The Man behind the Guitar

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Paul Prentice has been obsessed with guitars and guitar-based music since his early teens. A natural autodidact, Paul not only taught himself how to play guitar, but took electronics courses in high school to better understand how guitar electronics worked. Through his teens and early twenties, Paul played in DIY Hardcore Punk / Metal band The Devil’s Discipline and recorded in various extreme metal projects. He also studied classical guitar for a year in college before redirecting his education towards the luthier/guitar repair direction. Paul relocated to Los Angeles in 2008 to enroll in the Guitar Craft Academy at the renown Musician’s Institute. He finished top of the class and won the annual Most Outstanding Student achievement award. Upon graduation, Paul began working for The ESP Guitar Company while moonlighting as a guitar tech in studios across Los Angeles. After five years of shaking hands and crossing paths with his guitar hero’s, musicians, luthiers, and techs along the way, he felt inspired enough to return to his native Upstate New York to pursue his craft while branching out into traditional woodworking and other ventures.

Paul started Crown & Saddle in 2018 with the intention of not only providing his guitar repair services, but as an outlet to research, document, and compile information to be available, free, to musicians to better understand their instruments and bridge the gap between player and luthier. Paul’s philosophy is simple: The more information a guitarist can know about their instrument, the more they can excel as a musician.
Raised on extreme metal and hardcore punk, Paul specializes in the extra attention that is needed for down-tuned guitars, high-gain conditions, and keeping a guitar in tune after excessive dive-bombing. Conversely, his background in classical guitar and love for fingerpicking, even on steel string acoustics, has broadened his expertise in the set-up realm. Testing out theories in his own music recording, Paul is able to create optimal and unique sounds for him and his clients.

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