Hi,
I'm Ben.
I got my first PRS - SE Standard 24 in Translucent Blue a couple of months ago.
I got a black SE Singlecut Trem less than a month later when I noticed it'd been sitting at JB Hi Fi quite a while, & had dropped down - & bought it sans trem arm & gig bag.
Electric Factory were good enough to provide me a trem arm for free, & I happened to have a spare case so no probs.
Turned out the Singlecut was 4 years old, clearly sat in the distributors, then JB for several years, waiting for someone like me to realise it just needed a good home & some new strings!
To be honest, I think it's actually at least as good as the SE Standard, probably better, just without the coil split, & of course since it's a Singlecut rather than the newer 245, only has a single vol & tone knob.
PRS probably first came on the radar for me back in the late '80s - early '90s when I saw that Rick Brewster & Bob Spencer were playing PRS in The Angels.
There were no S2s or SE's back then, so owning a PRS seemed like a dream that would never come to pass.
I couldn't (& Still struggle to) justify paying over $1k for a guitar; probably because I've not come from a wealthy family, or ever had a particularly highly paid job. I can see the value, & I know how beautiful & well made the customs & private stock are, but both can't afford them, & would be too paranoid to play them, in case I scratched or damaged it.
That said if a guitar isn't being played, I can't see the point in holding onto it; they're musical instruments, not just novelty decorations.
To cut a long story short, I'm a recycled husband, & had a daughter with my ex wife.
She (my daughter) passed away from cancer just over a year ago, but in the months before she left us, we got into some discussions about PRS & other guitars, & she made me aware - or increased my awareness of the SE range.
Until then, I didn't realise the SE's were are good as they are, or that they came in at around the $700 range Au.
I'm now paying off my credit card, after getting the 2 SE's in quick succession, & since that made 3 guitar purchases this year, I won't be getting another this year - as I want to stay married & not stress out my wife too much.
I've got my eye on the SE 245 as my next guitar though; & I think it looks great in the new/reintroduced Cherry Sunburst.
To get it in the new 2017 model, with the PRS signature on the headstock, well that's the icing on the cake.
Unfortunately no retailers over here seem to stock the 2017 range yet, so the plan is to hold back until I've paid off my credit card, by which time I should be able to make my next purchase.
My first guitar was a pretty crappy Cimar strat style guitar, which was followed by a Gibson SG circa 1975 - which proved to me the name on the headstock (for some brands) is not a promise of quality. The neck broke on me twice where it meets the headstock, & when I had it repaired, was told that this had happened to this guitar previously!
I've also owned a few other less memorable guitars, like Ibanez RG 350 with Floyd Rose, & some that are so unmemorable, I can vaguely remember what they looked like, but not much else detail.
There was a Les Paul copy in black back there somewhere, that never held tune, & had weak pickups, a few others that got the Pete Townshend treatment (I was an angry young man at the time), & a few sub par acoustic guitars.
My ex did not enjoy my guitar playing at all, so there were several years there when my guitars did little more than gather dust.
When we split up, I took a few years to pick up the pieces & hook up with my current wife, so again the guitar playing really took a backseat.
The past few years I've really tried to get back into playing, & should be playing now instead of posting!
My daughter was 15 when she passed, & had been really getting into guitar, having gone through a few different instruments before moving to guitar.
Some of my last conversations were about music, & I recall her telling me she didn't know what to do.
At the time I didn't realise how sick she was, & thought she was planning her future after school (which never came) so I told her to focus on her passion.
I now take my advice to her as advice to myself, & have come to realise, that often enough the advice we give is the advice we should take.
So it's back to practising guitar for me now.
I'll probably never be a pro musician, or even play any real gigs, but life's too short to put your passions in the backseat long term.