I'll try to describe this as best I can. I know it's the honeymoon and everything, but I've never experienced a guitar like this in my life. I've owned a good amount of PRS guitars, great guitars. This is something above and beyond anything I've experienced in a guitar. It sounds huge. I think I've already stated, it's got a big, thick low end resonance to it. Similar to qualities of a single cut, but still different. I'd say it's a little more focused or tighter sounding in the bottom end than an SC. I feel like I really achieved the tone I was after when I spec'd the guitar out with a SC thickness on the body. Overall, the guitar has a certain clarity to it that's really awesome. It's something I really noticed while notes were being held and sustaining. Keep in mind, I'm playing through an Archon with the gain around noon, volume around 10:00. I just kept thinking to myself....WOW....
We are rehearsing songs we are going into the studio with, so we played most of rehearsal with the click pounding through the PA. Not exactly what you want to hear when you're trying to assess a new guitar since the click is hogging some of the mid and high end frequencies that the guitar usually occupies. We started out(at my request) playing an older song that we're not recording without that click going. I picked a song that had a little bit of everything in terms of guitar tones. No clean channel used, but a song that I go from full on high gain to rolling of the volume knob for a semi distorted tone(about 1/2 the gain I usually use), to rolling it down to very close to clean(think pushed clean with slight breakup). I do that by utilizing the separate volume knobs for the pickups. Semi distorted tone is both pickups, bridge all the way up and the neck rolled down to about 4-5. The pushed clean is just the neck pickup with the volume knob rolled down even a little further with the volume around 3ish. This is where I really noticed how great the dynamics of the guitar were. I had a lot more control over the rolled off tones. Everything was a lot cleaner or clearer sounding. It was just easier for me to control things and get the tones I was after. The guitar really performed great through the whole realm of tones during the song. It was incredible.
So we pounded through the "work" portion of practice with the click. The guitar sounded and played great through this, even with my sonic space slightly hampered by the click. I did notice that things were easier for me to hear vs. using my other guitars. Who knows if that's actually due to the guitar or something else like temperature, humidity, etc. Anyway, everything sounded great on these songs as well, so I was really happy.
At the end of our rehearsal, I was just messing around with listening to tones by myself. Working through the controls while on my high gain channel. Going between all pickup combos varying both volumes and the tone up and down, tapping coils...pretty much going through gamut of available tones just working the guitar controls. Well, I must've been doing something right because everyone was off their instruments on the other side of the room and one by one, they came back for an impromptu jam. We don't do that all that often. At least not after everyone is done with rehearsal. It was really fun. I continued to go through the whole spectrum of tones here. We almost went into an odd timed jazz thing for awhile, which is totally not our style. The coolest part aside from the jam itself, was that it really gave a long period of time to work through all the tones of the guitar. It turned out to be extremely inspiring and let me see how special the guitar really is. I felt the magic and it was amazing.
I would say to anyone on the fence about going PS, do it. Hard to believe you'd be disappointed. Rob, Alan or anyone with their first PS in the oven - get ready, it's just a different level of PRS awesomeness. It's almost unbelievable. Zero regrets.