They moved to the new location (Kent Island) around late '94 - '95. Before that, they were made in Annapolis.
Mine is a '94, came out of the Annapolis factory (one of the last), and has the smaller heel.
I met a guy named John Ingram who is an ex-PRS employee.
http://orkiespoil.com/ The parrot is real by the way, and he does nice work.
I had the chance to talk to him about the heel.
I mentioned 'ol Ed's argument for it, which goes as follows:
PRS decided to use a larger heel because by so doing, they didn't have to use as high quality wood. When the heel was smaller, making a mahogany neck that long and thin required a very nice quartersawn piece of mahogany. Switching to the larger heel allowed PRS to use inferior wood. Bla bla bla, something like that.
Or so the argument goes. Worth nothing that before Ed had this revelation, he was trying to buy up all the Annapolis PRS's he could get his hands on, mine included.
We call that a pump-and-dump in the equity world.
Being an ex-employee I figured he didn't have any reason to give me "the company line".
So John had two things to say about that:
1. Ed is a bla bla bla expletive salesman, expletive.
2. They just sounded better.
Just to clarify something though. The pick of the big heeled PRS rosewood neck posted earlier is a Custom 22.
Take a look at a new Custom 24, the heel isn't that much bigger. Comparing apples to apples, the current Custom 24 heel isn't quite that bad. It is definitely bigger though.
I believe PRS was trying to go after the Les Paul crowd with the Custom 22 and the beefier neck.
I remember when PRS first came out, and the Custom 24 was all there was basically, the general complaint at the time was that they sounded too thin.
I think the Custom 22 sounds closer to a Les Paul than a Custom 24 personally.
Anyway, I'm registered for Experience 2009, and I'll see if I can get more info on that.
...and I ain't partin' with my PRS.
