PRS Mira

All the good feedback on PRS guitars finally got to me, and I had to buy this. Let me start by saying my favorite guitar right now is my SG, but it has a few shortcomings, and I saw this Mira as a way to get a similar guitar but with a few updates to the design. I played both the original Mira and one of the new S2 Miras in the store, and ended up liking the original a little more. Honestly though, PRS has done an amazing job at optimizing the manufacturing process of the new S2s (reducing cost a lot) without much change in the product (and these are mostly cosmetic anyway). Still, when I saw this one in showroom condition (it's a 2012) for less than the cost of a new S2, I couldn't pass it up.

I've played it now for several hours and my biggest takeaway is I love the way it feels. It just fits like a glove, and is perfectly balanced. It weighs 6.5 lbs and has a mahogany body with mahogany neck. I haven't put a strap on yet, but I imagine it will be quite comfy since it's the lightest guitar I have. It has nice rolled edges on the fretboard and 24 frets with really easy access to the upper frets. Super easy to play. Just love that part about it.

It sounds great and I would say it has a huge range of tones available that all sound very good. I'm still undecided on these pickups though. They are a little bright/brittle in the bridge and a little noisy (just a little and really only noticeable when you A/B with other guitars) but they do cover a ton of ground. My SG still edges it out though in a head to head tone battle. So over the up coming weeks as I play it more and more, I have to decide if I want the massive flexibility of the existing pickups, or do I want to drop a 498t in the bridge and sound spectacular at that target tone, but at the expense of maybe being more confined to that tone. I find that pickup to be more mid heavy and a little dark, so certainly not as general purpose as what this PRS comes with stock. Oh, and the neck pickup is pretty good as it is. It's very articulate (actually they both are) and I like the mix of highs and lows it provides, very nice.

Funny thing also about this Mira... It doesn't have an insane amount of resonance. I actually did an A/B with my SG for this as well, and they sustained for roughly the same amount of time (the biggest variability came from me pulling the string a slightly different amount before letting it go each time) However this Mira kicks out pinch harmonics like nobodies business. Just super easy and they fly off just by thinking about them. Not sure why, but it's cool.

Here is the obligatory picture.

Yes, that is good advice. I have been playing it almost nonstop since I got it, and there are definitely things it can do better than my other guitars. Last night I was playing some punk rock tunes and the bright bridge tone really kicked it into overdrive. Sounded crisper than even my strat with a maple fretboard (super bright).

The other thing these pickups do is inspire you to be creative. They hear everything. I found myself pulling old chords out of my memory and improvising not just with the progression of a song, but also with subtle muting, percussive effects, string noise, and even how you might just let up on one string in a chord to deaden it just a little, and you can clearly hear all that. I think it was db who said PRS pickups are "full range" and that's a really good description of them. The only problem is that at high gain on an amp that also has a wide frequency response, it's just too much content. It's like when you play cowboy chords into the red channel of a triple rect. The word that comes to mind is cacophony. Contrast that with the SG and it’s A5 overwound pups which is so dark that you almost need a treble booster on all the time, but the tone is always focused and musical. I just didn’t expect them to be so different, and that’s mostly what I’m struggling with. I was hoping to retire my SG.

I’m also with you on how different profiles go better with different guitars. I have some really picky guitars, the kind where when you fire up RM and walk through a bunch of profiles on the RE, you may find 1 or 2 in a hundred where you say, man that sounds good. I have other guitars though where you walk through the same hundred profiles and half of them sound great. And none of them are the same between guitars. My KPA is filled with stuff like “Money For Nothing – SB” and “Money For Nothing – GM” the extension at the end is SB = Strat Bridge, GM = SG Middle” and they are not even the same amp, or the same author, they just sound good for that guitar.

What I might try is swapping the pups between the SG and the Mira and see what happens, but you’re right, first up I’m going to keep playing for a while longer and see how it goes. I might even try to build a little EQ profile to put in the A or B slots to sculpt the PRS input and tame the high end. It’s tricky though. I don’t want to just roll it off like the guitar tone knob does because that gets rid of the presence too.

Why is it evertime I get a new guitar, I like it in a way that is different from all my others? This makes it really hard to keep a lid on the number.

Oh, and I love the Bigsby on that Starla. When I played with it in the local shop, it reminded me of Better Call Saul. LOL. Not sure if you know this TV series, but here is the intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cweQ9ynkf4