We are pleased to announce the winner of our Heritage Standard Giveaway contest: Steven Lefebvre from Yakima Washington read more...
The Prestige Heritage Hollow was given a review in this month's Guitar World Magazine. read more...
The Prestige Musician was given a review in Guitar Player Magazine last month. read more...
With the iPhone increasing in popularity, we thought to devote this month’s column on the best iPhone Apps for Guitar players. Who wouldn’t want to transform their iPhone into a Chord Book, a Pocket Guitar, heck even a Recording Studio! Let inspiration motive you at anytime with these 6 Best iPhone applications. read more...
Congratulations to Steven Lefebvre from Yakima Washington. Enjoy your brand new Prestige Heritage Standard!Here's what Steven had to say about his new Prestige...
I've been playing the Prestige Heritage Standard since it arrived and I have to say that it is much more than just a "standard" guitar. The guitar is very comfortable to play and sounds as great as it looks. Plays great, sounds great and looks great... Can't ask for more, can you?
Watch the Video ReviewBY ERIC KIRKLAND
CANADIAN GUITAR manufacturers have been enjoying greater visibility in the world market over the past decade. Among them, Prestige Guitar Company is quickly becoming a prominent brand by creating instruments made with high-quality woods and featuring ornamentation that rivals what’s found on privately crafted instruments.
Prestige’s Heritage solidbody already has an obsessive following among players who want an affordable boutique-level instrument. The new Heritage Hollow hollowbody electric builds on that guitar’s worldwide success. Classic archtop tones are easily conjured from this specialized hollowbody, and thanks to its unique construction and Duncan humbuckers, it’s equally capable as a wailing rocker.
FEATURES
THE HERITAGE TAKES full advantage of Canada’s native stock of maple wood. The arched back and sides are both crafted from maple, while the top is made of AAA quilted maple. The angle formed by the union of the arched top and the neck joint is not noticeably different from that of a solidbody guitar, so playing the Heritage Hollow requires no adjustment of the player’s hand positions.
Significantly, the Heritage Hollow is a true hollowbody—it has no center block. However, a massive mahogany sustainer block under the bridge provides stability and blends warmth into the bright maple chamber. Dual f-holes (or “S” holes, as Prestige calls them) and three air slots on the upper bout allow the guitar to exhale feedbackfree resonance. This style of guitar is among the most expensive to produce, so it’s especially impressive to note the Heritage’s under-$2,000 price tag.
Another key to smoothing the maple’s tone is the one-piece mahogany neck. It’s C shaped, relatively narrow and features a sword taper in the tradition of vintage jazz guitars, so it’s easy to grip and facilitates fast playing. The 22 short and narrow frets are also similar to what might be found on a jazz guitar. While this reduces the instrument’s touch sensitivity, it’s superb for smooth transitions and complicated chord-wrapped harmonies.
The rosewood fretboard adds a touch of dark and warm tone. Most of the board is covered with a floral vine inlay of mother-of-pearl and abalone. Inlays as extravagant as this usually cost more than the total asking price for this guitar, but incredibly, the Heritage’s body, headstock and fingerboard are also bound in abalone, and the inlaid logo is created with mother-of-pearl. As if that weren’t enough to blind the audience, the Tune-O-Matic bridge, stop tail, tuners and pickup covers are plated in midrange-enhancing gold.
Electronics consist of a Seymour Duncan JB SH-4 pickup in the bridge and a Duncan ’59 SH-1 in the neck, plus a three-way toggle. Because hollowbody instruments illuminate so many overtones, the pickup-specific volume and tone pots are necessary to dial in precise sounds and mate the output to various gain levels.
PERFORMANCE
THE HERITAGE HOLLOW is undoubtedly capable as a jazz guitar, and its small and fast neck feels like the stick on a traditional archtop. That’s really where the similarities end, though, because the Heritage’s other attributes make it more of a crossover between and solidbody and hollowbody. Resounding acoustics emanate through the body in especially tight patterns, which fight any natural propensity for feedback when distortion or high gain is present.
Whereas the pickups on a jazz guitar are geared toward specific applications, the Duncan pickups make the Heritage compatible with any amp. Fat and woody archtop tones are easily coaxed through the ’59 neck pickup, which adds a velvety fur to each note. When distortion is present, this pickup helps the Heritage produce stacks of sound that are very close to Peter Stroud’s famous mix of clean and driven overtones. Through a high-gain channel, the neck pickup remains gritty but also becomes creamy and sweet, à la Gary Moore. By itself, the JB bridge humbucker can be harsh, but the guitar’s naturally soft bottom notes and bright treble bursts can be quickly compensated for with a twist of the tone pot.
THE BOTTOM LINE
PRESTIGE’S HERITAGE Hollow is a visually striking instrument, to say the least, with plenty of shell-born bling. At the same time, this Heritage melds traditional archtop acoustics with modern solidbody playability and tone. Its focused bark adds sting to jazz styles, while the Seymour Duncan humbuckers extend this guitar’s performance palette into the realms of rock and hard blues.
Watch the Video Review
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Michael Molenda - Editor in Chief - Guitar Player MagazineWhat guitarist doesn’t geek out at discovering a relatively mysterious, off-the-map instrument that totally rocks? I had no knowledge of Prestige when the Musician showed up at GP Central, and I grabbed the unknown guitar for a rehearsal without any expectations. But mere seconds after I plugged the Musician into the Egnater Rebel-20, I knew I had stumbled onto something magnificent. Even though it’s one of the plus-sized models in this Fight Club, the guitar felt great on my shoulder, it played beautifully, and it could cover everything from jazz to rock to rockabilly to punk. It was also one tough customer. I’m not exactly a delicate player, but the Musician just shrugged at my vicious strumming, bombastic guitar-body percussion, and hummingbird-flutter Bigsby wanking. To further humble me, the Musician refused to be beaten horribly out of tune. A tweak of the Grovers here and there was all it needed to keep things tuneful.
The Canadian maker—which debuted in 2003—employs an interesting guitar-building methodology. All woods originate in ....Vancouver.., ..British Columbia...., where they are cut to the company’s specs. Then, the woods are shipped to ....Inchon.., ..South Korea.... for manufacturing and finishing. Ultimately, everything is sent back to Prestige’s ....Vancouver.... factory for wiring, final assembly, setup, and inspection. The ping-pong production process seems to have no qualitative downside, as the Musician is an exceptionally well-made instrument. The frets are smooth and rounded, the hardware is rugged (even when banging on the pickguard, it stayed rigid), and the glossy, marchiano cherry finish is pristine.
As mentioned earlier, the Musician is a sonic “all rounder” that can take on many different guises. It doesn’t quite exhibit the extreme bass-to-treble shadings of the ....Normandy.... or the Reverend, but the Musician absolutely nails more traditional jazz and rock timbres. The neck-pickup sounds, for example, are warm and robust with just enough pop to bring fingerpicked melodic runs to the forefront. It’s not quite George Benson- or Wes Montgomery-esque, but it’s still a sensual tone. The dual-pickup sound was my favorite, as it offers a meaty thud and an airy shimmer. That may seem like a bizarre sonic combo, but the simultaneous low-midrange resonance and upper-midrange attack produced a dazzling palette of bell-like arpeggios, ringing chords, and edgy solos. The bridge tones deliver enough midrange punch for crunch chords and aggressive riffs, but they lack a bit of sparkle and dimension for convincing faux-acoustic strums. No matter—every other sound rocks so hard, so why quibble? I called the Musician the “Jennifer Connelly,” because it reminded me of first seeing the relatively unknown actress in the 1990 film, The Hot Spot. She blew me away then, she later proved her mettle with an Academy Award, and she has never stopped being a stunning presence—an arc of success that I believe the Musician will parallel.
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