PRS SE Allender (newer version)

I am down in NC this week, spent the first half of the week with my brother who just returned from Afghanistan after his 12-month deployment and the 2nd half with our buddy Ryan. :wub: Well, last night we swung by the Charlotte Guitar Center just to browse the used section and figured we would check out the new SE line since they had several of them. They had a Torero and one of the newer Allender models so we took both into the amp room for an hour or so. The Torero was pretty disappointing, played ok but sounded awful, really thin and lacking definition.

Then we plugged in the Allender... damn. I was pleasantly surprised that it sounded and played fantastic! :metal: Intonation was spot on as was the fretwork and apparently it was unboxed 2 days ago so I guess it hasn't had much time on the wall to be abused. :lol: Only things I'm not huge on were the bat inlays (look cheap/tacky to me :shrug and the board was clearly dyed poorly as there are darker black spots leftover in some places on the fretboard.

After playing it for a bit I checked out the tag and thought the price was pretty good and figured it was used. We went back to Ryan's place and I thought about it some more so I decided to see how much they ran when I realized most "new" Allender models on eBay were around $800+ and I could have sworn the price was lower at GC.... We called them back and after 15 minutes of being transferred finally got someone to take a look and it turns out it was actually new and tagged quite a bit lower than the standard $828 new price....





Few pics of the guitar:







Ryan approves!



Going to throw this bitch into Drop-C since these new EMGs seem to handle that low end pretty well and the split tones on both pickups are excellent. :yesway: