1987 Washburn RS-10V

Details

I spotted this by chance on Reverb, and had to do a bit of research on just what it was. Not long before purchasing this, I’d spent some time with a friend who creates soundscapes with a couple of PRS guitars. I’ve never been a big PRS guy, but hearing his music and seeing those guitars had me really looking for an 80s PRS and I thought this would scratch the itch.

Overall, this is a very nice guitar - the figured top is extremely thick, the body appears to be high quality wood, and the neck has a very interesting composite fingerboard material and abalone inlays. The EMG select pickups are on the cheaper side but actually sound pretty decent, and the pots are nicely dampened and smooth. The bridge is very strange - a Washburn 600T made by Takeuchi. It’s not a bad quality bridge, but definitely not up to OFR or Edge standards, and has a weirdly shaped route that sadly means you can’t replace this bridge with one of higher quality without doing more work to the body. I don’t feel obligated to replace it, but if this were my main player I might - one of the biggest drawbacks of this guitar.

The headstock is a late 80s Washburn pointy shape not used on many other models, but I actually really like this shape - it’s thin, and has the underbite kind of look that an ESP headstock has, but not as long.

There’s a lot of debate on where these were made, and not many made it out the door - likely due to a sternly worded letter from PRS. Washburn literature seems to imply these were made in Chicago, USA, but the EMG select pickups and Takeuchi bridge point more towards overseas production - specifically, these appear to be made by Samick in Korea, and follow that serial number scheme. The quality of fit and finish is definitely very good either way.

These were also available in several colors, and I’ve seen a lot of variation in the tops. Mine has a cool flamed figuring, and I like that it’s not flipped - maybe an accident, maybe not - but gives it kind of a “falling rain” appearance which I think is unique. I’ve also seen natural birdseye and quilted tops too, it seems they were trying some different things likely preparing for more full-scale production but ended up having to cancel the project. There is an RS-8v model as well, which came in solid finish colors and lacked figured tops, but came with very interesting V shaped inlays on the neck, and the same hardware and pickups as this model.