Hello from the windy city!
I took up the guitar in 1986 inspired by bands of the day like WASP, Poison and Ratt (therefore it should come as no surprise that my first guitar was a flying V copy). I quickly moved on to embrace Metallica, Metal Church and the like as well as their predecessors like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Black Sabbath.
In 1990 I saw BB King at the Cains Ballroom in Tulsa ... and everything changed.
I first played a PRS (I think it was a McCarty, but I could be wrong) in 1995 or 1996. Do I need to state how amazed I was? The playability and sound were impeccable. Unfortunately, it was out of reach for me at the time, but it was the “Holy Grail” guitar that stuck in my memory. Like many I came up through the ranks of SE and S2 guitars trying to recapture that sense of awe from my first experience. They were great guitars but didn’t have the "mojo" that I remembered, and I was beginning to wonder if I was looking back at that guitar through rose-colored glasses.
Recently everything came full circle when I acquired a 1995 Custom 22 10 Top. My recollection was spot-on.