PRS made a limited run of 100 guitars in 1996 with a rosewood neck.

That feature alone would have been intriguing enough to those guitarists – Paul Reed Smith, among them – who believe that wood is as important as electronics in shaping the sound of a solidbody electric. However, when PRS put a rosewood-neck model into regular production in 2004, the esoteric neck material turned out to be a relatively minor refinement compared to the electronic system introduced on this new model.

What appeared to be a humbucker-single-humbucker setup was really five single-coil pickups. The two blade-style selector switches created a total of 13 different pickup combinations. The system five-pickup, 13-selection system was sufficiently innovative for PRS to incorporate it into the model name of the 513 Rosewood. Newly designed bird inlays also received the designation “513 birds”.

Introduced in 2004, the 513 Rosewood lasted only a few years, but the 513 electronics reamined viable, and in 2007 PRS answered the increasing demand for this system with the more conventional mahogany-neck Model 513.