If guitarists wanted one other excuse to argue about tone, Deep Purple’s Simon McBride could have simply supplied one.

Chatting with Guitar World forward of the band’s upcoming album SPLAT!, the guitarist reveals he recorded all the album with a prototype PRS that ditches one function present in nearly each fashionable electrical guitar: the truss rod.

For these new to guitar anatomy, the truss rod is the steel bar operating by way of the size of your guitar’s neck beneath the fretboard. Its job is to counteract the fixed pull of the strings, serving to hold the neck straight and permitting reduction changes over time.

In different phrases, it’s one of many least glamorous – however arguably most essential – components of a contemporary guitar. McBride, nevertheless, believes it’s additionally getting in the way in which of nice tone.

“I performed every part on this file with a prototype from PRS,” he says. “The thought is that there’s no truss rod. It goes again to the early days when guitars had no truss rods as a result of I’m a agency believer that in case you put a truss rod in a guitar, it sucks the tone and maintain out of it.”

In accordance with McBride, the distinction was instantly noticeable.

“This guitar is like an animal,” he says. “It’s onerous to manage as a result of there’s a lot pure maintain, and I don’t do high-output pickups.”

“Acoustically, there’s such a distinction with out the truss rod. [The neck] have to be the strongest piece of wooden they may discover as a result of it doesn’t bend in any respect.”

Guitarists, in fact, are not any strangers to passionate debates over what does and doesn’t have an effect on tone. From tonewoods and guitar form to select materials and even theoretical information, there’s not often a scarcity of opinions. McBride’s truss rod principle is actually one of many extra uncommon additions to the dialog, although we wouldn’t advocate anybody begin pulling theirs out simply but.

Deep Purple’s new album SPLAT! arrives on 3 July. Try their newest single beneath.