The PRS Silver Sky was designed by Paul Reed Smith and built to John Mayer's specifications. This vintage-inspired guitar boasts a familiar shape with an eye-catching contrasting tone in its cutaway scoop. Its neck carve, scale length, and fingerboard radius were modeled after John's early-'60s instruments; however, a modified PRS-style headstock and locking tuners propel it firmly into the twenty-first century. Park this axe in front of any tube amp, and its sweet-sounding single-coil pickups will churn out glassy, musical tones with excellent note definition. Beyond that, the Silver Sky includes a bone nut, molded metal jack plate, retooled knobs, custom fret-wire, and PRS's double-action truss rod.

Vintage-inspired neck with practical contemporary touches

The Silver Sky's bolt-on neck is patterned after John Mayer's beloved vintage instruments. Its fingerboard is loaded with 22 custom-sized frets, and it boasts a 25.5" scale length and 7.25" radius. At Music Experience, we're intimately familiar with the unique feel of classic American electric guitars, and we can attest — PRS nailed it. Wrap your hand around this neck, and you'll agree — it just feels right. The Silver Sky features an inverted PRS-style headstock that's been modified to accommodate John's playing style and to keep a consistent length of string behind the nut, which improves intonation. You also get traditional vintage-style closed-back tuners with modern locking mechanisms.

A trio of sweet-sounding single-coil pickups

If you're a single-coil tone connoisseur, you'll love the PRS Silver Sky. Its pickups combine the best elements of early-'60s American electric guitars: a round and full tone with glassy, musical highs that never venture into ice-pick land. The chiming harmonics yielded by these pickups are jaw-dropping. And when you put them in front of a tube amp, you get a gorgeous growl with outstanding note definition. These pickups have a few modern tricks up their sleeve, too: they exhibit a higher signal-to-noise ratio than vintage models, and their in-between sounds are noise canceling. On top of that, their electronics have been precision valued, ensuring superior consistency from pickup to pickup.

Classic-styled tremolo with modern reliability

Much like its tuners, the Silver Sky's tremolo takes a classic design and embellishes it with modern features. For starters, it features PRS's unthreaded tremolo arm, which supplies you with a small set screw to optimize its playing position. Beyond that, Gen III knife-edge screws ensure a reliable return to pitch. Also, per John Mayer's request, the tremolo rests flush against the guitar's body in a neutral position, so that it only goes down in pitch. Keeping the bridge in contact with the body amplifies the guitar acoustically, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the Silver Sky's pickups.

What PRS Says...

The PRS Silver Sky is the result of a close collaboration between Grammy Award-winning musician John Mayer and Paul Reed Smith. More than two and half years in the making, the Silver Sky is a vintage-inspired instrument that is at once familiar but also newly PRS through and through. This model was based off of Mayer and Smith’s favorite elements from 1963 and 1964 vintage instruments, resulting in an idealized version of a vintage single-coil guitar. The attention that was paid to every detail sets this guitar apart.

Modern Design Elements

Some of the more distinctive specifications include, the headstock shape, tuners, neck and fretboard, bridge, and pickups and electronics. The headstock shape is based on PRS’s trademark design, but inverted to both accommodate Mayer’s playing style and also to keep a consistent length of string behind the nut, which makes staying in tune easier. The tuners are a traditional vintage-style, closed-back tuner, but with PRS’s locking design. The neck shape was modeled after 1963/1964 vintage instruments, and the fretboard has a 7.25” radius. The moment your hand grabs this neck, it just feels right. Like the tuners, the steel tremolo takes a classic design and incorporates PRS’s trem arm and Gen III knife-edge screws. The bridge on the Silver Sky is setup flush to the body in the neutral position so that the tremolo bridge only goes down in pitch. By keeping the bridge in contact with the body, the guitar itself is acoustically louder, which improves the signal to noise ratio of the single-coil pickups. The 635JM single-coil pickups are very round and full, with a musical high end that is never “ice-picky” or brash. Other high-quality specifications include a bone nut, a molded metal jack plate that is curved and makes plugging and unplugging a guitar cable hassle-free, retooled knobs, fretwire that is slightly smaller than what you’d find on most PRS electric guitars, and PRS’s double action truss rod (accessible from the front of the headstock for ease of use). The Silver Sky comes in various colors with distinctive accents on PRS’s trademark lower horn scoop.