Hi. This version does sound smoother and nicer than the old version. Now, I'm probably one of the most picky persons here, so keep that in mind while I comment.
The intro is cool. I like the way you did it the first time far better than how you did it in the middle. I'd try to do it the same way each time, at least as far as timing goes. Your timing was a little peculiar the second time around.

Also, I do like the softer guitar. I don't know if it is just that you need to get more familiar with how the SA voices work, or if Yamaha just programmed them kind of poorly, but all that string scraping in the background was about to drive me nuts, literally. There is no way under the sun that guitarists would be making that much string fret noise. Yours is not the first demo that exhibited this sound either, but that scraping is hugely overdone.

Finally, I agree that the chords in the bridge are still off. Now I'm not saying you have to do it just as it was originally done, but I would say that learning the correct chords should come first, then altering the chords. In other words, know the song thoroughly before you change it personally.

So there you have it, for whatever it's worth.