DREW KRAG: Hey guys. This is Drew Krag with Gearwire.Com, and we’ve been going through my guitar collection, and I’m going to introduce to you a very special guitar in my life. Now, this was my first dream guitar, and I’m going to tell you a little kind of story that may help you with purchasing guitars or whatever. Check this out.

So, it was probably 1996, the end of ’96 or early ’97, and I decided that I’ve finally figured out what kind of guitar I wanted to buy. Now, I was one of these guys -- I wasn’t a Gibson guy and I wasn’t a Fender guy. I actually love them both. I love the sound of the Fender and I love the sound of the Gibson and I wanted both in the same guitar. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily exist exactly, but what I’m gearing, was getting geared up to buy was actually a Paul Reed Smith guitar, and those guitars at that time were all hand made and they were just really high-quality guitars, great tone, good pickups, great craftsmanship, beautiful guitars at that, and they kind of bridged this gap between Gibson and Fender. In other words, they bridge the gap between single coil and humbucking. They were able to do both at once, and that’s pretty much what set those guitars apart and created the demand for them.

So, I decided, you know, the cheapest Paul Reed at that time was probably around 1,200 or 1,300 bucks, and I decided if I was going to spend that much money, I might as well spend an extra $700 or $800 and get a really, really good one. So, I called up the company and I was going to put in an order for them to custom-make me one, and they were really enthusiastic about doing that. However, they told me it would take about two years for that to show up on my doorstep, and I went, “Oh geez. Two years: That’s an awful long time to wait for a guitar.”

So I asked them. I was like, “Well, you know what I’m looking for, how many of these guitars you think you’ve made so far?” And they’re lie, “You would probably be able to find one, if not one very, very similar, and you know you might have to take a hit as far as the exact color or whatever, but they’re out there so you might be able to find one.” So, I set out on a quest to find my dream guitar, searching guitar stores from coast to coast, all over the place trying to find the perfect one, and I finally found it down in Margate, Florida in a Sam Ash music store, and I walked in and negotiated the price down as low as I possibly could.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to my Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 guitar. Now, this guitar is probably one of their higher end guitars definitely of the day. Like I said, it was from 1996. I bought it on December 31st 1996, and it’s got obviously all the bells and whistles that you can get added on to this guitar. For one, the bird inlay, these are abalone and mother of pearl and they’re absolutely gorgeous. Now, this all cosmetic so it’s still going to sound the same without them. It doesn’t matter. But like I said, if you’re going to spend that much money, you might as well cough up the extra couple of hundred bucks and get the best one you can get

The other thing is that this is a 10 top guitar which means the finish is absolutely flawless. That you can always find out whether it’s 10 top by looking at the back of the neck and it will have a little 10 right up there. Now, these came with HFS and vintage bass pickups which are very -- actually really good pickups. I’ve been think about swapping them out just to experiment, try something new. I mean geez I’ve had the guitar for 11 years. I may want to try some new pickups in it. But a couple of modifications I made to this guitar, I dropped the bridge so that it could get more sustain. I don’t use the tremolo as much as I probably should but dropping the bridge allowed me to have more sustain and it actually helps keep it more in tune in the long run. Other than that, it’s pretty much all stock parts. It’s pretty much everything is original on this guitar.