Since 1979, I've purchased and owned nearly 200 guitars (give or take a few) and honestly, the Sub 1 is probably the finest guitar I've purchased new in the $600 and below range. How Ernie Ball does it is anyone's guess. There is no comparison between this and what is currently coming out of Korea or China. Those guitars are often adorned with abalone purfing/faux binding in lame attempts to make up for shoddy fret work or bargain basement electronics. Compare the tremolo block on this guitar to your typical $500 Strat and you'll know what I'm talking about. The locking tuners on this guitar I actually like MORE than Sperzels or other types which have too much mass behind the headstock. This is a better design to my eyes.
As for pickups, these are only a fraction under the tone quality of a Dimarzio or Duncan whereas in most guitars competing with the Sub 1, the pickups are trash with little or no sonic character whatsoever. When you roll off the treble to the neck humbucker, it nails that Velvet Revolver, Slash-tone about as good as anything this side of a $2500 Les Paul. The bridge has just enough bite to get you into heavy gain territory without all the mud, common with inexpensive humbuckers voiced for high gain only.
The story behind this graphite Sub 1 is funny. I originally visited a local high-end guitar shop to pick up a Peavey XXX combo I had been eyeballing for awhile and decided to match it with a 20th anniversary PRS for its test run. Hell, if I liked the PRS as much as I figured I would, I might even get the guitar as well. My checkbook was ready!
The combination sounded, as you might expect, fantastic, but I wanted to know how much of that sound was from the guitar and how much was being generated from the amp so I figured I would find something considerably less in quality to try out. I saw this textured graphite Sub 1 a few hangers down from the PRS and figured..."well, let's see if the XXX can make this budget 'Ball sound decent. If so, I know the amp is mine."
Five minutes into the test drive, I had completely forgotten about the PRS. That little beast kicked that XXX combo into such incendiary tones that it took me damn near one hour to finally put it down. I had a grin on my face, as sportswriter legend Ring Lardner once said, "you could of poured on a waffle." The neck on the Sub 1 seemed to have been built after Ernie Ball luthiers sneaked into my bedroom one night and took 100 measurements of my hands. I've had custom guitars built for $2500 whose necks didn't feel that comfortable.
As for the 20th anniversary PRS, sorry to say folks but the Music Man ate it for breakfast...and this is coming from someone who has owned six or seven PRS'. Only when I returned home did I realize the guitar is available in white (my favorite color for guitars) so I immediately ordered it and decided I would sell this one for a great price to someone probably shopping $400 Korean or Chinese-built instruments at a fraction of this guitar's quality.
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