To me, the Starla just looks like Paul has gone and said to his R&D guys "hey, we don't really have anything for the rockabilly type crowd, you wanna make somethng? Take 15 minutes, we'll do a run of the first thing you come up with, just whack a bigsby on something else we make, that'll do, if it looks daft, it still says PRS on it."
That's very disrespectful to a highly succesful businessman with a genuine passion for his company and his guitars.
You may not like his work, but there's no need to belittle what he does.
I disagree. I don't think the guitar will be any worse than their other similarly priced models, once it was drawn up I'm sure plenty effort went into making the production models, it's just that I think the design itself looks thrown together. To me it looks completely jarring, like someone's just been pulling bits off disparate styles of instruments and sticking them together in photoshop.
They're blatantly just trying to force their way into markets that they haven't been in before, which is fair enough but at least try to do it with some panache, why not try to make a completely new take on something? Why just whap a bigsby and scratchplate onto one of their current models?
If I was Mr Smith, I would like to hope I'd just think "You know, I'm extremely succesful, I make shedloads of money making these instruments I've made my name with, people love them. I think I'll just keep trying to make better and better versions of these." True to the original vision, if you like.
I was surprised enough when they made the SE level models - likewise with Parker and their mid priced instruments - why bother? Why not just keep makking good quality stuff and try retain that niche brand identity.
There's a reason nobody remembers Fender's "metal" guitars...
