PTC Guitar Overhaul - Hollowbody II Modifications!

Posted Dec 04, 2015

Behind The Gear / Tech Tips

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 making unique modifications to your guitar to meet your needs as a musician. The PTC job we are exploring today features our popular Hollowbody II model with some interesting modifications. Check out the work done to this guitar below!

Let’s start by taking a look at our Hollowbody II model in its stock form.

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We created this guitar to be versatile - and with that versatility to carry great tone across any genre of music. The stock electronics are complex, yet simple to use on stage. It starts with a 3-way toggle switch paired with a volume and tone to give you plenty of lush sounds across the Hollowbody II’s two humbucker setup. But wait there’s more! A small mini-toggle on the body of the instrument allows the player to switch between 100% acoustic piezo pickup, both piezo and magnetic pickups, and 100% magnetic pickups. A blend knob accompanies this mini-toggle so players can blend in the piezo when the mini-toggle is in the middle position.

The PTC job we are exploring today takes the Hollowbody II’s versatility a step further.

The customer was looking for the ability to control the volume of his neck pickup and be able to blend it in with the bridge pickup. The PTC was able to achieve this by adding another volume knob and doing some custom wiring.

The guitar now has 4 knobs - a neck pickup volume which feeds into the master volume, a global tone control, and a piezo/mag blend knob.

After it was all wired up, the PTC gave the guitar a top-notch setup and sent it out to the customer, he was thrilled!

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To explore a PTC job for your own guitar, check out the PTC page!

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