Long-time Telecaster lover Keith Urban has revealed he’s working with Paul Reed Smith on a new Tele-type model as he searches for something a little different in his next guitar.
Namely, he wants a Tele without limits and a PRS that isn’t as easy to play as its siblings, as the guitarist wants to wage war with his six strings rather than kneeling to their whims.
The country star has played many guitars over his career, but has long been associated with Fender guitars more so than any other brand – his 40th Anniversary Fender Telecaster, ‘Clarence,’ which he’s owned since 1989, chief among them. But now he has followed in the footsteps of his friend John Mayer by joining the PRS team.
As it turns out, Mayer’s best-selling Silver Sky signature highlighted some of Clarence’s shortcomings, prompting him to jump ship and strike up a working relationship with Smith to remedy issues he faces with his beloved Tele.
“John had Paul build a guitar for him for the Dead & Company run that he did [the ‘Dead Spec’ Silver Sky], and he wanted one guitar, like, ‘Can I just play one guitar all night?’” Urban says in a new interview with Guitar World. “I thought, ‘Let's see if I can get back to a bit more of that.’
The new project will use the T-type design as a launch pad, with Urban eager to put his stamp all over the build-in-progress.
Urban says he can “play anything on Clarence,” but adds “I just wish it sounded a little bit better. It's a frustrating thing. So, that was really the beginning of the search with Paul and the people up there at PRS.
“I want to see if we can create something modeled on the feel of Clarence but with a better tonal range.”
So far, choice changes have come from Urban and Smith in equal measure, making for an interesting concept.
“I like a little bit of a hollowbody, so it's got a little bit of that in there,” the guitarist explains. “We have a customized f-hole shape that is modeled after the phoenix tattoo on my forearm. And it's got these pickups that are specifically Paul's design.
“They're humbuckers but have an amazing, almost Dumble harmonic range. I can get squeaks and squawks out of them; unlike any other guitar I've got. And the playability is just beautiful.”
Naturally, a project as ambitious as a Tele 2.0 isn’t without its issues, with Urban wanting to concoct a guitar with a little more fight than other PRS models. In his own words, they can be too easy to play, finding the vintage guitars he’s grown accustomed to making music with being far less submissive.
“My struggle is I like a little fight out of a guitar. I'm used to it, and I'm a bit more of an aggressive player,” he details. “I'm trying to see if I can get Paul to help me get a bit of fight out of a guitar designed to give you no fight and effortless play. I do better when I struggle a little bit with the guitar, if that makes any sense.”
This isn’t the first instance of PRS turning its craft to T-type guitars, though. The company “rose to the occasion” of Myles Kennedy’s signature guitar demands for a build that was a tonal “Swiss Army knife.”
A key component for the guitar was PRS' intuitive Narrowfield MK humbuckers, which have impressed for their blend of single-coil tones and hum-free full-bodied humbucker traits. These pickups now feature in the Silver Sky’s recently-released sibling of sorts, the SE NF3.
It will be interesting to see if Smith's Dumble-esque pickups pertain a little of the Narrowfield secret sauce to widen the scope of its tones, as that is indeed exactly what Urban is chasing with his take on the Tele template.
Urban and Smith are set to continue working on the signature build, with the industry's curiosity certainly rising as time goes on.
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