PRS Guitars is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 guitar manufacturer headquartered in Stevensville, Maryland

Stevensville, Maryland

Stevensville is a census-designated place in Queen Anne's County, Maryland, and is the county's most populous place among both CDPs and municipalities. The Stevensville Historic District is one of only two registered historic districts in the county, the other being the Centreville Historic...

. PRS Guitars was founded by guitarist and luthier

Luthier

A luthier is someone who makes or repairs lutes and other string instruments. In the United States, the term is used interchangeably with a term for the specialty of each maker, such as violinmaker, guitar maker, lute maker, etc...

 Paul Reed Smith

Paul Reed Smith

Paul Reed Smith , is a luthier and the founder and owner of PRS Guitars.Smith is originally from Bowie, Maryland. He made his first guitar while at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and continued to build guitars after he finished college, making them one at a time, one a month...

 in 1985. The company is one of the leading manufacturers of high-end electric guitars.
The bodies of PRS guitars are crafted of mahogany

Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....

, with a maple

Maple

Acer is a genus of trees or shrubs commonly known as maple.Maples are variously classified in a family of their own, the Aceraceae, or together with the Hippocastanaceae included in the family Sapindaceae. Modern classifications, including the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system, favour inclusion in...

 top on most models. They often feature highly figured tops, including flame maple

Flame maple

Flame maple , also known as flamed maple, curly maple, ripple maple, fiddleback or tiger stripe, is a feature of maple in which the growth of the wood fibers is distorted in an undulating chatoyant pattern, producing wavy lines known as "flames"...

, quilt maple

Quilt maple

Quilt or quilted maple refers to a type of "figure" in maple wood. It is seen on the tangential plane and looks like a wavy "quilted" pattern, often similar to ripples on water. It is a distortion of the grain pattern itself. Prized for its beauty, it is used frequently in the manufacturing of...

 and figured maple creating the effect of tiger stripes.