“I could not believe my eyes when it actually showed up”: How a supportive member of a Facebook group gifted Sophie Burrell the PRS of her dreams
While the internet often gets a bad rep for its slew of trolls and negativity, there are plenty of supportive online communities. In fact, guitarist Sophie Burrell has revealed that, if not for the kindness of a stranger on Facebook, she “wouldn’t be the player she was today”.
In a new interview with Guitar World, Burrell explains the “very special and quite unique” story of how she came to acquire her favourite PRS guitar. According to Burrell, she was gifted it at the age of 14… from an encouraging member of Facebook group PRS Guitar Owners Worldwide that saw potential in the young guitarist.
“I was a member of this group on Facebook called PRS Guitar Owners Worldwide, and I used to post little videos of me playing in there,” she says. “I was just playing an SE and [a man named Al] said, ‘I want to support you. You’re great. I think you deserve to be playing on a USA model, not just an SE.’”
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At first, when Al was showing the potential options he could ship over to Burrell, the young guitarist wasn’t convinced the guitar would turn up at all. “I was like, ‘Whatever you want, I’ll take it… sounds good,’” she recalls. “I could not believe my eyes when it actually showed up.”
Al proved to be one of Burrell’s first diehard supporters, going so far as to ship her a genuine USA PRS guitar. It’s the same PRS guitar she plays to this day. “I’m endlessly grateful to Al, who gifted this guitar to me,” she says. “I believe I would not be the player I am today without that [support].”
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While it’s earned a few “battle scars” along the way, Burrell couldn’t imagine life without the mahogany body and flame maple neck of Burrell’s 2014 PRS Custom 24 Wood Library. “It just feels like an extension of me, as soon as I picked it up the first time,” she explains. “I come up with my best ideas on this guitar… At this point, it kind of feels like it’s part of my soul!”
In a 2021 interview with Guitar.com, Burrell also expressed her soul-tie with PRS guitars: “My love for PRS goes back quite far. I first saw PRS about when I saw one of my idols playing PRS guitars – Mark Tremonti [of Creed and Alter Bridge] – and I was absolutely captivated by the birds on the fretboard.”
“I started looking into it when I was 12, I was going to get a Tremonti signature PRS. After saving up all my lunch money for about a year or two, I got one,” she continued. “That’s where the love started!”
On an unfortunate note, Burrell has recently discovered that an AI ‘influencer’ is regularly generating deepfake replicas of her content, a phenomenon that has also impacted guitarists like Sophie Lloyd.
In a new interview with Guitar World, Burrell explained: “I was scrolling on TikTok and got recommended a video of a ‘girl’ playing guitar,” she says. “It was identical to my setup. Same camera angle, same room, same guitar, same movements. It took me less than a second to realise it was literally my video, except I’d been replaced by an AI-generated character.”
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The post “I could not believe my eyes when it actually showed up”: How a supportive member of a Facebook group gifted Sophie Burrell the PRS of her dreams appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
