Great guitar, and very similar in looks to my first one, a 1991 bought new back then.
I'll take small issue with your statement that there's somehow a
rumor that the new ones are "better."
They're different in some details. That's not a rumor, it's a fact. "Better" involves a value judgment, and what's best for one person isn't necessarily the best thing for another person.
Having owned many PRS guitars since 1991, I think recent PRS guitars' changes are "improvements." You might disagree. That's not a bad thing!
I would say that beyond this new guitar being gorgeous, I find that most of the flame wood I have seen on tops was better earlier in PRS's offerings, then currently.
PRS customer since '91, and I saw
plenty of variability in the flame wood on 10s back in the day with my own two eyeballs. The eyes don't lie.
And during that past 25 years, I've owned an awful lot of them, and ran through plenty of racks of PRS guitars while shopping.
In fact, I remember ordering a guitar with a ten top back in December of 1999 or 2000 (one of the first Singlecuts), that had a
spectacular top that I though should have been an Artist top - it was certainly the equal of my 1993 Artist II - and that very night went on the old PRS Forum only to see someone make the claim that 10 tops had declined in quality. The irony made me laugh.
So I'm not convinced by pictures posted by collectors on the internet, they're going to be heavily skewed towards the prettiest examples.
