Meet The Models: New Metallic Colors

Posted Apr 19, 2016

Behind The Gear

Out with the old, in with the new.

Back in July of 2015, we announced the release of two metallic colors for our S2 lineup, Egyptian Gold Metallic and Ice Blue Firemist. In our constant effort to keep things fresh and continue innovating, we’re now offering two brand new metallic finishes to take the place of Egyptian Gold Metallic and Ice Blue Firemist.

Meet, Frost Green and Champagne Gold.

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And this time we’re not just offering cool metallic finishes for our S2 lineup, but also as an option on each of our core and bolt-on models! If you’re a fan, be sure to pick these up quickly because we’re going to start refreshing metallic colors every 6 months to keep things interesting!

We are excited to offer these new colors across the PRS brand. Metallic finishes offer a sleek hotrod vibe that certain players really gravitate toward,” said Jim Cullen, National Sales Manager. “And there are so many swanky colors available, we couldn’t just choose two and leave the rest out. By refreshing the line every six months in this way, we get to offer more colors and keep things poppin’ fresh.

If you’re wondering how our finish department sprays and handles metallic colors, here’s a peek into our finish process!

Step One: Finish Sanding

A guitar goes through two dozen steps up to this point, but culminates in finish sanding—the final step before the guitar is ready for paint!

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Step Two: Poly Coat

The spray team gives the guitar 3 coats of clear poly - think of it like a clear primer for the guitar. The poly helps fill in any porous areas on the guitar’s body, ultimately protecting the instrument over its lifetime and ensuring durability.

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Step Three: Sanding

After the poly coat dries, the guitar is sanded with a high grit sandpaper (320 grit) to give an even consistency to the poly coat and to prepare the body for its main spray - the metallic color. Before spraying the color coat on the guitar we want to make sure to cover up areas where we don’t want paint! In this case, the fingerboard and binding. We prep the guitar by taping these areas off.

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Step Four: The Metallic Coat

The guitar is then sprayed with 2 coats of its main paint, in this case either Frost Green or Champagne Gold.

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Step Five: Peel Tape & Write Serial Number

After the guitar gets its metallic coat and has ample drying time, its time for us to peel the tape off of the fretboard and binding and write the serial number on the back of the headstock. We have a whole separate work station set up just for writing the serial number!

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Step Six: Clear Coat

To seal and protect our fresh coat of metallic and give the guitar a “dipped in glass” finish, we apply 4 thin coats of acrylic top coat. We give that time to dry before sanding with polishing sandpaper (1500 grit) and buffing. Once the guitar is buffed and shining beautifully we do a thorough finish quality inspection and pass the guitar over to our final assembly folks for hardware and set up. The whole process is long but worth the wait!

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When all is said and done, it’s time for the gig! The big question is which color looks best on you?

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Check out these new metallic finishes in person at your Authorized PRS Dealer!