When Paul Reed Smith launched the new John Mayer's signature guitar, the PRS Silver Sky back in 2018, the whole guitar world seem to been like being hit by a storm.

John Mayer, American singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose melodic, often soft rock earned him a wide audience and a number of Grammy Awards in the early 21st century has been recognized for using Fender Stratocasters on stage and records and even had his own signature strats from Fender and later announced to what people describe as "just another strat with a PRS headstock".

But is it "just another strat"? Let's dive in together and explore why did John Mayer made such a weird jump to having his own signature guitar from PRS, the Silver Sky!

Visually, you will see essentially "just another strat guitar" that looks very similar to the original stratocasters ; an alder strat-shapped body with bolt-on 1964-strat-inspired 25.5" maple neck with 22-frets rosewood fretboard, 3 single coil pickups with 5-way toggle switch, 1 volume and 2 tone knobs, and a strat tremolo bridge.

All very similar to the strats everybody knows except for the headstock, which is that distinctive PRS shape but inverted. Even if you strip down the Silver Sky, you will see the wiring diagram and the overall built is pretty much no different to that of Stratocasters.

Another interesting fact about the Silver Sky is the color finishes available on the guitar. According to John Mayer, he wanted to sway away from the classic colors such as the sunburst three-color sunburst, daphne blue, honey blonde and many more. Instead he chose colors that you can find on automotive cars, particularly from Tesla cars. His reason for that is he want a guitar that can resembles the current trend of modern, simplicity and high technology like how other big brands are doing currently such as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Leica and so forth.

While visually and the built is the same, we have to bear in mind that the Silver Sky is the creation of both from Paul Reed Smith and John Mayer himself. A lot of people including John Mayer himself consider PRS a “custom shop” guitar company that produces guitars that you can get right of the shelves. First of all, the single coil pickup are all made by PRS themselves with John Mayer’s specs. As John Mayer said it himself, he wanted the pickups to sound and character of a 50’s strats if being played today, but without the need to wait for 50 or even 100 years for the guitar and the pickups to age and starting to lose it’s top end due to the weakening of the magnets inside. So basically you can get a vintage strat sounding guitar right from the start!

Not only that, with these pickups by PRS (called PRS 635JM pickups) also solved the issue of that “out-of-phase” sounds when you play when in the second and fourth position due to volume drop between 2 separate pickups. With these pickups, you can also sort of get that “out-of-phase” sounds but at a very minimal volume loss, thanks to it’s very round and full, with a musical high end that is never “ice-picky” or brash.

The neck carve, scale length, and fingerboard radius were modeled after John Mayer’s early-'60s instruments. Its fingerboard is loaded with 22 custom-sized frets, and it boasts a 25.5" scale length and 7.25" radius and of course, those beautiful bird inlays which very much recognizable from PRS.

And last but not least…the headstock! When the PRS Silver Sky was first introduced, a lot of guitar players felt skeptical about the overall design of the guitar; will the strings stay in tune or will the guitar sounds completely different from how a strat sound that everyone knows should be? In short, the headstock modified to accommodate John Mayer’s playing style and to keep a consistent length of string behind the nut, which improves intonation and not only that, the headstock is sort of a sign to display the craftsmanship of PRS for creating guitar and John Mayer’s vision of taking the strat guitar to the next level without leaving the everlasting legacy of the Stratocaster.

Let’s take an example of a brand that everybody in the world knows ; Nike. When Nike introduced the Air Jordans back in 1984, it became a huge success that the shoes was not just only the shoes worn by the NBA legend Michael Jordan or is just another pair of shoes produced by Nike, it became it’s own identity which led to it become it’s own brand up until now.

This is the concept that John Mayer had when he created the Silver Sky together with PRS. According to him, he wanted a guitar that is ”a modern and a higher definition” strat guitar that can play beautifully when picked up from any guitar stores around the world. So in other words, the Silver Sky is created to be that perfect strat guitar you will ever play and you can create magic every time you strung the strings on it.

So, is John Mayer’s PRS Silver Sky just another strat guitar with an inverted PRS headstock? The best answer would be it is a strat guitar, but created with an innovative vision of taking a classic guitar and revolutionise it to todays modern age and also with passion of creating a guitar that can create magic for those who wield it. Just like in his words :

“It’s been a dream of mine for years to design a guitar that includes some of my favorite vintage specifications but with a modern spirit and aesthetic. After two years of study and refinement, the Silver Sky is my vision of what a reboot of the electric guitar should look and feel like.”