That's a lot of words to not share what you think of the new guitar.
You like? You no like? You kinda like? Pros? Cons?
LOL. Sometimes my mind is on more important things than just the guitar itself.
Yeah, the guitar is nice. It's a plain jane among better wood grains and finishes, but IMHO, sometimes guys (including myself) just like modest black finishes.
The roasted maple neck is a 14" radius thin neck, which is comfortable and fast. I usually prefer PRS pattern regular necks, but this will do nicely.
The pickups have nice "quack and spank" in the 2nd and 4th position. The Diamond single-coil neck and mid pickup rich, full-bodied and warm sounding. The Diamond humbucker beefy, which can be tone knob coil-tapped for single-coil tones. A nice feature, and the pickups still silent even though they're SC mode. The silent pickups are the feature that drew me to this guitar, which at this price point is a good part of the price of admission.
The 5-way toggled positions are dead silent at gig volume with strings unmuted among the single-coil/ humbucker pickups, which was my original question to the sales rep who sold me this guitar. I need to be sure that the pickups did not exhibit any ambient noise such as 60Hz hum, crackling, or artifacts. Quiet as can be. Perhaps the FM9's input gate has something to do with it, but I've not tried the gate at levels less than -40dB, so the guitar may exhibit noise by itself. That's really not an issue with the FM9.
The guitar fills the niche I'd not had before with my PRS humbuckers. Now, I can add a wider range of blues, rock, funk and R&B tunes to my repertoire that I'd not been able to with solely my PRS guitars.
I can't imagine any cons of this guitar being a significant issue. The locking tuners will be of help with tuning stability. My only concern might be the maintenance part if I needed step up a string gauge or adjust the trem tension. My friend upstate can assist with that if needs be, and he accepts home-cooked meals in place of cash for his work. He also taught me some of the basics regards guitar maintenance, so I've got most of that covered adequately.
It's kind of like tuning up your car for optimal performance. The instructor who lets you watch him and ask questions while he works you can learn a lot from.