What makes a guitar great isn’t just some wood, some metal, and some pickups. How is the wood aged and dried? How is it selected? What quality is chosen? How much attention to detail in assembly? What’s the design and quality of the hardware that touches and affects the strings? I could go on, but you get the picture.
Things like tone and resonance are subjective, and different players have varying needs. I find the Core models more resonant and toneful than the others, and the hardware and stock pickups are the nicest that PRS turns out. The Cores and S2s are roughly comparable in playability, though more attention to detail happens with Core.
The hardware touches the strings and affects tone. The wood resonates and affects tone. It all matters, the Core models certainly have the whole thing covered without much compromise.
Bang for buck - well, how much buck, and how much bang? How selective are you? It’s hard to quantify satisfaction, and everyone’s idea of value is different.
With an S2 you get PRS’ Maryland wood selection and finish. The compromise is made with the other stuff, hardware and pickups, and those things can be changed. I think the wood and how it’s aged and dried is important to resonance and tone, so S2 would certainly be good bang for buck.
For me, Core and Private Stock are the best bang for bucks, because you get everything, and I’m a guy who cares about all that. Long term satisfaction matters in terms of what constitutes value in an instrument - for me, one guy who certainly doesn’t speak for everyone. The SEs are a bargain, but here the whole guitar represents a degree of compromise. However, lots of folks love them.
On the other hand, you may disagree with all I’ve said, and no amount of discussion may alter your view. For example, you seem to be perfectly happy with a Navigator/ESP Les Paul copy instead of a real Les Paul, and in terms of the vintage tone that lots of folks want from an LP, the two aren’t truly comparable - maybe you found one that’s unusually good, maybe you aren’t all that picky, or into that tone thing; one can only guess.
To make a weird analogy, you can trick out a Honda and it’ll be a fun toy. You can buy a Ferrari and it’ll have a degree of sophistication in handling, materials, engineering, engine, and build the Honda can’t touch, but both will get you to work on time. Which would give you the most satisfaction, and therefore the most bang? And how much are you willing to pay to get that bang? one thing’s for sure: no matter how much you tinker with and mod that Honda, it’s never going to be the Ferrari.
My takeaway is that if the idea of “bang” is a moving target that no two people share identically, and no two people value money in exactly the same way, the idea of bang for buck is awfully hard to define.
