Yeah, but I have no idea how old my SE is. They had to get it from the back of the store, and it had an old price tag on it.It's good that you're switching out the stick also. I used to have an SE and it began screwing up. Controls were unresponsive or I'd be jumping and stuff like that. The newer SEs probably fixed that though.
Whether it's new or not, I'm still switching the stick. The stock one just feels really loose and imprecise to me, and it doesn't pick up quarter rolls (236, etc if rolls isn't the term, lol) very well.