I'm going to be that guy, and I'll say I haven't had good experience with PRS SE.
I have only had Korean ones. I have not tried the new Cort Indo-made ones. So take this as a grain of salt.
I've had 5. Out of those, only one has been like objectively good. It was a Mike Mushok SE baritone. Great guitar. No flaws. Sounded great. Played great. No complaints.
The worst was when I had a Paul Allender which I struggled with. It had a FANTASTIC neck (that I'm sure you wouldn't dig because it was the wide-thin with a flatter fretboard than they usually use), but it had a mayor QC issue. It had a hump on the fretboard towards the last few frets. Like from 20-24. That made the action have to be mile-high, or else, anything played in the lower frets choke out bad. I did buy the guitar used, so I was stuck with it, but no way that kind of defect would have been developed by mistreating the guitar. It was evidently a factory defect. I could've told the seller about it, but I liked the neck profile so much, and at that point, it was the only SE that didn't have an underwhelmingly figured top thaht I owned, that I decided to suck it up and bring it to my tech. He had to remove frets 20-24, sand the hump down, and refret those frets. It wasn't cheap, but in the end, I loved the guitar, so to me, it was worth it. But be wary, many people would not have been cool with that. It did sound brighter than what I usually like, but oh, well.
I also had other 3. Out of the ones that had fancy veneers, all of them were below average to very poorly figured tops. None of them sounded particularly good.
In fact, the worst should've been a Nick Catanese. That one looked OK. Didn't have the worst-looking top, but not the best either. I always struggled with the neck (Wide Fat), but that's just personal preference. Keep in mind, though, the Wide Fat does not feel like a Gibson 50's. It's shaped differently, and it has a rounder fretboard. Anyway, what was worse about that guitar is it sounded so thin and anemic. I must've tried like a thousand pickups in it, and all of them in that guitar were annoyingly lower output than in other guitars, and very bright, for some reason. The only one that made it sound OK was the EMG 85. That guitar was a turd sound-wise.
I also had a few that were very well below average. One that comes to mind was a Korina Singlecut. That one was freakishly light, but it sounded better. Better, not good, though. Kinda bright and thin, but very loud acoustically, unlike the Nick Catanse. What was worse about that is it had a multi-piece body that wasn't matched well at all and looked cheap as hell. Same awkard Wide Fat neck profile, but this one had tiny small frets.
I also an Singlecut SE that I didn't keep photos of. Like I said, below average. Thin or dead-sounding with an underwhemlingly figured top.
Also, the tuners they put in those are absolute garbage. Expect to have to change them out. I've heard some people have good experiences with them. The ones in my Mushok actually held tune fine. But all of the others didn't at all. I always changed them out for Grovers or Gotohs. The nuts were terrible as well, and they're cut for fucking 9's. Like literally, you can't even fit 11's in them. 10's you can, but expect binding.
For a company that profess the importance of one piece bodies and necks and hardware made of the right alloys, they certainly seem to be cutting every corner they can to bring these to a pricepoint. Which in the end, isn't even that cheap compared to like Squier Classic Vibe, which is around the same level of quality I'd come to expect from PRS SE.
Do not mistake me as some kind of snob. I've had LTD's that cost around the same, but came with good pickups and tuners, didn't have any major defects, and sounded much better.
So that's been my experience with PRS SE. Sorry to be the party pooper.
