To start with: I think the OP was fully within his rights to return the guitar for a full refund. Hopefully the dealer will find a purchaser who will see the guitar in person and like the unique top and will pay full price for it. If not, and it languishes, then the dealer should be having a serious discussion with PRS about it.
I don't think the OP can expect PRS to "rush" an order through as a replacement. It's just not how they roll. OP can want it all he wants, I just don't see it happening. So the OP then has to figure out if the better option is to find a different guitar currently available and obtain that instead - which is harder to do up in The Great White North. And I completely understand the OP not wanting to wait another 12 months for the regular order process.
Agreed. OP, I feel for you. But I wouldn't accept that guitar & while you're looking out for your dealer, he should be looking out for you.
I still find this odd. How is the dealer not responsible?
That is exactly what he means: "[the dealer] should be looking out for you".
Yeah, the dealer didn't make the guitar, but the dealer is responsible for ensuring the customer gets what they ordered, and that if something as subjective as a guitar finish is involved, the customer does reserve the right to say "no, that isn't what I expected".
So just to clarify a couple of things that I think are getting overlooked: this wasn't a custom order. Private Stock is a custom order. Even Wood Library runs are only pseudo-custom order, IMHO. This "10-top" is really no different from ordering a car through your car dealer and waiting for it to get built because they don't have one on the lot that matches your wants/needs. The delay is a lot longer than a typical car build, but the idea is the same. The muddy bit is that the guitars are made of wood, and the type of wood is chosen specifically because it takes a finish differently from the last piece - otherwise we'd all have identical looking flamed tops. That variation can be quite wide, obviously.
Unfortunately the designation of "10 top" is truly arbitrary. There are some guidelines such as "complete coverage of figuring - no dead spots".
I feel for the OP - the guitar, while it has an "interesting" top, does not match his expectations of what a 10-top should look like. I'm not sure whether PRS would have graded this any differently on any other day. As I said earlier, I have a "10 top" that doesn't look nearly as uniform as the OP's, and the figuring is much more subtle in normal light. But it is figuring that completely covers the whole top, and is fairly symmetrical. All of my non-10 tops that have figured tops look fantastic, IMHO, but I can see the "dead spots" that disqualified them from the "10-top" designation, even if they aren't very big.
Therefore I honestly don't consider this a "QC fail" - that would mean it was released knowingly not meeting "specs", or unknowingly because no-one really looked at it. I think someone looked at this and said, "yeah, it sure is a bit oddball, but it is still a 10-top according to the (qualitative and arbitrary) rules, in my eyes."
Maybe PRS needs to re-evaluate how it grades 10-tops. If this guitar was "not good enough for Artist Package", that doesn't automatically mean it only falls one grade to "10-top" - maybe it should be an ungraded "regular top".
I dunno, hard to see how this will ever resolve to a happy ending for the OP. The bitter taste will linger, no matter what happens. Since I did not participate in any of the communications between OP, dealer, and PRS, it is difficult for me to judge.