Apparently PRS' policy has changed within the past 5 years or so. I've read a user account, where circumstances were *very* similar to mine, state that he received unbelievably favorable treatment from PRS and that, moreover, the PTC did a complete refinish on his (second owner) guitar to render it "like new," second owner was only held responsible for shipping. Change in personnel / service manager?
I think that is where their evaluation comes in. I had to send one of mine in due to clouding issues. I had no idea if they were going to take care of it when I sent it in. The way I looked at it was that if I ever decided to sell the guitar it was going to sell for less because of the finish. I like the guitar so it made sense to send it in and let them look at it to see what it was going to cost to fix it. After looking at it they told me they were going to refinish it under warrantee. They determined it was a failure in either materials or workmanship. I have my guitars insured through Heritage so I didn't have to pay a huge insurance fee to get it there.
Yeah, it sucks for the buyer, but instruments are typically only warranted to the original owner. The warranty doesn’t transfer even if the guitar is resold in it’s first week with the original purchaser.
The 513 was very close to being my first PRS guitar. I found that a shop I bought much of my stuff from back then had one and it was in a finish I really liked. It had a great top on it. I talked to one of my sales guys there and we took it down from the rack and plugged it in. I really wanted it to be the end all be all guitar. It was not. It hummed a lot, more than a guitar with regular single coil pickups in it. I ended up buying a different brand of high end guitar that day. Thankfully I didn't let that one guitar ruin the dream of owning a PRS for me.
