has just one such test for differentiating between “good” and “bad” guitars, and it’s somewhat similar in approach to Eddie Van Halen’s amp “torture test” that Dave Friedman described a while back.

In a video taken at a 2023 guitar clinic hosted by Cosmo Music and which was only recently posted on the Canadian retailer’s YouTube page, Paul Reed Smith argued that the level of sustain makes or breaks an instrument (via MusicRadar):

“A good guitar will ring for about 45 seconds. A bad guitar rings for about 12 seconds. You can time it with a stopwatch. The guitar is either shutting down a string or allowing it to ring. The string wants to go nuts. You can take a really good guitar and a bad guitar and switch the strings, and it is still a really good guitar and a bad guitar. The string is trying to do its job; the guitar is shutting it down… And the lesser amount that the guitar shuts the string down the better the guitar is.”

As MusicRadar notes, the same test would hardly work on rubber bridge guitars, but it can definitely be applied on PRS axes. However, the luthier himself didn’t think of that until he was once challenged by an audience member to time the sustain of old and new Les Pauls and Strats, as well as one PRS guitar. Recalling the experience, Paul said:

“I broke out in a cold sweat the minute he challenged me because I had never timed my guitar. The old Les Paul rang for about 45 seconds. The new one rang for about 17 seconds. The old Strat rang about 47, 48 seconds. The new one rang about 17 or 18 seconds, and the PRS lasted 48 seconds, so it was okay.”

“If they start screaming, that’s the guitar they want”

Paul Reed Smith also described another test meant for retailers who want to determine whether a customer is seriously interested in buying a given guitar or not. The test is as simple as it is audacious — just play “catch” with the instrument and watch for the customer’s reaction:

“If they start screaming when you are playing catch with one of the guitars that’s the one they want. It’s true! It happened to me. We were in Florida and this guy goes, ‘I just can’t decide if I love this guitar or not.’ And [former PRS sales rep] Jim Greenhill said, ‘Back up, Paul!’ And we started chucking it, and he started screaming; his credit card came out so fast it was unbelievable! Now we’ve done the opposite, we’ve started throwing it and the person has no reaction whatsoever. They don’t buy it.”