I need a replacement Paul Reed Smith logo for my guitar

thommydonuts

Hey, 

I'm getting my PRS guitar refinished and it will need a new Paul Reed Smith Logo for the headstock. I've had a google and there are a few floating about. Has anyone got any advice where to get a good quality one to sit under the lacquer? Thanks,

guitars4you

thommydonuts said:

Hey, 

I'm getting my PRS guitar refinished and it will need a new Paul Reed Smith Logo for the headstock. I've had a google and there are a few floating about. Has anyone got any advice where to get a good quality one to sit under the lacquer? Thanks,

Is it a Custom USA model, or a SE/S2 model - I've managed to get a replacement for a bolt on neck USA CE model in the past - These are/were a transfer, similar to Fender and sat above the lacquer - I don't think they are all the same  - Contact PRS UK with the appropriate serial number and why you need one and see how it goes

Musical_Mystery_Tour

Can recommend this guy's stuff, used his decals a few times. Follow the instructions properly and it will look great.

The trick is to cut around the decal in a wavy line and use a brand new scalpel blade at a low dragged angle so you get a smooth-edged cut with no ragged fraying and no obvious straight line on the edge of the decal. You then need quite a few coats of laquer to end up with enough on there to mask the edge of the decal by having the laquer not display an obvious ridge. Wait a long time between adding new laquer layers to allow it to thoroughly dry and clean it off between each one you spray, so there is no dust; take your time, impatience will spoil it. Give the decal a (very light) coat of laquer before you use it to prevent it being damaged by the water. Mask the entire guitar apart from the face of the headstock when spraying, laquer particles will float in the air and land on your guitar otherwise.

ICBM

The USA type aren't decals, they're self-adhesive foil - there's no carrier or outline to worry about at all.

I bought one from a Russian Ebay seller before the Ukraine war - PRS USA wouldn't sell me one without shipping the guitar back to them in the USA, even though they had already told me it was a genuine PRS guitar and I'd sent pics of the damaged logo. Their loss... I really didn't want to buy a fake logo, but there was no other sensible choice.

Jay100

Email PRS Europe (they’re based in Cambridge not far from me). They’ve also been super helpful to me and should be able to help you out.

Philly_Q

Interesting thread.  My 2013 S2 Mira has the problematic delaminating finish they were using that year.  The finish hasn't started falling off, it's just cloudy in a few spots, but I've wondered what I would do about the logo/decal if the guitar ever needs a refinish.

Neilybob

A friend took his PRS to an evening event with Paul Reed Smith run by Anderton's years ago and Paul got his tech to replace the PRS logo while he waited. 

Might be worth firing an email to PRS to ask the question? 

thommydonuts

Thanks everyone, plenty to look into there! 

CavemanGrogg

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

Can recommend this guy's stuff, used his decals a few times. Follow the instructions properly and it will look great.

The trick is to cut around the decal in a wavy line and use a brand new scalpel blade at a low dragged angle so you get a smooth-edged cut with no ragged fraying and no obvious straight line on the edge of the decal. You then need quite a few coats of laquer to end up with enough on there to mask the edge of the decal by having the laquer not display an obvious ridge. Wait a long time between adding new laquer layers to allow it to thoroughly dry and clean it off between each one you spray, so there is no dust; take your time, impatience will spoil it. Give the decal a (very light) coat of laquer before you use it to prevent it being damaged by the water. Mask the entire guitar apart from the face of the headstock when spraying, laquer particles will float in the air and land on your guitar otherwise.

That simply disgusts me, logos and brand names are also copy righted and protected by IP laws.  And quite frankly selling things that are needed to produce counterfeit guitars - like converting cheap shitty brand A to pass it off as expensive brand B, is scraping the bottom of the barrel low, as in ''I can't come up with my own original ideas to make a living or get a real job, so I'll just steal somebody else's hard work and reputation, and not compensate the owners for my theft of their hard work''.

I've reported the seller, and I'm not ashamed to admit to that, or that I've also sent a link to the eBay store to Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Godin, Burns, ESP, and every other manufacturer the seller is selling counterfeit logos and branding of.  Honestly how would people here feel if he was selling Oil City Pickups branded pickup bases, or even Feline guitar logos?

Seriously, if you don't want to lose the branding on your branded guitar:

1, Don't fuck around with the original finish

2, If you need the headstock or anywhere else on your guitar refinished or repaired that has the logo and branding of the manufacturer, then send it back to the manufacturer or their local representative to have the work done, if this is out of your budget, of you find it too expensive for your tastes, that does not give you the right to use counterfeit logos and branding, no matter how special you think you are.

thommydonuts

Haa, I get some of that. But, I don't think I'm special. I'm just giving an old guitar of mine a new lease of life! 

Musical_Mystery_Tour

CavemanGrogg said:

That simply disgusts me, logos and brand names are also copy righted and protected by IP laws.  And quite frankly selling things that are needed to produce counterfeit guitars - like converting cheap shitty brand A to pass it off as expensive brand B, is scraping the bottom of the barrel low, as in ''I can't come up with my own original ideas to make a living or get a real job, so I'll just steal somebody else's hard work and reputation, and not compensate the owners for my theft of their hard work''.

I've reported the seller, and I'm not ashamed to admit to that, or that I've also sent a link to the eBay store to Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Godin, Burns, ESP, and every other manufacturer the seller is selling counterfeit logos and branding of.  Honestly how would people here feel if he was selling Oil City Pickups branded pickup bases, or even Feline guitar logos?

Seriously, if you don't want to lose the branding on your branded guitar:

1, Don't fuck around with the original finish

2, If you need the headstock or anywhere else on your guitar refinished or repaired that has the logo and branding of the manufacturer, then send it back to the manufacturer or their local representative to have the work done, if this is out of your budget, of you find it too expensive for your tastes, that does not give you the right to use counterfeit logos and branding, no matter how special you think you are.

That would be true if one is using them to fake guitars, not that doing so is likely to fool anyone since to do that you'd probably need to screen print a logo on. Moreover, if a similar guitar is so good that it is indistinguishable from another simply by changing a logo, why even bother, surely it would stand on its own merit? There is nothing wrong with using them to repair or refinish a guitar which originally had that logo on it in the first place, which is what the seller states these are for and what I've used those products for, for example, I bought a Gibson which someone had tried to scratch the logo off, I don't know why they had attempted to do that, but I repaired the scratched headstock and then put a replacement logo on it. This was in no way affecting Gibson's intellectual property, nor faking a guitar, because it was made by Gibson in the first place and if anyone thinks I could have sent it to Gibson, have them repair the wood and and put a new logo on for less than it cost me to do it, or at all, they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

ICBM

The guitar I had was damaged before I got it. I would have been very happy to pay even quite a substantial amount of money to PRS for an authentic logo, and I fully understand why they wouldn’t sell one unless I was able to show I had a genuine PRS with a damaged logo - but which I did, and they confirmed it. But they wouldn’t sell me the logo, at any price - unless I shipped the guitar back to them in the US. Both from a cost and a risk point of view I wasn’t willing to do this, so reluctantly I bought a fake logo. I’m not particularly happy about having to do that, and I certainly don’t feel special - but I did want the guitar to look at least half decent.

The logo I bought was actually detectable as a fake anyway - the dimensions were slightly off, as if it had been copied from a photo of a guitar rather than scanning a genuine logo - so I don’t think it would pass for making a fake PRS appear genuine, at least to someone familiar enough with the real thing. The guitar itself had already been badly refinished anyway, so it really made no difference to anything to put a slightly dodgy logo on it as well.

I didn’t profit from this, by the way - I later gave the guitar to a friend.

Philly_Q

ICBM said:

The guitar I had was damaged before I got it. I would have been very happy to pay even quite a substantial amount of money to PRS for an authentic logo, and I fully understand why they wouldn’t sell one unless I was able to show I had a genuine PRS with a damaged logo - but which I did, and they confirmed it. But they wouldn’t sell me the logo, at any price - unless I shipped the guitar back to them in the US. Both from a cost and a risk point of view I wasn’t willing to do this, so reluctantly I bought a fake logo. I’m not particularly happy about having to do that, and I certainly don’t feel special - but I did want the guitar to look at least half decent.

Completely understandable.  

guitarjack66

Aren't PRS guitars copies anyway?

Scuttles off before Blitzkrieg.

euan

The problem is the Paul carefully chose the positioning, material and thickness of the logo to tune the resonance of the guitar. That’s all lost with a non PRS logo 

Musical_Mystery_Tour

euan said:

The problem is the Paul carefully chose the positioning, material and thickness of the logo to tune the resonance of the guitar. That’s all lost with a non PRS logo 

Yup, I taped a Fender logo on one of my Gibson Melody Makers to test that theory and it started sounding like a Stratocaster. Anyway, I'm off to tape a Mustang logo on my car to see if it is more suitable for a lengthy car chase around San Francisco.

Musicman20

guitarjack66 said:

Aren't PRS guitars copies anyway?

Scuttles off before Blitzkrieg.

Bad Strats I heard....

Philly_Q

guitarjack66 said:

Aren't PRS guitars copies anyway?

Scuttles off before Blitzkrieg.

No, I just can't be arsed.

Sarge

CavemanGrogg said:

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

Can recommend this guy's stuff, used his decals a few times. Follow the instructions properly and it will look great.

The trick is to cut around the decal in a wavy line and use a brand new scalpel blade at a low dragged angle so you get a smooth-edged cut with no ragged fraying and no obvious straight line on the edge of the decal. You then need quite a few coats of laquer to end up with enough on there to mask the edge of the decal by having the laquer not display an obvious ridge. Wait a long time between adding new laquer layers to allow it to thoroughly dry and clean it off between each one you spray, so there is no dust; take your time, impatience will spoil it. Give the decal a (very light) coat of laquer before you use it to prevent it being damaged by the water. Mask the entire guitar apart from the face of the headstock when spraying, laquer particles will float in the air and land on your guitar otherwise.

That simply disgusts me, logos and brand names are also copy righted and protected by IP laws.  And quite frankly selling things that are needed to produce counterfeit guitars - like converting cheap shitty brand A to pass it off as expensive brand B, is scraping the bottom of the barrel low, as in ''I can't come up with my own original ideas to make a living or get a real job, so I'll just steal somebody else's hard work and reputation, and not compensate the owners for my theft of their hard work''.

I've reported the seller, and I'm not ashamed to admit to that, or that I've also sent a link to the eBay store to Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Godin, Burns, ESP, and every other manufacturer the seller is selling counterfeit logos and branding of.  Honestly how would people here feel if he was selling Oil City Pickups branded pickup bases, or even Feline guitar logos?

Seriously, if you don't want to lose the branding on your branded guitar:

1, Don't fuck around with the original finish

2, If you need the headstock or anywhere else on your guitar refinished or repaired that has the logo and branding of the manufacturer, then send it back to the manufacturer or their local representative to have the work done, if this is out of your budget, of you find it too expensive for your tastes, that does not give you the right to use counterfeit logos and branding, no matter how special you think you are.

Wow, I bet you're fun at parties. 

Kittyfrisk

Sarge said:

CavemanGrogg said:

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

Can recommend this guy's stuff, used his decals a few times. Follow the instructions properly and it will look great.

The trick is to cut around the decal in a wavy line and use a brand new scalpel blade at a low dragged angle so you get a smooth-edged cut with no ragged fraying and no obvious straight line on the edge of the decal. You then need quite a few coats of laquer to end up with enough on there to mask the edge of the decal by having the laquer not display an obvious ridge. Wait a long time between adding new laquer layers to allow it to thoroughly dry and clean it off between each one you spray, so there is no dust; take your time, impatience will spoil it. Give the decal a (very light) coat of laquer before you use it to prevent it being damaged by the water. Mask the entire guitar apart from the face of the headstock when spraying, laquer particles will float in the air and land on your guitar otherwise.

That simply disgusts me, logos and brand names are also copy righted and protected by IP laws.  And quite frankly selling things that are needed to produce counterfeit guitars - like converting cheap shitty brand A to pass it off as expensive brand B, is scraping the bottom of the barrel low, as in ''I can't come up with my own original ideas to make a living or get a real job, so I'll just steal somebody else's hard work and reputation, and not compensate the owners for my theft of their hard work''.

I've reported the seller, and I'm not ashamed to admit to that, or that I've also sent a link to the eBay store to Gibson, Fender, Ibanez, Godin, Burns, ESP, and every other manufacturer the seller is selling counterfeit logos and branding of.  Honestly how would people here feel if he was selling Oil City Pickups branded pickup bases, or even Feline guitar logos?

Seriously, if you don't want to lose the branding on your branded guitar:

1, Don't fuck around with the original finish

2, If you need the headstock or anywhere else on your guitar refinished or repaired that has the logo and branding of the manufacturer, then send it back to the manufacturer or their local representative to have the work done, if this is out of your budget, of you find it too expensive for your tastes, that does not give you the right to use counterfeit logos and branding, no matter how special you think you are.

Wow, I bet you're fun at parties. 

Adey

I needed a new oil filter for my car. I bought one from Ford because I didn't want to buy a fake one....

:-)