Back in 1992, PRS Guitars was just seven years old and plenty of people thought the first Dragon guitar was the beginning of the end.
For a brand in its infancy known for high-end opulent guitars, that Dragon was a ‘love it or hate it’ run of just 50 pieces aimed not for the stage but for very well-heeled collectors. In reality, that particular guitar was more the starting point: a redesign of the recipe.
Up until that stage, PRS’s set-neck guitars were only available with 24 frets. The Dragon introduced a shorter (and stiffer) 22-fret Wide Fat profile neck with a longer heel and a slightly steeper headstock back-angle in an attempt to improve the sound.
“Ralph Perucci and I designed it on my kitchen table at Christmas,” Paul Reed Smith told this writer back in the day. “We talked about the changes, and I knew we had to change the neck. Any time I’d found an old guitar with a short, fat neck it sounded better.”
That first ’92 Dragon also introduced the PRS Stoptail one-piece wrapover bridge and another first was the set of covered humbuckers (Dragons, naturally). This design led directly to the standard production Custom 22 in 1993, followed by the McCarty Model in 1994.
Priced at $17,500/£18,995, today’s 40th Anniversary Dragon is the 10th Dragon we’ve seen since 1992 and it’s certainly a sizeable investment (although the 2005 20th Anniversary Dragon Double Neck cost an eye-watering £32k on its launch). This latest model is limited to 165 pieces, with 40 heading to the UK and Europe.
The new Dragon is based on the PRS McCarty platform and has a mahogany back and Private Stock-grade figured maple top – “the kinda flame maple people dream of,” says Paul. “This is the rare stuff!” The neck is ziricote and the fingerboard is Gaboon ebony with a pale moon ebony insert. It’s all finished in a gloss nitro Burnt Chestnut.
“I don’t want to just make some piece of art,” says Paul Reed Smith today. “I want it to be an extraordinary instrument. It should be able to be used at a recording session, a gig. It should be a helluva guitar. That’s important to me and that’s what I really like about this 40th Anniversary Dragon.”
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The production version of that first Dragon (without the inlay) was the 1993 Custom 22, which used the changes in the design and was the first non-limited guitar to feature the Stoptail bridge and (uncovered) Dragon Treble and Bass pickups. The ceramic-powered Treble aimed for a big ‘fat’ voicing “with zero loss of clarity”, said PRS, while the Bass pickup was lower output and more PAF-like with an “angelic” high-end.
Those original first-version Dragon pickups are now highly desirable among PRS aficionados. “We always used Dragons to release new pickups,” says Paul today. “While those Dragon Is were about us dipping into more turns to give it a throatier sound, the new McCarty IIIs are throaty but in a very clear way”
- The Private Stock 40th Anniversary McCarty Dragon is available now, priced $17,500/£18,995. See PRS Guitars for more details.
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