While dive-bomb vibrato units and dramatic body shapes carried a wave of upstart guitar companies through the 1980s, a new company called PRS introduced itself in 1985 with elegant refinements of traditional designs.

Paul Reed Smith, now based in Stevensville, MD, took his inspiration from the short-horn, asymmetrical double-cutaway shape of Gibson’s low-end Les Paul Junior and Special of the late 1950s. His calling card was a contoured top of highly figured maple, the unbound edges of which gave his guitars the appearance of being bound with curly maple, but he redesigned almost every element of the traditional design. The result was a high-end instrument that appealed to guitar connoisseurs as well as to players.

Appropriate to Smith’s ten-year background as a custom builder, he named the maple-top PRS model the Custom. He introduced his new guitar at the winter NAMM trade show in January of 1985 and took orders.

By the summer show his production team had made their first 20 instruments. Less than a year later on June 16, 1987, the company celebrated it’s 1,000th guitar.