I went to Eric Drake's mouthpiece shop in Berkeley today and tried about 12 or so Links. Ended up with a Babbit STM 7* and (surprisingly) a 0.110" Ponzol with very little baffle. He also worked on my new NY piece a bit, took some material off the baffle. I can say I'm pretty pleased now and have some good pieces to work with. I have tended to find that the newer Links do indeed sound better after they have been refaced and had the baffle tweaked a bit.
The comments of jgreiner caught my attention. As far as new versus old, I could definitely tell a big difference from the batch of new NY Links I tried from WW&BW. Now, this may be apples and oranges, as the pieces I played today were mostly hand-tweaked vintage Links, but by far the older pieces sounded better. More even sound quality. Better volume. Richer overtones. Hopefully this isn't just a misperception. I was not at all impressed by any of the 6*, 7, or 7* new NY Links I playtested, and as I stated, I thought they would need a refacing and what-not before being up to par. All of them were subpar compared to any of the vintage pieces I played-tested, today, which again may be a misperception. But I doubt it.
Some of the best pieces I have played at the shop were Florida Links, which are fat-sounding pieces. The new NY would have trouble hangimg with these, IMO. But these are a bit out of my budget, for now.
Of course, since when you start tweaking a mouthpiece, it isn't really just a stock product anymore, your experiences may vary. I'm sure that there are both great-sounding new New York pieces out there which require zero tweaking and furthermore a lot of new NY mouthpieces will play much better after a little TLC.