How hard is this?

Is this a good example of over-engineering?

I have seen a couple of re-inventions of the wheel this week but this one takes the cake. Yep, it is a hard tail bridge but just how 'hard' is it? First there are no strings through the body, instead the strings are locked by the key holes and actually pull upwards putting pressure on the steel mounting plate.

To reveal where this rare bird has been spotted read on..


You're right, this is the bridge from the Paul Reed-Smith S2 Vela. PRS have had this guitar out there for a while now but this is the all new and improved 2018 model. Complete with a look-a-like DeArmond Model 2000 neck pickup, improved of course.

The PRS S2 Vela 2018

The guitar itself no doubt is of typical PRS high quality but like the recent John Meyer Stratosmith it just looks like another wheel. As for the hardtail bridge, a combination of a regular Strat hardie, some oddball Tele saddles with strings anchored in keyed slots, like something I made at school in metalwork class. This bridge not only looks bad bad bad but with two screws to adjust each of only two saddles there must be some unseen trickery to achieve a suitable intonating angle.

Just on a side note.. Paul is quite the inventor coming up with channels cut in his six tremolo mounting screws (see image) for the fulcrum point of the trem plate to ride in. This was a dumb idea IMO. Yes, it does prevent the fulcrum point from riding up the screws of a badly adjusted Strat style vintage tremolo but as PRS even advises, to adjust one of these channelled screws with the trem mounted and under tension can cause extreme damage, think about it.

Each screw has a channel

And did I say? The only guitar that can legitimately feature raw (un-plated) brass saddles should be the Telecaster.