PTC Brent Mason Electronics Overhaul

*photo courtesy of musicradar.com

The Paul Reed Smith Tech Center (PTC) is in the business of making your guitar dreams a reality. In addition to standard PRS repairs and maintenance, the PTC specializes in overhauling your guitar to meet your unique needs as a musician. The PTC job we are exploring today features an electronics and control layout change to a PRS Brent Mason signature model. This specific customer needed to easily access a variety of tones when gigging, and the PTC helped him make it happen!

Before we can understand the electronics changes made by the PTC, let’s take a look at a stock PRS Brent Mason model.

As you can see above, the stock Brent Mason features a three pickup layout. A narrow 408 bass pickup sits in the neck position, a narrow 408 treble pickup in the bridge, and a 305 singlecoil in the middle position.

Two mini-toggle switches coil-tap the 408 pickups when engaged. To round out the rest of the electronics controls, the guitar has a 5-way blade pickup switch and a master volume and master tone control.

Here’s a look at the PTC modded Brent Mason model in Tri-Color Sunburst finish!

While the original narrow 408 bass pickup in the neck remained stock, the narrow 408 treble pickup was moved to the middle position and a wide 408 pickup was placed in the bridge position. Another mini-toggle was added to the existing two mini-toggles so that each pickup could be individually coil-tapped as desired. The standard tone knob became a unique push-pull. Here’s how it works—when the tone knob is down it operates as a standard master tone control, when the tone knob is up it operates as a middle pickup volume control. This allows the player to blend the middle pickup individually with any other pickup that is selected by the 5-way blade switch.

These PTC additions made an already versatile instrument even more unique for the player gigging it. If you would like your PRS instrument serviced by the only authorized PRS service center, contact the PTC today for a quote!