NICE!! Congrats and WELCOME to PRS and the PRS Forum.
That is one sexy beast you got yourself there. What year is it? The newer ones come with bird inlays. This one's body and carve look like one of the more current ones but the lack of birds and the 22 frets mean it's like around a 2011 or 2010?
Either way, the SEs are phenomenal guitars IMHO. They are pro quality instruments right out of the box (a PRS trait) but they are also SO moddable and upgradable.
Eventually you might decide to do a pickup upgrade. NOT that theres anything wrong with the SE pickups...in FACT, as far as stock PRS humbuckers go, (not including the 5x/xx series), the stock bridge humbucker on my SEs are the only stock bridge humbuckers I've ever been satisfied with and didn't instantly feel the need to replace.
Even my American made PRSs have had their bridge buckers replaced. It's pretty common practice to swap pups on a lot of PRSs...American OR Korean.
BUT...do NOT fall for the ever-so-common fallacy that every PRS SE guitar's nut MUST BE UPGRADED.
Yes, sometimes if your SE came strung with lighter gauged (.009"s) than you like, and when you put thicker strings on it you experience some binding/hanging-up in the nutslots, well that's why God gave us nutfiles, torch tip cleaners and folded emery cloth.
Another common unnecessary "upgrade" is to replace the stock tuners for locking ones. I fell for it and put lockers on my Tremonti SE Custom because since it isn't a double locking trem (a-la Floyd Rose), heavy use of the whammy bar in conjunction with deep string bends....well I don't think there is a non-double locking trem on the planet that is going to stay in tune with that kind of abuse...locking tuners or not.
I put a set on my Tremonti and I experienced ABSOLUTELY NO TUNING STABILITY IMPROVEMENT.
What they DID do for me though was to make stringchanges a lot faster. So if you work in the pits of the Grand Prix, you definitely should get locking machine heads. If you have 5 minutes to spare...
The locking tuners will also add a good deal of mass to the headstock. I used to (and still might) think that could be a good thing but PRS seems to think otherwise with it's "LOW MASS Phase3 tuners".
In conclusion I guess my points are...SWEET AXE there Mister. The SEs are absolutely awesome and they are good to go right out of the box and will last you a lifetime. A lot of pro players who don't have to still play PRS SEs. AND....DONT fall for all the hype that says nutswaps are mandatory on all SEs. They are definitely NOT and wont bring you a tonal improvement (unless you always play only open strings and even THEN it's doubtful). If you experience binding, widen the slots. You don't chop your head off when your face gets dirty you just wash it.
You can get 19:1 Wilkinson locking tuners for 20 bucks on eBay. Hard to say no to that but remember...they aren't necessary and it was my experience that they did not at all help tuning stability. That is probably a testament to how great PRS guitars (and trem bridge blocks with the deep counterbores) are and not how poor lockers are.
AND...IF you eventually decide that the pickups aren't quite perfect for you, a magnet swap might get you where you want to be and magnets are under 3 bucks each.
OR...just go NUTS (no pun intended) and mod the crap out of that thing. That's another beautiful thing about the SEs. You aren't defacing a priceless instrument by modding them. They are probably one of the best modding platforms out there...after a Squier.
CONGRATS again and welcome to PRS. You are in big trouble. Theyre worse than CHIPS!
EDIT: Be careful if looking at the S2 line. They are almost every bit as Korean or foreign as the SEs (I don't think there is a single component on an S2 that comes from the USA yet they say they are made in the USA :-O ???? the maple cap MIGHT be from the USA but more likely it is from up here in Canada). You can skip right past the S2s when going from the SE to the USA PRSs. For LESS than the price of a Korean made (in the USA?) S2 you can get an all (actual) made in the USA used CE22, CE24 or even McCarty.
In FACT, being an owner of SEs and American made PRSs but never having played an S2, going only by their spec sheet and knowing how theyre made and out of how many glued-together pieces of wood goes into one compared to an SE, I don't even think the S2s are an UPGRADE over the SE line.
YMMV, IMHO and with a grain of salt..again..I aint ever even played an S2. I am ONY going by the facts that their hardware and electronics are Korean like the SEs, the SEs use fewer pieces of glued together scraps to make their necks, and/but, they ARE ASSEMBLED in the USA and Quality Controlled in the USA...but the SEs have their QC done in the same place by the same people and in I assume the same way. What you are paying for in the S2 line over the SE line is...seemingly only the Made in the USA caption and the extra glue? Yeah...stick with the SE and then if you feel the urge to step up a notch...just go straight to the core American made line of PRS guitars. If money is an object, look at the used market. It's actually fairly EASY to find a GREAT used CE22 or CE24 for UNDER 800 or 900 bucks.
And again...YMMV, IMHO, AFAIK and all that stuff.
