Since it arrived in 2018, John Mayer’s PRS Silver Sky signature guitar has undergone a handful of careful revisions, and a few more radical iterations could yet be in the offing – including an HSS model.
The Silver Sky was recently reimagined as a Land Rover Defender collab electric guitar and, perhaps more notably, given a ‘Dead Spec’ spin-off.
But as Mayer recently told Guitar World, he and Paul Reed Smith are constantly discussing ways they can further fine-tune the template for potential limited runs.
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“It’s telling a story really thoughtfully,” Mayer said of the Silver Sky line. “It’s basically two SKUs: it’s a Core model and it’s an SE, with a slight number of limited models like the Dead Spec. There was 1,000 of the Dead Spec, which, to me, I always see as a kind of concept guitar.”
“I just think there’s something that feels good in my brain, and maybe other guitar players’ brains, about this model,” he continues.
“I would like to introduce – and will introduce – evolutions of this as we go. Paul is always calling me with another idea.”
One of those ideas, it turns out, is a Silver Sky with a bridge humbucker. “I have a prototype of an HSS,” Mayer reveals.
It’s a popular after-market mod that many Silver Sky owners have taken upon themselves to retrofit – Neal Schon included. So any talk of an official HSS Silver Sky could spark borderline hysteria from Mayer fans.
But the Sob Rock guitarist is quick to quash the idea. Almost as soon as he reveals its existence, he plays down the idea it could become a future ‘concept guitar’ a la the Dead Spec.
“I think that’s too much of a tease,” he replied when asked if it’d be released. “I don’t think it would be a limited run. I’m not out to frustrate people. I’m out to excite people – and it’s a fine line between excitement [and frustration].
“It’s got to be right. You’ve got to be braiding it very slowly – everything has to be as tight as the braid before it. And it’s not a matter of, ‘When’s the right time to drop this on people that would be the most exciting?’ It’s like, ‘When is it right?’
“You know, you have a geometry puzzle on a design level when you take two single-coils and you place them together. How are you going to express the shape of that in a way that communicates with the rest of the design language? How do you do it sonically so you don’t go full blast when you go into the [bridge pickup]. You need it to stay even. These are design-based timelines.”
Given Mayer’s comments, it seems unlikely there will be a design-timeline for an HSS Silver Sky. For now, we can just rest easy knowing one exists – and pray Mayer takes it on to the stage when he hits the Sphere for his solo residency next year.
For more from John Mayer, read Guitar World’s interview on the making of the recent PRS x Land Rover Defender collaboration.
