Along with the McCarty Hollowbody of 1998, PRS introduced a deeper-bodied model called the PRS McCarty Archtop.

And topping the Archtop was the super high-end, special-order Archtop Artist, with Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, bird inlays with gold-inlaid outlines, gold-plated hardware, and an abalone peghead signature.

The Archtop design came from PRS master luthier Joe Knaggs, who created PRS’s first archtops for their Guitar of the Month and Private Stock programs. As a self-described ex-jazz guitarist, Knaggs felt that the wide bodies of traditional jazz guitars – a carryover from the pre-electric era, when a guitar had to be big to be heard – were simply uncomfortable to play, and he wanted to capture the performance of a Gibson L-5CES, for example, in a smaller-bodied instrument.

With a depth of 2.75 inches at the rim and a full 4 inches in the center of the body, the PRS McCarty Archtop was substancially deeper than the standard PRS or a typical “thinline” guitar, but it still had the compact, easy-to-play body of a solid model.