Paul Reed Smith

This passion for quality affects not only the work habits of individuals but also the structure of the whole company. Paul Smith: “We’re not organized like other companies. Every PRS craftsperson is a self-contained quality control ‘department.’ They have a lot of authority over their work, and if a guitar falls short in any way, they don’t pass it on to the next stage, and they make that decision themselves. They hand guitars back and forth all the time, and they inspect everything over and over. It’s like an old European guild or a shop. There’s a constant ‘is this good enough?’ conversation out there on the factory floor. So the quality control begins at the workbench. It’s not something we overlay or tack on. It’s an integral, organic part of the process, beginning with design and materials selection and going through every single step in construction and testing.”