PRS Guitars is celebrating its 40th anniversary by launching new guitars every month in 2025, and it isn’t waiting around for June’s drop. The 40th Anniversary McCarty SC56 Limited Edition is based on a single-cutaway body and serves as “a tribute to tradition and a reliable tool for the modern performer.”
Its name tells its story. The ‘SC’ part is related to the single-cutaway body that pairs a “slightly thicker” mahogany back with a violin-carved maple top, and unlike previous iterations, it benefits from weight relief to counter one of the biggest gripes players have with single-cutaway guitars.
That’s a win for backs up and down the country, and PRS has also ensured there are several contact points between the guitar’s top and back to eliminate the hollow sound those cavities can have.
1956 is significant here in two ways. Not only was it the year in which the firm’s founding father and chief tonewood debunker, Paul Reed Smith, was born, but it was also the year that PAF humbuckers came into existence.
The minor caveat is that they weren’t commercially available until the following year, but the guitar’s namesake Ted McCarty (the esteemed Gibson CEO and, in his later years, mentor to Paul Reed Smith) had put P.A.F. ‘buckers into production in ’56.
It’s no surprise that this guitar chooses such flavors instead of its modern and innovative Narrowfield pickups, with two PRS McCarty III pickups the go-to.
They’re “designed to give a warm, woody tone with excellent note separation, and a beautiful vintage character,” and a fairly comprehensive electronics layout featuring two Volume and Tone controls each, and a three-way toggle found on the upper bout, offers plenty of personalization.
Elsewhere, the 24.594” build has Pattern Vintage mahogany neck, and a 22-fret rosewood fingerboard with a PRS two-piece bridge “to promote its musical sustain,” and Phase III tuners, which are sadly non-locking.
All these features, alongside fretboard binding, coalesce for a Les Paul-like electric guitar (indeed the use of the McCarty name is still a bone of contention with Gibson) . Its vintage-inspired McCarty Burst nitrocellulose finish further fuels those flames, but the PRS bird inlays remind you of its Maryland origins.
If the McCarty Sunburst isn’t rousing your fancy, it also comes in Faded Blue Jean and Translucent Black finishes.
The PRS 40th Anniversary McCarty SC56 Limited Edition is available now for $4,950.
Head to PRS for more.
