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To truss or not to truss
Simon McBride talks shop to the Guitar World:
“I played everything on this record with a prototype from PRS,” McBride tells Guitar World ahead of SPLAT!’s release on July 3.
“The idea is that there’s no truss rod,” he continues. “It goes back to the early days when guitars had no truss rods because I’m a firm believer that if you put a truss rod in a guitar, it sucks the tone and sustain out of it.”
Truss rods, typically made of metal or carbon fiber, run down the length of the neck of a guitar beneath the fretboard and work to reinforce the neck and counter the tension generated by the strings.
They are a necessary feature to prevent and remedy any nasty neck warps. For most, they’re a vital ingredient in guitar building. McBride disagrees.
“This guitar is like an animal,” McBride says of his PRS. “It’s hard to control because there’s so much natural sustain, and I don’t do high-output pickups.
“Acoustically, there’s such a difference without the truss rod,” he adds, alluding to the apparent increased sustain and resonance that comes with removing a chunk of metal from the guitar. “[The neck] must be the strongest piece of wood they could find because it doesn’t bend at all.”
The interview in full appears in the August/2026 issue of the Guitarist magazine that can be ordered via Magazines Direct.
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